July 12, 2008 -- Really Dumb Ride
By Tom Clark
I had to deliberate some before deciding to even write this one up. It started out with cranks turning, but had enough thrashing through the woods to bring into question whether it could be called a ride.
The idea was simple: meet at Cleary Summit, and look for some trails that an Evil Nameless Source supplied to Eric Troyer by way of a map of the area, with trails highlighted. Looked good, so off we went (Eric Troyer, Geoff Orth and myself). We crossed the Steese, and started up the other side. The first right that we came to, we wondered "where does that go?" It ended up being little more than a roughed-in road that required pushing to get to the top of because of all the root masses and dirt mounds. It dumped out near the old rope-tow shed for the upper slopes of Cleary. We stopped to inspect the remaining gadgets and Rube Goldberg contraptions that seemed to constitute the hardware. In a way, these served as an omen for things to come...
We followed the powerline behind the shed west to an intersection with the True North mine road. The powerline turned north, and so did the trail supplied by the Evil Nameless Source, so north we went. This dropped downhill through tall, wet grass and muddy slopes. Blech. The grass hid quite a few surprises, and though a lot of dabs were required, nobody hit the dirt. We ended up at the top of the road down to the old Eldorado Camp. We went up the dirt road to the north, which was a fine quality 4x4 road.
We ignored a left hand turn off this road, as Eric explained that he'd followed it up to a tower site once, where it had dead ended. We continued on up, and after about 1.75 miles up from the start of the climb, the road abruptly veered left, downhill. There was a second trail, continuing on straight ahead that was rougher and less used, and this was our route. The other route was a dead end, according to Eric Troyer, and I seemed to remember from map gazing that this was true. So, we forged on, riding over continually rougher terrain, with my goddamn camelback bite-valve leaking all over me, and Eric Troyer saying of the trail "it's getting better". The ridge riding turned into downhill riding, and it was some technical downhill at that. Lotsa roots and endo opportunities. Nobody cashed in on the opportunity yet though.
After waiting out a brief rain shower under some trees, we finally rode to the bottom of our ridable descent. We appeared to be a east-west section line. Our trail teed into this section line, with no sign of trail on the other side. The problem was, the map supplied by the Evil Nameless Source had shown a trail (if you could call what we were riding on a trail) continuing down. We searched the immediate area and found no continuation downhill, so we decided to push west. After ten or fifteen minutes, we'd covered about 0.14 miles, with lots of getting the bikes caught up in various crap. We paused and reviewed our situation, and reviewed the maps. We couldn't say for certain that we knew how to get anywhere, other than going overland. So, clearly, it was time for Rock-Paper-Scissors. (A true sign of desperation.)
The outcome was that we would go overland toward a road-looking thing that Eric liked. Naturally, none of us really wanted to go overland yet, thus we ignored the results of Rock-Paper-Scissors and opted to go back and see what happened if we went east on our section-line-like-thing. The trail improved for a bit, and was actually ridable for a hundered feet or so. After considerable effort and 0.2 miles, we again paused to contemplate our situation. Our options were threefold: we could continue on like this for somewhere under a mile and hopefully connect with the Steese, or climb back up the hill, or go overland. It was the moment that none of us had wanted to come to, but here it was: time to go downhill, overland.
The leaking bite-valve that had been pissing me off so much (I was saying bad things about it repeatedly) no longer really concerned me at this point. I was trying to ride down the hill and kept getting the front tire caught up in either logs, branches or deep moss. I'd then go over the handlebars, though fortunately it was always a soft landing. We were all cursing the Evil Nameless Source, none of us wanting to take the blame for our self-inflicted misery. The bastard.
There was a line of cottonwood, aspen and birch that we were approaching, and hopes for a ridable path were running high. Once there, we saw that it was the Davidson Ditch. We crossed it in the one spot that had any water in it -- of course. We know this because we pushed westward along the ditch for about 0.30 miles, our hopes for being able to ride it dashed to bits. Eric suggested going for 15 minutes and seeing if anything cropped up. Nothing did besides lots of bashed shins, scraped ankles and bug bites. After a time, the voice of reason (Geoff Orth) pointed out that this was likely to continue, and back where we'd joined up with the ditch looked like as good a spot as any to continue overland towards the highway. So back we pushed, through branches, mosquitoes and flies. When we got to some open looking woods down we went, even hopping on the bikes for a bit here and there.
It soon became clear that riding should no longer be attempted, even as a lark. Grimly we pressed on, downhill toward road noises that got ever louder. After negotiotiating a particularly steep pitch, we crossed a knee-deep creek, scrambled over some tailings, and then... we were on the road. Paved road. The Steese. It felt good. The funny thing is that each of us was pretty happy and grinning at this point, pretty much as we had been the whole way. Yeah, it sucked, and yeah, I will never EVER do that route again, but it was entertaining. Way up there on the stupid scale, probably a 9 out of ten, but entertaining. That probably doesn't say much for the participants...
Eric had to go buy a pizza for the fam, so he took off, riding up the Steese to Cleary. Geoff and I opted to finish out the day with an actual ride. It was easily longer than the adventure we'd just had, and a good bike ride to boot. However, since we were able to ride all of it, and this is report of a stupid ride, I won't detail the ride. Briefly, we rode up Old Chatanika highway (a dirt 4x4 road) to where it joined the Davidson Ditch for a moment before turning sharply uphill. We followed this road through the burn, staying on the main trail, past various scenic lookouts and intersections. We joined up with Fairbanks Creek road for the last two-plus miles, where it intersected with Fish Creek road which we coasted back to the car.
Lessons learned: