Passes & Canyons Blog

This trail is nothing compared to what some of these folks in this ADV thread have done.

I’m down to only one motorcycle these days, and that one is my 2006 Suzuki V-Strom. I keep telling myself I will buy a second bike, presumably some time in the next year, but I don’t actually feel very motivated because I really like the V and it can do just about anything.

Of course, there are a lot of things it could do that I won’t try to make it do, primarily at this point because I don’t have the right tires for that kind of thing. I’ve quit running those 80/20 Shinkos because they don’t hold up to highway travel all that well and I do a heck of a lot more highway riding than off-road riding.

However, may people who own V-Stroms do have knobbies and they do take their bikes all kinds of places. And there is a thread on Adventure Rider where the theme/title is “Let’s see your Vstrom OFFROAD.” I was looking at this recently and oh man, some of these folks are up for a lot more than I am. Or maybe they weren’t really up for what they encountered but they did encounter it.

Just to give you some idea, I started on page 80 of this thread (there are 91 pages at this point, with 20 posts per page) and I’ll describe a bit of what there is to see.

Right away, in the fourth post on the page, we encounter a couple standing amongst some bikes, giving a thumbs-up, with the caption “High spirits before.” If that is not foreboding nothing is. You scroll down and they’ve come down a steep, gravel hill that comes to a large pool of water at the bottom, with one bike coming through the pool. The next several shots are a bike on its side, having come through a smaller pool, and then a different bike up to the saddle in a deep pool and the rider trying to walk it through.

But they made it and I’m sure they were proud of themselves. I’m not sorry I missed that one.

Next come a bunch of shots of bikes in great-looking spots, people really pleased with where they have gotten to. Some real feel-good shots.

Page 81 opens with a shot of a guy splashing through a stream. Yeah, I’ve done that. Then more shots of cool places people have gotten to. And then it starts going a bit off. First a shot of a dirt road, followed by a path that is mainly marked by other people’s tires having passed this way, followed by a long stretch of muddy road. Then a V-Strom high-centered on a pile of rotting timbers that the guy thought he could get over but was wrong.

A little later (caption “Oops!) we see a V half-way on its side with the front on dirt and the rear in a mud puddle.

Next some more “look at the great place I got to” shots. Envy is what I’m feeling now.

Then there’s another high-centered bike, followed by another bike up to its axles in mud. And a bike on the ground, with a shot showing that they have come through a so-called trail that is nothing but water hole after water hole. Then more mud, more water holes.

It goes on and on. And this was just starting on page 80 of 91 pages. Worth a look for the entertainment value and to see some great shots of some of the great places a motorcycle will take you. If you have the right tires.

Biker Quote for Today

I’m not a thrill-seeker; I’m a thrill-giver to my soul.

At the Grand Canyon on a different OFMC trip.

Sure any day on a motorcycle is better than just about anything else, but still, we all have had especially good days. So I got to thinking about what I would list as my best days riding.

The first one comes instantly and requires no consideration. This was the day Kevin and I rode a couple of his V-Stroms over Cinnamon Pass. This was a September day and if you have spent time in Colorado in the fall you know that there are some days in the fall when the sun, the air, and everything is so perfect it’s a true Rocky Mountain high. It was being here for a few of these days when I traveled for a year after college that persuaded me to come here when I decided it was time to put my roots down somewhere.

This day with Kevin on the V-Stroms on Cinnamon Pass was one of those incredible days. On top of that, Cinnamon Pass itself was beautiful. The fall colors were in full profusion and it’s a beautiful mountain location. The pass runs from Lake City over to the Silverton area, on US 550, the Million Dollar Highway. How could it not be an incredible ride? It was. I’ve never had a day on a bike I enjoyed more.

Another best day was really nothing special but circumstances made it special. This was in 1996 and the OFMC was heading out with Deadwood, SD, our destination for the first day.

The circumstances were this: I was married just a year at this point and, about six months in, my wife’s three kids became ungodly terrors. They hated me and made that utterly clear. And for the next seven years they made our lives a living hell, day after day after day. They finally all moved out, they’ve grown up now, and they are adults I actually like and even care about. But back then I was in shock.

John and Bill and I took off this day and as we rode north and I knew I would be away from it all for a week the anger and frustration melted away. I found myself riding along throwing my head back and screaming into the wind, “I love my motorcycle!!!” I will never forget that day. There haven’t been many days in my life when I felt that good. But for the next six years the situation with the kids made my one week on the bike trip something I longed for like crazy, and I was overjoyed each year when it finally came.

After that it gets harder to identify best days. I actually have to think about it.

I guess another best day was also one of the worst. It was at the end of the day when all the woes of the day were overcome that I felt absolutely wonderful.

This was on another OFMC trip, and I’ve told this story before. I had taken my bike in for some work and the shop promised me a dozen times it would be ready by the time we were set to leave. And it wasn’t. John and Bill left without me and we agreed to meet at the campground at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I finally got my bike and blasted off in that direction. After two days of very hard riding I got to the campground, found the campsite but no buddies, so I went looking for them.

Not finding them in any of the obvious places I considered the non-obvious. Perhaps they had ridden out to Sunset Point to watch the sunset. This point is about 25 miles out a narrow, winding road, max speed about 25 mph. I rode out there and they weren’t there so I turned around and headed back. Then my bike died. I was miles from nowhere and there was not another soul on the road. With all the other stress I’d been through up to this point this was where I broke.

Standing there next to my bike in the darkness on this deserted road I pounded on the seat of my bike screaming “God damn it!! God damn it!! God damn it!!”

Then it dawned on me that maybe I’d just run out of gas and I needed to go to Reserve. I flipped the lever down, hit the start button, it sputtered, and then fired up. Talk about exultation! I hurried on back to camp, John and Bill were there, I grabbed the last beer they had out of John’s hand and drank it down, and I felt great. I was with my buddies, all was well, and oh my god the horror was over. You don’t ever feel much better than I felt right then.

OK, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind when I started writing this but that’s where I ended up. Maybe I’ll come back to this topic if some good rides come to mind. Meanwhile, there surely must be some quote I could use that is appropriate to this piece.

Biker Quote for Today

The best moments are always unplanned.

The home page of the A&M Moto Toys website.

This is long overdue. I have been acquainted at a distance for quite a few years now with Mark Odette. We have never met but we connected back when I was writing for Examiner.com and I was putting together a series of articles on the antipathy in the sportbike community to ABATE. (It was pretty much all about helmets.)

At one point way back then Mark suggested we meet up somewhere and do a ride together. That never came together, though. But we’ve been connected on Meetup for years now. And it was through Meetup something over a year ago that I became aware that Mark set up his own motorcycle rental outfit. I made a note immediately to contact him and do a blog post about his endeavor. This is finally that post.

The company is called A&M Moto Toys LLC and they have a website plus a Facebook page. Everything I’m about to tell you comes from those two sources because I never have connected directly to Mark.

The thing that really stands out here is that unlike so many motorcycle rental places offering street bikes, Mark is offering dirt bikes. What bikes does he have? Here’s the list from the website: 2022 Talaria Sting; 2022 GPX Moto FSE450R; 2022 GPX Moto FSE300R; 2022 GPX Moto FSE250E; 2022 Rieju MR300 Pro; 2019 Beta 390 RRS. He also list these as bikes he intends to add to the fleet: 2022 Moto GPX TSE300R; 2022 Moto GPX 450 Rally; Moto GPX Adventure 500; Kawasaki KLR 650 Adventure.

The company is located in Monument. It says they serve Colorado Spring, Denver, and Pueblo. No prices given but the banner across the home page touts “Affordable Rentals.” Considering that some Harley rentals will run you up to $200 a day, I wonder what affordable means here. In my mind I’d be looking for maybe around $100 a day, but I have no idea really.

It also appears that Mark deals in parts. He lists a variety of manufacturers being represented.

That’s kind of it in a nutshell. You can reach Mark at contact@ammototoys.com.

And then there’s one other interesting note I turned up looking over the A&M Moto Toys website. Mark generously lists information on another rental outfit run by a friend called Ride With Will Rentals. This outfit offers ATVs as well as dirt bikes and will even handle lodging for you if you’re coming in from out of town. This company is headquartered in Pueblo West.

So hey, want to go dirt riding but don’t have a dirt bike? Now you know where to go.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker when you can t imagine your life without riding or the memories of riding.

Photo courtesy of Exit Tours.

I’ve been having an email conversation with Mike Brown, of Exit Tours, about doing some rides with his group. To recap, Exit Tours is structured as a club and for your annual membership fee you get one free ride and then others are fairly inexpensive.

So Mike is making a big push this year to reach a higher level of participation and to that end, I’m assuming as an introduction, he is putting on a no-charge, no-membership-needed Fathers Day Ride to the Alpine Tunnel, set for June 18 and 19. This looks very interesting.

The group will gather near Greens Creek, near Salida, and camp the night of the 18th and do the ride on the 19th.

Here’s the description of the ride:

Ride to the Alpine Tunnel on Sunday June 19.
The Dual Sport ride is a 121 mile Loop with a challenging section on Tomichi Pass.
Snow may be present in late June.
We will provide an alternate Adventure bike loop option over Blacksage and Waunita Passes to Pitkin and the Tunnel site, return over Blacksage and Waunita Passes.
This route is a bit Longer, but does not include any real challenging sections.
Ride counterclockwise from Greens Creek to Old Monarch Pass, Snowblind to Tomichi Pass to the Alpine Tunnel on the Dual Sport Loop.
Then head towards Pitkin on the old Denver, Southpark & Pacific Railroad line.
Lunch & Fuel in Pitkin.
Waunita Pass to Black Sage Pass to Sargents on Hwy 50.
To over Marshall Pass to down Hwy 285. Poncha Springs on Hwy 50 to Greens Creek.
Fuel and Food available at the Silver Plume General Store in Pitkin on either loop.
Phone Compatible GPS Tracks will be provided.
This is a FREE club ride with no other Amenities provided.
Fill out the form on the Sign-Up link if you want to go on an epic ride on Fathers Day and receive GPS tracks.

If you go to the Exit Tours website you’ll notice in the pictures that all the bikes have knobby tires. I have a V-Strom and I run 80/20 Shinko tires. That’s 80% biased to street, 20% biased to dirt. I asked Mike if that would be adequate on the alternate routes that are less challenging. His answer was not reassuring.

However, I mentioned the ride to Bruce, who checked it out and immediately signed up, and he said he has ridden most of those routes before and he thinks I could do it OK.

So I’m not sure here. I would definitely like to do this, and I suppose I could have some more dirt-capable tires put on the V-Strom but I just had new tires front and back put on, and mounting tires is a real expense. Gonna have to think on this.

If you, on the other hand, are totally prepared for this kind of ride you may want to seriously consider signing up.

Biker Quote for Today

We know you’re a poser if you won’t ride down a gravel road.

The Shelf Road is rougher but more scenic than Phantom Canyon Road.

I came down to Canon City from Victor on the Phantom Canyon Road. Now my plan was to go back up to Cripple Creek on the Shelf Road. This was part of an all-day dirt-riding run I did on my own. My thinking was that maybe this would be a good ride to lead some of the RMMRC folks on, those with dirt-capable bikes at least.

I headed north out of Canon City on Field Avenue, which became Garden Park Road. I was surprised, actually, at how far the road is paved. I guess I hadn’t been on this road in a lot of years. It does ultimately become the Shelf Road and the pavement ends.

This is one snaking road. And it is much narrower than the Phantom Canyon Road that I rode down to Canon City on. It’s also a lot rougher–a lot more potholes, bumps, and just generally uneven, loose gravel. I was glad I rode Phantom Canyon first because that allowed me to get back up to speed with my dirt-riding skills, such as they are.

One thing that was good about both roads is that there was not much traffic on either. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have my close call with oncoming traffic. You’re basically riding on a shelf cut into the hillside with a sheer drop on the other side and the turns are often very tight. So of course some guy is coming the other direction, around a spot where the road juts way out, and he wants to get a better view. So he drives right out to the edge, which is to say, directly into my traffic lane. Dude, did you not understand that it’s a blind curve? What if someone is coming the other way? And I was. I hit the brakes as hard as I dared and he very sheepishly quickly swerved back into his own lane.

The road from Canon City to Cripple Creek was only about 26 miles, compared to the 34 miles of the Phantom Canyon Road, but there had to be 10 times as many bumps. I had forgotten one thing I knew about riding dirt, which was to stand up on the pegs on the rougher stuff. Of course, on the Shelf Road that would have meant standing up most of the way. I paid for this the next day–my back really hurt! Fortunately it felt fine by the following day.

So the Shelf Road is probably the more scenic of the two. There’s even a spot where you see a natural arch or hole in the wall.

There’s a hole in the rock wall at upper right.

I got to Cripple Creek and was headed home but my dirt riding for the day was not quite over. I had seen on the map that as I headed north on CO 67 to Divide that there is a road a bit to the west that covers much of that same distance. This is Teller County Road 61. It diverges from and then rejoins 67 as they go north. Perhaps, I thought, this road would go through some unexpected beautiful spots, through some canyon maybe. So I took it.

Sorry to say, no, it’s just a dirt road through the woods. Oh well, I wasn’t going to be satisfied until I had seen it. Now I’ve seen it.

It was getting late and I was heading home and I had considered taking US 24 all the way into Colorado Springs and blasting to Denver on the interstate, or at least part of the way. But by now I would have been hitting the commuter traffic. You wouldn’t believe how many people commute between Denver and Colorado Springs for work. It’s ugly.

So I changed my mind and went back the way I came down, going up CO 67 and CO 126 north out of Woodland Park, back to US 285 and then home. That turned out to be a great choice. There was hardly another vehicle on the road; I had it all to myself. And let’s just say that I didn’t dawdle. It was a fun ride. In fact, the whole day was a fun ride. And I even got home in time for dinner (barely).

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if one of your children or pets have either “Harley” or “Davidson” in their name.

This is actually one of the wider spots along the Phantom Canyon Road–and notice how smooth it is, at least now.

Most of this website was built more than a few years ago now but it’s never really finished. There is always stuff that needs to be updated and there are always roads I want to pay more attention to. And more and more those roads are unpaved. I mean, let’s face it, I’ve already addressed most of the paved roads in the state that are worthy of attention, but there are lots of unpaved roads, and some of them are fabulous.

One area that has had my attention lately is the area around Cripple Creek. Unlike the pages I’ve built for passes and for canyons, the page I envision for Cripple Creek would focus on all the roads leading to it. Because there are quite a few of them. And there’s not a one of them that’s not interesting or worth riding. But they’re not all paved.

With all this in mind, I headed out last week by myself to refamiliarize myself and to shoot photos to go on this new page. It turned out to be a longer day than I had anticipated, but man did I have a good time.

I headed out of Denver on US 285 as far as the turn-off at Pine Junction, going south on CO 126 through Pine and down to Deckers, where the road becomes CO 67. Up to this point, amazingly, it had been cool enough that I wore a down vest over my t-shirt inside my mesh jacket. I stopped at Deckers to use the john and stretch my legs and I took the vest off now.

CO 67 continues south from Deckers until it reaches Woodland Park and there I turned west on US 24. This took me the short distance to Divide, where I turned south once again on CO 67. Actually, it was CO 67 all the way; US 24 and CO 67 are the same along this stretch.

Heading south on CO 67 is the main road into Cripple Creek and all by itself it is quite scenic. The road rides high and there are numerous view points with nice scenery. And to top it off, as you crest the hill and descend steeply into Cripple Creek you have just gone over Tenderfoot Pass. Not that it’s well marked or anything, but it’s there.

But I didn’t go that route. Just a few miles before Cripple Creek CO 67 does a hard right but if you go straight you’ll be on Teller County Road 81, which goes to Victor. I don’t know why but I’ve always had the idea this road was unpaved, but it isn’t. It’s paved all the way. And, of course, the paved road goes on around to Cripple Creek so it’s a loop.

Victor was where I was to pick up the first of the day’s gravel roads: the Phantom Canyon Road. Coming this direction you actually come to the Phantom Canyon Road before you even get into Victor. I saw the sign for County Road 86 and thought that might be it but went on into town before I stopped to check the map. Sure enough. No matter, it wasn’t more than half a mile.

So I turned down County Road 86 and I had a little trepidation. The truth is, although I’ve had this V-Strom for a number of years now, and I got it specifically to be able to ride off the pavement, I just haven’t done all that much of it. Certainly not as much as I have wanted to do. And at this point, what dirt-riding skills I have developed were a bit rusty.

Not to worry. The road was amazingly smooth. So smooth, in fact, that it appeared it had only recently been graded. That impression was confirmed in a short while when I encountered the road grader at work.

The Phantom Canyon Road used to be a narrow-gauge train route so there were a couple tunnels cut through sheer rock walls and a lot of the road hugs the cliff with canyon way down below–and of course no guard rails and not so wide that two cars can pass comfortably unless one hangs back in wider spot when they see the other one coming. Absolutely fine for motorcycles, though.

Altogether, from Victor to where you hit US 50 east of Canon City it’s about 34 miles. It’s slow going so figure on an hour minimum. And it really is a pretty good road all the way, especially right now. You won’t be disappointed in the scenery.

I stopped in Canon City for lunch and that’s where I’ll leave this today. I’ll pick up the tale next time.

Biker Quote for Today

Why motorcycles are better than women: If your Motorcycle is too soft, you can get different shocks.