Big Bear Moonlight Madness

[tntmo 887]

I wasn't really planning on making it to this ride, but my buddy Grant bought a KTM 625 after claiming he had quit riding last year. He had signed up for the ride and wanted to go with someone so I put my name on the list too.

We drove up to Big Bear, got to the registration area around 6pm. After getting all the paperwork done, prepping the bikes and putting on our gear we hit the trail about 7pm. The first dirt was less than 10 miles from the staging area, and was a nice rocky trail with some hills. I'm glad we hit it before dark.

The sun was just below the horizon when we hit section 2. The Big Bear Trail Riders had some good trail markers up, they used chem-lights and reflective strips to keep us from wandering around like Hansel & Gretel in the forest. Here is where I found out what an idiot I was for bringing my Yamaha. The light on it absolutely sucks! I think a couple of candles would have put out more light, but since I was too lazy to swap wheels on my other bikes I decided the Yamaha light was probably good enough. I had a couple of camping headlamps velcroed to my helmet and they were my saving grace. Pretty sad really. The beginning of section 2 had us going around in circles at the beginning, but we got it sorted out. After the first couple miles it turned into a sand wash that we had to follow for 9 miles. This would have been a lot of fun during the day, or with a good headlight. I couldn't get enough speed going to stay on top of the sand because I could only see about 2 feet ahead of me. I fell over a few times, but sand is forgiving. We finally got out of the sand to finish that section.

Section 3 had a hard/easy split and we were both beat from the sand. We took the easy route, it had some small sand sections and ended up on the highway for gas. Not too much exciting happened, except there was a couple of people walking right on the edge of the road wearing all black. I was riding the right edge of the lane and my pathetic headlight didn't pick them up until the last minute. Scared me for a second. Hit up the gas station for some fuel and liquids. There were a bunch of riders there, a lot of them were District 37 folks. I think about half of them cut out from that point and were heading back. We were tired but decided to press on.

Section 4 had about 12 miles of pavement and then onto Jacoby Canyon trail. It had a black diamond marker on it, what kind of sick group takes people on a night ride down a black diamond trail? It wasn't too bad, hard packed with lots of rocks. Good traction compared to the sand, I was loving it. I turned on both of my camping headlamps so I could see and cranked up the speed a bit. Sure enough, I came over a hill and my front wheel got into a rut and then hit a rock. I got slammed down on my left side onto that hard packed rock strewn trail. I thought at first that I had re-broken my collar bone, but after a few moments I realized that it just hurt like hell. We were about half-way into the trail so decided to ride it out. Considering I could barely hold the grip I think I did okay by making it through the rest of it.

We bailed out from there, missing section 5 and 6. Loaded up the bikes and talked with a bunch of guys before heading home. It was fun, and I'd do it again with a better headlight. I have to go explore some of those trails during the day too. My shoulder/arm/back/hip all still hurt but I'll probably heal.

See ya on the trail.

[dirt dame 559]

Sounds nutso to me. I can barely ride the pavement at night! I have ridden in the dirt at night, In the desert. With no lights. Peeking over the top of my prescription sunglasses. So, your ride could have been worse :curtsey:

[Crawdaddy 96]

I wasn't really planning on making it to this ride, but my buddy Grant bought a KTM 625 after claiming he had quit riding last year. He had signed up for the ride and wanted to go with someone so I put my name on the list too.

See ya on the trail.

I thought about going....but let the thought pass :curtsey:

Here's a link to the D37 Moonlight Madness Thread