HotRod82 2 Posted March 10, 2014 Complacency rears it's ugly head....... Our mixed group of bikes and prerunner trucks had been planning an easy run to SF for about a month and I was looking forward to it as I had not been to SF since my last race there in 2002. I suggested since we had vehicles capable of hauling fuel to make the run east out of Tecate and down La Rumarosa. From there, there are nice easy trails south skirting Laguna Solada to Borrego, across Hwy 3 and down to SF. I was not the ride leader on this one, there were others doing most of the planning so I simply prepared my bike and gear as usual and looked forward to the coming ride. I packed the usual survival gear and was prepared to spend the night in the desert if I had to for some unknown reason. Friday morning came and I met up with the group that had suprisingly dwindled down to 2 bikes (including me) and 1 V8 powered go fast ranger prerunner. I was not concerned about it as the other rider (Buck) was a go fast guy with real skill and lots of Baja experience. The prerunner driver Rob was on his first outing in Baja but is an experienced wheeler and an all round outdoorsman from Wisconsin so I had complete confidence in my team heading south. Unfortunately, the guy handling the route and GPS dropped out last minute so we were heading down without set routes. No problem for me and Buck, we are experienced professionals right? RIGHT. For some reason, we make terrible time getting to the trail head at Rancho Ponderosa and we didn't get rolling until after 9AM. We were nearly at the bottom of La Rumarosa (awesome trail btw) when Buck gets a front flat AND the prerunner shears off the centering bolt in one of the leaf packs. We make trailside repairs and hit the road again and now it is almost 1PM. I tell Buck we need to really get on it, it's getting late. We twist the throttle and head south with Rob and his ranger hot on our tail. We were having a blast. Fast, smooth tracks with berms in the corners, we were railing and putting in some quick miles. Buck and I both knew we needed to head South by SouthEast to work our way down to Borrego......we missed by about 25 miles WEST. No problem I thought, I'm sure we can find a road East to get around this giant mountain in front of us. We tried one road which dead ended in about 10 miles, then found a second road headed due east that was wide and obviously well traveled. "This is it" I thought, we charged EAST many miles into a well travelled wash. My GPS indicated we were 15 miles NORTH of Hwy 3 and only 3 miles from Hwy 5 and heading straight toward it. The wash deteriorated from the recent rains and it was tough going but we were nearly to Hwy 5 so we pressed on. Two miles from Hwy 5 we came to a 50 or so feet waterfall.....another dead end and it was nearly completely dark. I thought to myself...... "This is getting serious" As I mentioned earlier, Buck is a very skilled rider although unfortunately he hasn't been riding much recently. One of the reasons we wanted an easy route was to take it easy on Buck's first long ride in some time. Fatige and darkness are now real issues for all of us, but we press on. Getting back out of that wash was a real challenge but we made it out and sniffed out the race course from a week ago. We jumped on it and headed south and unfortunately I knew where we were.....the back side of the Summit. "There must be a road around this to the South" I thought to myself, I was wrong. The road up the back of the Summit is a tough trail for just about anybody on a bike. This trail in the dark with not so great lights AND being tired is a monster. The slow pace combined with the lights and cooling fans running killed both of our batteries so we had to kick our bikes back to life if you stalled. My bike is an easy starter, Buck could no longer kick his so Rob and I took turns kicking a bike that is a terribly hard starting machine. Even with his skill level Buck was having a hard time of it, he was just completely wiped out. As we stood there kicking his bike for the 1000th time, something approached us from the darkness. Buck turned to me and said "Dude, there is something out there". I turned my light on and saw a man with an automatic weapon jump behind a rock about 30 yards in front of us. I won't print the words that went through my head at that moment. We took the light off of him hoping he was legit Army, we put our hands out where he could see them and did not move. He put lights on us and we heard the slide drop on the FAL he was carrying and 5 more soldiers appeared on our flanks. I won't lie, it was tense for a few minutes but I was confident these guys were legit. After looking through every pocket of every bag we had, they looked at our ID and asked Rob to give 2 of them a ride up to their HumVee. I will admit it was funny to see two soldiers with machine guns stuffed in with Rob bouncing his way up the rocks. To this day I don't know how Rob got his truck up those hills in the dark, big HP and a heavy right foot. Later the Captain says in perfect english "what are you crazy Americans doing out here in the middle of the night?" Turns out they had a plane up looking for a suspicious car and they spotted us. The Army guys were professional and friendly, these guys have a really tough job. We bid the soldiers farewell and pressed on. The new part of the race course we were on is a mess from the rain, I can see why on race day they decided not to use it but it was really torn up from all of the prerunners. If you are skilled and looking for a challenge I would recommend running the summit backwards as we did.....just do it during the daylight. We struggled our way out to Hwy 3 finally and had a pretty good haul into SF. We rolled into our villa at 1:30AM Sat. The rest of our trip went perfectly, Mikes on Sat. night and home on Sunday. I've had some time to reflect on that crazy night and have counted at least 100 things we did wrong. I hope our little story is not only entertaining but a lesson that complacency really can be dangerous. Buck and I have literally decades of Baja experience and it worked against us as we thought a simple ride to SF didn't warrant our full attention and we paid dearly for it. Of course things could have gone even worse and I am thankful they didn't. We always hear stories of things going wrong on rides but I can tell you I'm going to do a better job preparing so I can avoid situations like this if at all possible. Ride safe everybody, cheers. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dress4Less 162 Posted March 10, 2014 Whew! Seeing and then hearing the slide of an automatic weapon in the dark had to have you guys puckering up a bit! Glad it all worked out aok... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Chris in Wildomar 0 Posted March 10, 2014 Wow!! Great write up and massive pucker factor!! Good lessons in there for all and thank you for sharing! Prep Prep Prep and have a plan B! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Dan Diego 40 Posted March 10, 2014 Holy cow, what a classic Baja story! I wish I had a peso for every time I've had a rifle pointed at me by legit Mexican military folks... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Crawdaddy 96 Posted March 10, 2014 The Army guys were professional and friendly, these guys have a really tough job. We bid the soldiers farewell and pressed on. We had no issues at the inspection points on our recent trip.......I think they were miserable standing around in the rain and didn't want t be bothered.......we always got waved through with no hassles with the exception of one half ass check of Russ's saddlebags at one checkpoint.........same thing at the border crossing coming home........we cut the line and they let us pass through rather than sending us back behind all the cars........that was pretty cool of'em...... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tree 0 Posted March 11, 2014 Wise advise on the importance of preparation. I may have just decided to camp the night instead of pressing forward in the dark. The Mexican army has always been friendly to us as well during normal stops but I could see why they would take precautions with a group in the back roads in the middle of the night. Those are the stories you remember for a lifetime though. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Baja2015 0 Posted March 14, 2014 Baja norte can be different place at night. especially on the back roads. Lucky they where federales. My friend Luis had to give a whole convoy a ride one time in his bran new tundra in pouring rain. the whole time he was thinking that they where going to jack his truck, but everything went ok. Major pucker as well. They simply recruited him and his truck for a couple hours and thin let him on his way. What was he going to say no!!! Safe travels. Viva mexico!!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
97xr400r 122 Posted May 2, 2014 weyew! Thanks for sharing, these reads are always a good reminder. LIVIN' LIFE! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
