I just finished the north half of the COBDR and thought I’d share some of the experience.
I left my house in Frederick on Monday and rode up Poudre canyon up to Walden then Cowdrey. I was making good time so I took a detour to North Sand Hills OHV area, took the saddle bags off, and ripped around the dunes for a bit. It would have been more fun on my 2T, but I took the opportunity to do a little recon to see if north sand hills was worth a future trip, which it totally is on a smaller bike.
The ride to Encampment, WY and then to the northern terminus of the BDR was scenic and the roads were great, especially after Encampment. If you’re on the fence about the north part of the BDR due to the commute back to the front range, I’d say go for it- you won’t be disappointed.
Section 6 of the BDR is easy riding. I was happy I went north to south because it’s more scenic going that direction. I downloaded the GPX files and navigated using COTREX on my phone and had no issues route finding.
North of the town of Columbine, I hit a locked gate and needed to bypass by using some trails in vicinity of Hahns Peak. It’s a steep ascent and descent which was suboptimal on a loaded down T7, but doable with the right attitude.
Steamboat Lake State Park is gorgeous. It’s worth spending longer than 2 minutes there, but I didn’t have a state park pass, so I took my picture and left.
The riding into Steamboat is easy and scenic heading south. Steamboat is in the middle of pride month celebrations so @zbarnes should definitely make his haj there before July. My fuel gauge was reading nearly full at Steamboat so I grabbed some tacos from a food truck and kept heading south.
I hit a closed gate on the section from Lake Catamount to Stagecoach Reservoir, but it wasn’t locked so I continued on the established BDR trail. There wasn’t another gate on the other side, so I’m not sure exactly how that works or what the forest service’s logic is.
I continued south and stayed at Lynx pass Campground, which is a great spot to rest your weary head. There’s a nice pond near it, and I wish I brought my fishing pole.
Overall, big first day, continued heading south and went through the stagecoach water crossing, which was not big deal except for the fact that it was 36 degrees out and I got soaked. The twisties into Radium were fun. I continued down the route following the Colorado river while maintaining eye contact with 2 cows in the back of a trailer until I hung a left on the alt- hard route, which wasn’t very hard down the Gypsum. The alt-hard route is a little sandy but worth taking. There’s a lot of trails as you exit the canyon so it’s important to have the map up to navigate in real time. Just north of Gypsum there’s a ton of dirt bike trails- mostly steep hill climbs, so next time I head west on I-70, I may stop to check some of them out.
I was running on fumes as I pulled into the gas stop in Gypsum. Lesson here is fill up at every gas station before starting the next section. Even though I have the Acerbis 6.1 gallon tank, the bike only took 4.8 so I probably had more in the tank than what my fuel gauge was telling me.
As I made my way to Sylvan lake, I encountered a locked gate on route 101.
There may or may not be space to circumvent the gate on a motorcycle, but let’s just say I made my way to Sylvan Lake without issue. As you go up Crooked Creek pass, there was a wide open gate and a sign that said pass open. As I continued my way up over the pass and then backdown towards Thomasville, there was a locked gate at the bottom, which was unfortunate since there was no workaround without retracing my tracks. I took all the bags off my bike and dragged it under the gate in true adventure fashion. A note for the future is that I need to bring a sealed piece of tubing to put over the nipple on my gas cap so it doesn’t dribble fuel out when the bike is on its side.
The ride to Hagerman Pass is nice road riding. There was a sign that said “Hagerman Pass Open”, so I was stoked. Once you start up Hagerman the road gets pretty rocky but it’s nice and wide so I was able to pick good lines. There is a water crossing that’s rocky and somewhat deep so it’s definitely a “no-fall” zone.
At this point, I encountered a guy on an 890 who had turned around because about a mile further up, there was a snowfield on the road. he said there is a way to bypass the snowfield by going slightly off road, but he said his KTM couldn’t take the bypass because there’s two boulders that were too close together for his fuel testicles to fit through. When I got to that point, I took off my panniers and made it through the boulders no problem until I got to the top of Hagerman.
There’s another snowfield going down Hagerman towards Turquoise lake, but you can easily get around it. The problem is that there is another series of snowfields on the road on the north side of the mountain that are utterly impassable. I could see Turquoise lake from where I was and have a relatively high risk tolerance, but there was just no way of continuing.
I turned around and got to the first snowfield again. This time I was going downhill, so thought I’d try to ride through the snowbank instead of taking 5 minutes to remove my panniers and go through the boulders again. With momentum on my side- it still didn’t work out and I ended up beaching my bike on the soft snow.
I wasted no time deploying the Green Chili Z- drag and got myself out in a matter of minutes. Important note is that you need to bring materials to build an anchor to enhance the z drag’s capability. I always carry 15 feet of 1 inch tubular nylon and some soft ties with me for this purpose. This piece of kit saved me 20-30 minutes of trying to dig my bike out of the snow.
Long story short, I took independence pass to get back on the BDR. What should have been 4 miles turned into something like 110. Luckly, there was absolutely no traffic and the roads were great, so it wasn’t that bad. I stayed at Parry Peak Campground on the east side of Independence pass, which was another good spot except for the $28 price tag.
The next day I decided to ride to Buena Vista to do the section back to Leadville South to North to avoid riding with the sun in my eyes in the morning and have warmer temperatures on Weston pass. The section from BV to 285 is twisty and sandy- overall pretty fun but slow going. There was another locked gate on 309 so I doubled back and took 311 to 285 and went north to reconnect with the trail on Pony Park road. I hit ANOTHER!!! locked gate, or so I thought until I checked the gate and realized the pad lock wasn’t shackled. I rode into an aspen grove and came across a very large tree that had fallen over the road. I wasn’t able to circumvent the tree, so I busted out the z drag and moved it just enough to squeeze the bike past.
After this point, you get to an intersection and decide whether to take the more fun longer route with a water crossing or the less fun shorter route that bypasses the water crossing. I decided to take the longer route and was able to get through the water crossing without issue only because there was a bulldozer that just finished grading the road about 2 minutes before I showed up. I talked to the guy operating the dozer for a few minutes, and he said the day before there was about 18 Italian guys on bikes trying to get through that water crossing and 16 of them dumped their bikes into the water. He said he didn’t speak Italian but ascertained that the 2 guys that made it through without issue were fairly upset at the other 16 that didn’t.
I kept riding and encountered yet another locked gate approaching county road 22 but some very nice forest service rangers let me through without saying a word. I continued towards Weston Pass and saw a sign that said “closed” but there was a number of vehicles of up there and absolutely no snow. Also there aren’t any gates up there. In my opinion Weston Pass sucks because it’s a wide road so you think you can go fast but it’s still 1st or 2nd gear riding because of all the imbedded rocks. It’s also not terribly scenic.
The trip back to Leadville and then to Frederick was uneventful, but I took away a few good lessons from the trip. First, COTREX was a totally satisfactory navigation app to use so long as your phone stays plugged in since it drains battery quick. It’s a free app and shows you what roads are open. Just make sure you download the sections you need while you still have cell service. Second lesson is that I really liked my pannier racks and Nelson rigg bags. I’ve used rackless luggage in the past and they’re definitely lighter, but I just prefer the convenience of my current setup and the ability to pack heavier items lower and towards the center of the bike. Weight distribution is probably more important to the bike’s handling than the amount of weight you have on there. Imagine hiking through the mountains with a 45lbs plate versus a 60 lbs backpack. I’ll take the backpack everytime. I also just can’t stand bags over the rear fender because it’s difficult to swing my battle gnome leg over the seat with a bag in the way. Most rackless luggage setups incorporate a bag of this sort. I’m not saying my setup is better than anyone else’s. I’m just sharing my perspective. Third and final lesson is that recovery gear is critical. I have a pretty reliable bike with the T7 so I never needed my tools or tubes, but I absolutely needed my z drag twice during the trip. It’s coming with me much more often.
In summary, I would recommend against trying to do the BDR before June 15th, which is when the forest service opens all the gates. If you don’t have a week to do the whole BDR in one stretch, I would seriously consider doing the north half north to south. I hope to finish the BDR this summer and am still debating on which direction to go, so if you have recommendations, please let me know.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Hope to see you on the trail.
