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Mcassle & Placelast do Ballinger Canyon
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[QUOTE="MCassle, post: 537380, member: 22945"] I had originally planned for a weekend at Ballinger, but an hour & a half into my drive on Saturday morning I realized I left my duffle bag of clothes & toiletries sitting right next to my bed … I completely spaced it that morning! I’m a zombie when I first get out of bed, I’m lucky that was the only thing I forgot. I had on pants, but was wearing my Moose jersey and jacket. After a day of riding I wasn’t up to sleeping in my gear. Realizing my weekend was now cut down to a day trip, I looked on the bright side & was thankful to even be riding. Last time I was on the bike was back in October (lowers head in shame). Looking back on my records, the last time I was at Ballinger Canyon was June of 99, back when I lived in Bakersfield. Whoa, it has been awhile since I’ve been here. Driving from Fresno I made it to the area within three hours no problem. Pulling in I was surprised at how many people were there. I’ve only been to BC three times total, and this was the busiest I’ve ever seen it. I decided to suit up and putt around to look for John. As luck would have it John was the first person I pulled up to. I’m going to guess it had been at least a year (or more) since John & I had seen each other at a TWMC event, but I recognized him right off. He pulled his rig over to where I was parked (close to the bathrooms, heh I’m getting old) and we got ready to roll. Right out of the (only?) staging area for Ballinger is either a wide hard packed whooped out trail or a fire road. Being that I had been to BC a couple of times, I initially lead & chose the trail. Right off I could tell I was going to be one sore puppy come tomorrow, as I was woefully out of shape. Not having anytime on the bike since October made it worse, as I was very stiff and setting a slow pace. I kept to the wider trails as I got warmed up, and soon looked for some nasty black diamonds that we could cut our teeth on. Wicked #29, a nasty little trail that rides the ridge on the extreme south to south/east end of the park, was what we found ourselves on. With the high pitched sound of a two smoke right behind me, I could tell I was holding John up on this one. I was taking it nice & slow, and hugging every whoop not daring to risk any maneuver that would cause any sort of bobble. This is a true ‘do or die’ trail, with at least a one hundred plus foot drop off to an abyss on the south side, varying depths on the other but still dangerous none the less. By this time I was getting loose and enjoying myself, and pushed a little harder. Not hearing the two-stroke sound, I figured that on this trail John held back a bit so as to have room for some of the nastier uphills. Being that I didn’t dare take a chance on turning my head to check on him, for fear of pointing my front end right off the edge & plunging to my death, I putted along until I encountered a three way stop with a nice open ledge that afforded plenty of room. It was at this point that I realized that John might be stuck somewhere, as he was nowhere in site. Problem with this trail is that there is almost no way to turn your bike around once you get going on it. So I decided to walk it and look for him. Once over two ridges I figured it was just too much trail to traverse so I figured I would bite the bullet and ride it anyway. Right as I get back to my bike I hear that familiar two smoke sound & feel (my first) wave of relief. John proceeds to tell me the story of almost going head on with a KX500. Once rested I invited John to lead, as he is a faster rider & I also had very fuzzy memories of what trail went where. The park is small enough so I didn’t fear getting lost. As it turns out John is a great trail hound and found all sorts of nice nasty tight stuff for us to ride through. By far this was the best trip to Ballinger that I had ever done, as our first loop was around 30 miles and normally I had called it a day at Ballinger at around 30 miles. We looked over a map posted by the forest service, and tried to memorize a few trail numbers. This worked out great as we took the trails on the far northern side of the park and looped around back to the other extreme, the south western side of Ballinger Canyon. On a main road that we took as far west as we could, we encountered a gate and decided to turn around and make our way back to camp. Not wanting to take the same route twice, we found a nice little spur off the main trail that quickly turned into a tight sandy ravine with plenty of whoops for good measure. At one point I had to drop and drag the bike under a tree that had fallen over the trail. By this time I’m starting to think that this isn’t a legitimate forest trail as it is starting to get over grown in spots. I come around a corner and see John off the bike, hunkered down & playing with the kick-starter. Not good! John was thinking a seized engine, and I knew we were in trouble. Not only was it late in the day (3:30pm), but we were in just about the remotest part of the park that you could get in. Having never towed anyone, I wasn’t sure what to expect. We hooked the bikes up with a buddy tow and proceeded to beat the hell out of ourselves for the next hour in a fruitless attempt to gain access to the top of the ridge, in hopes that we could coast down the other side. Lesson learned here: if you are going to tow another bike & rider, if at all possible don’t do it uphill. I kick myself for it now, but the wiser choice was to backtrack downhill … that is soooo much easier. The new IRC VE33 I just put on the bike the day before was digging trenches trying to haul the RMX up the steep sand trails, not to mention I’m sure I was sandblasting John with all sorts of abrasive debris, although he never let on about it ;) From the top of a ridge we could see the main staging area, but is was far. And to make matters worse, there were no direct trails from point A (where we were at) to point B (camp), as that particular chunk of land was fenced off. At that point I headed up the trail to scout out how many more uphills we’d have to push the RMX up. After riding up three of them, and taking into consideration the time of day, which was now nearing the 4:30pm mark, I was giving up hope on that route. John suggested we go back down the trail to the gate. I thought it would be much rougher going than it was, but like I found out towing downhill is your friend. Most of the time John was able to coast down the trail on his own. I figured the sand would of put so much drag on the bike that the coasting would not of been possible. Thankfully I was wrong. With enough momentum I’d estimate John was able to coast down roughly half the trail on his own. The rest we towed and even that was cake compared to trying to tow uphill. Once to the gate we found it to be unlocked, and finding/towing our way back to the trucks was easy going, although cold than a witches you know what. My nips still hurt. By the time we got back, the sun had set and it was down right cold. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, and proceeded to warm them (through my riding gloves) on my exhaust. Just the fact that we made it back & weren’t stranded out in the middle of no where all night made it all worth it. What an experience, and lessons learned no doubt. If anything this trip was a testament to being prepared. I have always carried quite a selection of tools and knick-knacks with me while riding, though almost never required them. They have added weight to my rides and there have been times when I thought leaving the tool pack behind wouldn’t be a big deal. Never again! Not only that, but good thing John & I had both had towing devices, as my bike chewed one of them up. Now that I think about it, I’m getting another one just in case. They weigh next to nothing, and that six-foot length of nylon strap saved a couple of poor souls a miserable night out in a lonely canyon. Matt [/QUOTE]
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Mcassle & Placelast do Ballinger Canyon
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