the Eel
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- Sep 23, 2000
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Reagan Holiday Ride - Jawbone Canyon
I had to be in Mojave at 8 AM this past Friday for traffic court. Since I was going to be out there, I figured I’d take advantage of the free day to hit the trails. And since KelsoRat had been telling me about all the great riding at Jawbone, we decided to meet there after court was over.
The drive up was uneventful since I’ve started doing the speed limit. While driving, I began to daydream about past presidents, Reagan included, who came out to visit this very same desert for epic riding. Yup, that’s right. Many people don’t know it but many of our country’s leaders were riders. For instance Jimmy Carter, who was known as an excellent woods rider from days and days spent in the deep woods of Georgia, would often visit this area in the wintertime to work on his hardpack skills (and word has it he always had a tasty supply of peanuts in his trail pack). And Reagan himself, may he rest in peace, was an avid and well-respected hillclimber, though some say years of inhaling high-octane hillclimbing fuels may have accelerated his unfortunate condition. I’ve heard too that Nixon loved to ride here but was always paranoid about the green rattlesnakes. And even some more recent past presidents, like Bill Clinton, came to visit solely to enjoy the riding in the Mojave Desert. “Slick” Willie actually earned his nickname not because of his smooth-talking charisma, but because he rarely spent money on new tires, though the idea that he would wear a tire out at all is surprising to many since Bill would often never make it all the way up the 14, but would rather get sidetracked by some of the seedier pleasures available in the gardens of earthly delight know as Palmdale and Lancaster. But I digress.
As I said, the ride up was uneventful but the day would prove to be quite the opposite.
Court ran later than expected but I met Kelso under the only shade tree in Jawbone right around 10:30 AM, smack in front of the big blue-green hill just a few miles up the entrance road on the right. It was a killer spot. Total shade. I changed out of my conservative court clothes and geared up. The weather was cool and breezy and around 11 AM we hit the trails.
Kelso led on his new KTM 300 and took us over close to Dove Springs. We railed flat whooped-out singletrack and were surprised by the many red trail closure signs. There were quite a few. We stopped for a break, made a few suspension clicker adjustments, and off we went again. The Gas Gas forks were feeling great. My fork caps have been broken so I haven’t had rebound adjustment for months now. I just recently installed KTM’s adjustable preload caps and they work well, though as usual it took me hours to get them installed correctly the night before (Team Knucklehead forever). The KTM caps are a nice piece of work and were inexpensive. Good stuff.
We eventually returned to the backside of our camp, just able to see the top of the blue-green hill in the distance. The backside was a great spot for riding. Full of big rollers and treacherous ridgeline singletrack. We headed straight in toward our camp and began to descend. As it turned out we were working our way into a canyon that led from the backside straight in toward the entrance road, and which ended on the entrance road just a few hundred feet up from that house with all the green grass and trees. I was leading and came extremely close to going over the bars on a very loose, very steep downhill. Kelso followed just fine and we were excited to find an extremely tight, lightly used trail through the canyon. It was more like an animal trail than a bike trail. There were green bushes on either side that smelled wonderful but made your throat sore. It was quiet, deserted, rocky and beautiful. The technical tight continued for a few more feet when we came upon an 8 foot drop-off. Slick rock, straight down. No way we were gonna get down that. And this is where all the trouble began. The problem is we had been descending the whole time and turning around meant getting back up the stuff we had just come down. It turns out we had made a very bad move by descending that last loose hill that I had almost crashed on. It ended in a ditch and there was no way to get any run-up at all to try to go back up it. We were stuck, and just a mile and a half away from our camp as the crow flies.
We weighed our options. Check the loose hill again to see if maybe somehow we could get up. Nope. Check the rock drop-off again. Nope. We finally saw a way to get up another loose hill to our right, which led to a little off-camber cut on the hillside. Unfortunately it took us nearly an hour to get our bikes up the 15 feet to the cut. There was about 2 feet of run-up and then it was up dirt so soft we nearly dug a hole to China on each attempt. We finally got both the bikes up with one guy riding and one guy pushing. We were completely exhausted and the fun was only beginning.
At this point I was starting to get a bit worried but we stayed positive and considered our next move. We were now on a small off-camber trail on a hillside. The hill went up on our right and was more of the same dig-to-China dirt. On our left was a sheer rocky drop off 25 to 30 feet down to the wash at the bottom. We found a way to follow the cut ten more feet, hop over a little rocky hill, and then slide left down the side of the hill. Which would have been fine except the cut was so loose I dug a hole up to the top of my rear tire and could not budge my bike, this while Kelso was busy looping his KTM on the little rocky uphill, and almost fell over the cliff.. I looked over and Kelso had stripped off his chest protector and shirt and was lying on the ground next his bike. I sat down defeated and tried to catch my breath. It was about 4 PM.
We sat for awhile when Kelso tells me we need to walk out. We’re both completely tapped out and there’s no way we’re gonna make any more progress in the shape we’re in after wrestling the bikes for 2 hours. He’s right. We’re gonna have to walk out.
So we gather ourselves after a long breather and start following the canyon out to the road. Along the way we come across 2 more rock waterfalls, both 15 to 20-footers. No lie. At this point I tell Kelso we are not going to be able to get our bikes out today. Not a chance. He doesn’t respond and we keep moving. It turns out the canyon only went for about another third of a mile and then spit us out in a wash that led right to the road. It was a long way back though. We walked about 2.5 miles to get back to camp. Along the way a guy drove by on the road. We asked him for a ride and he said “yes” but his dog almost bit my face when I tried to squeeze in the backseat with him ! I told Kelso to just ride in the front seat instead but the driver seemingly got spooked and just drove off. So we kept walking. We were barely moving by the time we got back to camp .. I was dizzy, overheated, and had a blister on my heel neatly cut in the size and shape of a quarter. I stripped down to my underwear and promptly cracked a Coke. We rested, happy that we had at least got out in one piece and unhurt. It was about 5:00 PM.
After recovering a little I start to tell Kelso about how we can come back in a week or so with some buddies, hike in, and get the bikes out. We also chat a bit about the ungodly cost of possibly coptering the bikes out. As you can tell, at this point I was pretty much mentally and physically PUNISHED. But Kelso stayed positive, if a little nuts, and said we could recover a bit longer, drive the cars back to the canyon entrance, hike the 1/3 mile back to the bikes with some rope, and still get them out before dark. Yeah, right. But somehow he convinced me and by 6 PM or so we had packed up the trucks and I found myself driving back to the canyon entrance.
We got to the entrance, packed survival stuff, and hiked in. By 6:00 PM or so we got back to the bikes. Anyway, the rest of the story is really just an amazing blur. We actually got the bikes out, though I still can’t really believe we did it. We literally handed them down two rock water falls which were, no kidding, close to 20 feet down, nearly vertical. He would get the back wheel and I would get under the front wheel, with one hand on the front tire and one on the brake lever. We had made it out, the entire 1/3 of a mile, in just a little over 2 hours. I got back to my truck and cracked a celebratory Coke at 8:11 PM, packed up, and left. By 11 PM I was home safe and asleep, and my Gas Gas was in the garage.
I had to be in Mojave at 8 AM this past Friday for traffic court. Since I was going to be out there, I figured I’d take advantage of the free day to hit the trails. And since KelsoRat had been telling me about all the great riding at Jawbone, we decided to meet there after court was over.
The drive up was uneventful since I’ve started doing the speed limit. While driving, I began to daydream about past presidents, Reagan included, who came out to visit this very same desert for epic riding. Yup, that’s right. Many people don’t know it but many of our country’s leaders were riders. For instance Jimmy Carter, who was known as an excellent woods rider from days and days spent in the deep woods of Georgia, would often visit this area in the wintertime to work on his hardpack skills (and word has it he always had a tasty supply of peanuts in his trail pack). And Reagan himself, may he rest in peace, was an avid and well-respected hillclimber, though some say years of inhaling high-octane hillclimbing fuels may have accelerated his unfortunate condition. I’ve heard too that Nixon loved to ride here but was always paranoid about the green rattlesnakes. And even some more recent past presidents, like Bill Clinton, came to visit solely to enjoy the riding in the Mojave Desert. “Slick” Willie actually earned his nickname not because of his smooth-talking charisma, but because he rarely spent money on new tires, though the idea that he would wear a tire out at all is surprising to many since Bill would often never make it all the way up the 14, but would rather get sidetracked by some of the seedier pleasures available in the gardens of earthly delight know as Palmdale and Lancaster. But I digress.
As I said, the ride up was uneventful but the day would prove to be quite the opposite.
Court ran later than expected but I met Kelso under the only shade tree in Jawbone right around 10:30 AM, smack in front of the big blue-green hill just a few miles up the entrance road on the right. It was a killer spot. Total shade. I changed out of my conservative court clothes and geared up. The weather was cool and breezy and around 11 AM we hit the trails.
Kelso led on his new KTM 300 and took us over close to Dove Springs. We railed flat whooped-out singletrack and were surprised by the many red trail closure signs. There were quite a few. We stopped for a break, made a few suspension clicker adjustments, and off we went again. The Gas Gas forks were feeling great. My fork caps have been broken so I haven’t had rebound adjustment for months now. I just recently installed KTM’s adjustable preload caps and they work well, though as usual it took me hours to get them installed correctly the night before (Team Knucklehead forever). The KTM caps are a nice piece of work and were inexpensive. Good stuff.
We eventually returned to the backside of our camp, just able to see the top of the blue-green hill in the distance. The backside was a great spot for riding. Full of big rollers and treacherous ridgeline singletrack. We headed straight in toward our camp and began to descend. As it turned out we were working our way into a canyon that led from the backside straight in toward the entrance road, and which ended on the entrance road just a few hundred feet up from that house with all the green grass and trees. I was leading and came extremely close to going over the bars on a very loose, very steep downhill. Kelso followed just fine and we were excited to find an extremely tight, lightly used trail through the canyon. It was more like an animal trail than a bike trail. There were green bushes on either side that smelled wonderful but made your throat sore. It was quiet, deserted, rocky and beautiful. The technical tight continued for a few more feet when we came upon an 8 foot drop-off. Slick rock, straight down. No way we were gonna get down that. And this is where all the trouble began. The problem is we had been descending the whole time and turning around meant getting back up the stuff we had just come down. It turns out we had made a very bad move by descending that last loose hill that I had almost crashed on. It ended in a ditch and there was no way to get any run-up at all to try to go back up it. We were stuck, and just a mile and a half away from our camp as the crow flies.
We weighed our options. Check the loose hill again to see if maybe somehow we could get up. Nope. Check the rock drop-off again. Nope. We finally saw a way to get up another loose hill to our right, which led to a little off-camber cut on the hillside. Unfortunately it took us nearly an hour to get our bikes up the 15 feet to the cut. There was about 2 feet of run-up and then it was up dirt so soft we nearly dug a hole to China on each attempt. We finally got both the bikes up with one guy riding and one guy pushing. We were completely exhausted and the fun was only beginning.
At this point I was starting to get a bit worried but we stayed positive and considered our next move. We were now on a small off-camber trail on a hillside. The hill went up on our right and was more of the same dig-to-China dirt. On our left was a sheer rocky drop off 25 to 30 feet down to the wash at the bottom. We found a way to follow the cut ten more feet, hop over a little rocky hill, and then slide left down the side of the hill. Which would have been fine except the cut was so loose I dug a hole up to the top of my rear tire and could not budge my bike, this while Kelso was busy looping his KTM on the little rocky uphill, and almost fell over the cliff.. I looked over and Kelso had stripped off his chest protector and shirt and was lying on the ground next his bike. I sat down defeated and tried to catch my breath. It was about 4 PM.
We sat for awhile when Kelso tells me we need to walk out. We’re both completely tapped out and there’s no way we’re gonna make any more progress in the shape we’re in after wrestling the bikes for 2 hours. He’s right. We’re gonna have to walk out.
So we gather ourselves after a long breather and start following the canyon out to the road. Along the way we come across 2 more rock waterfalls, both 15 to 20-footers. No lie. At this point I tell Kelso we are not going to be able to get our bikes out today. Not a chance. He doesn’t respond and we keep moving. It turns out the canyon only went for about another third of a mile and then spit us out in a wash that led right to the road. It was a long way back though. We walked about 2.5 miles to get back to camp. Along the way a guy drove by on the road. We asked him for a ride and he said “yes” but his dog almost bit my face when I tried to squeeze in the backseat with him ! I told Kelso to just ride in the front seat instead but the driver seemingly got spooked and just drove off. So we kept walking. We were barely moving by the time we got back to camp .. I was dizzy, overheated, and had a blister on my heel neatly cut in the size and shape of a quarter. I stripped down to my underwear and promptly cracked a Coke. We rested, happy that we had at least got out in one piece and unhurt. It was about 5:00 PM.
After recovering a little I start to tell Kelso about how we can come back in a week or so with some buddies, hike in, and get the bikes out. We also chat a bit about the ungodly cost of possibly coptering the bikes out. As you can tell, at this point I was pretty much mentally and physically PUNISHED. But Kelso stayed positive, if a little nuts, and said we could recover a bit longer, drive the cars back to the canyon entrance, hike the 1/3 mile back to the bikes with some rope, and still get them out before dark. Yeah, right. But somehow he convinced me and by 6 PM or so we had packed up the trucks and I found myself driving back to the canyon entrance.
We got to the entrance, packed survival stuff, and hiked in. By 6:00 PM or so we got back to the bikes. Anyway, the rest of the story is really just an amazing blur. We actually got the bikes out, though I still can’t really believe we did it. We literally handed them down two rock water falls which were, no kidding, close to 20 feet down, nearly vertical. He would get the back wheel and I would get under the front wheel, with one hand on the front tire and one on the brake lever. We had made it out, the entire 1/3 of a mile, in just a little over 2 hours. I got back to my truck and cracked a celebratory Coke at 8:11 PM, packed up, and left. By 11 PM I was home safe and asleep, and my Gas Gas was in the garage.
