Cabinets 2009 Part Deux

Berlin Flats Campground

When Earl and I were up for our ride in the Cabinets back in June we dropped down out of the hills and actually hit pavement for about 25 feet. Just long enough to hang a hard right back onto the gravel of forest service road 412. We stopped to check the map to see where we ended up. I saw a sign a short way down the road and realized that we were about 7 miles from the town of Prichard Idaho and a few miles from a U.S. Forest Service Work Camp. We decided to head away from civilization following our practice for the week and wanted to gain some altitude again. On our way up the road I saw several campgrounds and noticed a lot of good places to camp and adventure during the day. A few miles into our ride and at about 5500 feet Earl and I came across snow and mud that was impassable and we ended up taking a different route and dropping into Heron MT. I vowed that I would be back and follow the road where it was covered with snow.

Where this picture is taken is the cutoff that headed up in altitude to Earl's and my ending point from the snow. This time though I could not be as careless since I had my friend Casey on his bad ass little KX65 and his mom Lisa (my woman of course) on her Polaris 4-wheeler. We followed the road all the way to Gem Pass. This put us at another crossroads that went 3 ways. Up to the top of 2 peaks and another back down into a beautiful valley. As my exploratory nature took over we headed up a hill into a area that had been badly burned by fire within the last year. What an eerie and dismal place. This finally turned into a road/trail of nothing but slate stone and shale. Not the easiest thing to ride on. By this point we were cresting 6000 feet and and Casey's two stroke 65 was not a happy camper at all. It was either all or nothing on the throttle. I adjusted the carb a few times and it ran better as I made adjustments. By the time we got to the top of this mountain we felt on top of the world. We had a gorgeous lookout over Montana and Idaho as we were riding the border. We ended up on Idaho Peak at 6508 feet. I know many people get to higher places but man what a feeling to share this with my friends.

We hung out here for a while and decided to drop down a bit and have lunch in a grassy area a little lower down. We finished the days adventure by following a few smaller roads back down to good old 412 and went back to the campsite. We had a nice spot just about 50 yards or so from the North Fork of the Couer D' Alene river which was running pretty good for August too. There was only one other group in the whole campground and they were all the way on the other side. Peaceful and quiet and really nice. We got up the next day and decided to head out once again but elected to go a different route down FS151 up to Porcupine Pass and once again the Idaho/Montana border. We made our way up to about 5500 feet or so and found it easier to stay below there so Casey's bike would run a little better. Both Casey's bike and Lisa's Polaris had minor issues during the day but were taken care of pretty easily. We road up and around several passes and followed small canyon edges. Adventured up roads that were supposedly closed to wide open forest roads that Casey and I could race down and really make his 65 scream. I guess it looked pretty humorous seeing us take off from behind with my KLR being so tall and the 65 so much smaller. I am really impressed with the power of that little Kawasaki. Next one will be a 4-stroke though.

We ended up riding about 100 miles in two days and was impressed how well Casey did keeping up. There is a lot of difference between my KLR and his KX as far as putting on miles. Lisa being on the 4-wheeler just hung on and enjoyed the scenery. She even pounded through a mud puddle or two like and old pro. We will be back up in the area again for sure. This time we will be there a little longer and find more neat places to see. Anyone want to join in?

-Charlie-

Cabinets 2009

East Fork of the Bull River

My friend Earl and I have this affinity for the Cabinet Mts in Idaho and Montana. They are fairly close to home and just absolutely beautiful. The picture above is at about 5500 feet up on Gem peak just below the lookout tower. We could not get to the top because of some snow but we did hike to the top anyway.

Our adventure started out in Spokane WA and we headed east to Sandpoint ID. Enjoying the scenery that part of the country offers we continued east further towards a little town in Montana called Noxon. We headed north on hwy 56 off hwy 200 to my friends cabin located a ways off the highway on the west side of Government Mt.

This is not a good picture of the cabin but it gives you the idea of what we were staying in. This cabin was built by a friend of mine over several years and it is very comfortable with all the amenities you could imagine. For the most part we cam back from riding the back roads and trails only to cook up some dogs on the fire and then crash on the cots in the loft resting up for the next day.

The first day of riding brought us all over the place with about 160 miles logged on everything from highway to forest service roads. We adventured to the top of every peak we could make our way to. Some of them still had snow and my favorite.......mud. Earls KLR is more oriented towards the street and has on Avon Grippsters. Those tires are about a 25% off road and 75% on road tire. Believe me it made for some amusing trail rides watching him go through snow and then mud and then snow all over again while the back end of his bike was whipping back and forth really fast. I started laughing so hard at one point he could hear me over the sound of the motorcycles and through helmets. We had to pull over and get it out of our system so we could continue. I have pretty aggressive knobbies and was having a blast tearing up the roads and trails.

After the first day of riding we convened at the cabin with out dogs and a nice cozy fire to relax by for the evening. We were sitting around the fire shooting a .22 and being the general noisy people we can be and in a short lull in the action we were amazed at how several deer approached the area around the cabin. I seem to recall about 5 of them and two were bucks. A 4 by 4 and a 3 by 3. Beautiful animals so close. One of the does actually walked all the way around the cabin munching on the soft grass for about an hour. All in all a relaxing evening.

The next day brought some really interesting adventure. It was the absolute best day of riding I have ever had. We rode the Idaho Montana border most of the day and came to Porcupine pass and dropped down into Idaho towards the town of Pritchard. We worked our way back up the hill and hit some snow about 5500 feet. It made for some interesting travel as we had to traverse this road with patches of snow with mud holes in between. We took most of the gear off the bikes and hiked it up to where we thought we would end up to load back up. I hopped my my bike and tore through the snow and mud grinning all the way. Now once again back to Earl and his less than knobby tires. We actually walked his bike through the woods a few times simply because it seemed safer to do with his KLR. Especially since his is an 08 and has a lot more fairing to damage. We worked through about 300 yards of this until we got to a point that we could not get any further no matter what. We back tracked about 100 yards and got on a road that lead towards the town of Heron MT. We got about 5 miles down the forest service road and as I cam around a corner Earl was stopped with a flat tire. Well we tried to be prepared and I had some slime and he had a CO2 pump for the air. OF all things he picked up a nail up there somehow. We pulled the nail, removed the stem, squeezed in the slime and used to CO2 pump. Up went the tire and we noticed that there were still leaks all over the tire. Uh Oh. We had 3 more cartridges so what we ended up doing was actually kind of fun. Well for me anyway. Earl rode as far as the air would remain in the tire and when I caught up I would lay on the road, hook up the CO2, pump the tire and Earl would tear off like he was on a NASCAR pit road. Needless to say we got about 2 miles from the town before we had to stop for fear of ruining the tire completely.

I am going to let Earl finish the flat tire part of this story as it becomes very amusing. Even a little bit of thievery involved. (there was a trade though)

The above picture is the next morning at the cabin where a convenient stump worked as a perfect bike stand. Earl had to ride my KLR about 90 miles to get his tire fixed.

There is so much I know I am forgetting to write about but all I know is I can't wait for next years adventure ride.

-Charlie-