He had arranged for someone to drive a truck out to the campsite area with all the camping gear, food, booze, etc. Cool! But when I showed up to his house the next day, he said the truck guy had bailed, so now I had to be expedition navigator and mule (dirt bikers can't pack much gear on their bikes, see here):
With the limited amount of space available on my Grizzly for their gear/food/booze and the extra Kolpin I brought along for them, they had to make some tough choices: naturally the booze won out in almost all the choices.
We started in Prosser Hill OHV, rode the dirt roads north to Henness Pass Road. and headed west. Here is a Google Earth shot of the route from where we started to where we took a break at Webber Falls:
From the falls we continued west on Henness Pass, hung a left at Webber Lake, onto Meadow Lake Road, then on out to Meadow Lake:
From Meadow Lake we went north to the intersection with the road that goes between Jackson Meadows Reservoir and Bowman Lake, turned west toward Bowman, then turned south toward Sawmill and Faucherie Lakes. The one-way trip is 39.4 miles per my GPS track log.
Pete re-found his sought after camp site along Canyon Creek. The dirt bike crew (Eric, Pete, Soren, Gina) and I are now happy campers at dinner time:
This has to be one of the best camp sites in the Sierras. You're camping right next to this:
Which flows into a deep pool with a natural diving board:
You can get into the water up in the rapids and go shooting down them like you're in a flume. When the current takes you to the diving board you climb out, walk the plank, jump back in.
My survival gear came in handy. For reasons unknown, they had brought enough water for a day of riding but not enough for two days of riding, and no one but me had a water filter. Two flip-flops sustained mechanical failures during the water play but were repaired using some McGyver skills and bits of this and that from my first aid kit. Calls home were made via the sat phone. My hank of paracord did Bear Bag duty overnight. The Gorilla wrench even worked well for splitting firewood chunks from a dead tree.
Speaking of first aid... those supplies came in handy two. All of them had wiped out at least once on the way there, and Gina wiped out twice, both times right in front of me. When copious amounts of alcohol failed to numb the pain, my supply of Advil, Aspirin and various other pain relievers was quickly depleted. Or maybe it was the copious amounts of alcohol that required all the pain relievers. I forget, I was trying to do my share of consumption duties...
We came back the same way the next day. I was hoping to take them on some different/rougher routes on the way back but the after effects of the prior evening's activities nixed that idea. I wasn't bummed out. Getting only about 3 hours of sleep on my survival kit's crappy air mattress didn't exactly lead to a go-get-em attitude for me the next morning. But it was still a great trip!
