Day 1 -
250 Miles
16 hours
Broken parts
Flat tires
Dead end washes
Run in with the Military at midnight
Extreme fatigue
130 AM arrival in San Felipe
I do not have the writing skill to convey what we went through that crazy night, perhaps Rob or Buck can chime in here.
Buck, Rob, we are as brothers from here forward.
BTW- where we going next?
Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
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flyinbronco
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
all I want to know is did anyone get tazzed?
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yikes
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Lol.flyinbronco wrote:all I want to know is did anyone get tazzed?
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yikes
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Wow! That sounds like a crazy trip. Everyone back home? We don't need to go on a rescue run?
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Quailhunter
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
OK , this is going to be good!
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flyinbronco
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
come on guys where's the story.
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HotRod82
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Here is what I posted on the SD dualsport website......
Complacency rears it's ugly head.......
Our mixed group of bikes and prerunner trucks had been planning an easy run to SF for about a month and I was looking forward to it as I had not been to SF since my last race there in 2002. I suggested since we had vehicles capable of hauling fuel to make the run east out of Tecate and down La Rumarosa. From there, there are nice easy trails south skirting Laguna Solada to Borrego, across Hwy 3 and down to SF. I was not the ride leader on this one, there were others doing most of the planning so I simply prepared my bike and gear as usual and looked forward to the coming ride. I packed the usual survival gear and was prepared to spend the night in the desert if I had to for some unknown reason. Friday morning came and I met up with the group that had suprisingly dwindled down to 2 bikes (including me) and 1 V8 powered go fast ranger prerunner. I was not concerned about it as the other rider (Buck) was a go fast guy with real skill and lots of Baja experience. The prerunner driver Rob was on his first outing in Baja but is an experienced wheeler and an all round outdoorsman from Wisconsin so I had complete confidence in my team heading south. Unfortunately, the guy handling the route and GPS dropped out last minute so we were heading down without set routes. No problem for me and Buck, we are experienced professionals right? RIGHT. For some reason, we make terrible time getting to the trail head at Rancho Ponderosa and we didn't get rolling until after 9AM. We were nearly at the bottom of La Rumarosa (awesome trail btw) when Buck gets a front flat AND the prerunner shears off the centering bolt in one of the leaf packs. We make trailside repairs and hit the road again and now it is almost 1PM. I tell Buck we need to really get on it, it's getting late. We twist the throttle and head south with Rob and his ranger hot on our tail. We were having a blast. Fast, smooth tracks with berms in the corners, we were railing and putting in some quick miles. Buck and I both knew we needed to head South by SouthEast to work our way down to Borrego......we missed by about 25 miles WEST. No problem I thought, I'm sure we can find a road East to get around this giant mountain in front of us. We tried one road which dead ended in about 10 miles, then found a second road headed due east that was wide and obviously well traveled. "This is it" I thought, we charged EAST many miles into a well travelled wash. My GPS indicated we were 15 miles NORTH of Hwy 3 and only 3 miles from Hwy 5 and heading straight toward it. The wash deteriorated from the recent rains and it was tough going but we were nearly to Hwy 5 so we pressed on. Two miles from Hwy 5 we came to a 50 or so feet waterfall.....another dead end and it was nearly completely dark. I thought to myself...... "This is getting serious"
As I mentioned earlier, Buck is a very skilled rider although unfortunately he hasn't been riding much recently. One of the reasons we wanted an easy route was to take it easy on Buck's first long ride in some time. Fatige and darkness are now real issues for all of us, but we press on. Getting back out of that wash was a real challenge but we made it out and sniffed out the race course from a week ago. We jumped on it and headed south and unfortunately I knew where we were.....the back side of the Summit. "There must be a road around this to the South" I thought to myself, I was wrong. The road up the back of the Summit is a tough trail for just about anybody on a bike. This trail in the dark with not so great lights AND being tired is a monster. The slow pace combined with the lights and cooling fans running killed both of our batteries so we had to kick our bikes back to life if you stalled. My bike is an easy starter, Buck could no longer kick his so Rob and I took turns kicking a bike that is a terribly hard starting machine. Even with his skill level Buck was having a hard time of it, he was just completely wiped out. As we stood there kicking his bike for the 1000th time, something approached us from the darkness. Buck turned to me and said "Dude, there is something out there".
I turned my light on and saw a man with an automatic weapon jump behind a rock about 30 yards in front of us. I won't print the words that went through my head at that moment. We took the light off of him hoping he was legit Army, we put our hands out where he could see them and did not move. He put lights on us and we heard the slide drop on the FAL he was carrying and 5 more soldiers appeared on our flanks. I won't lie, it was tense for a few minutes but I was confident these guys were legit. After looking through every pocket of every bag we had, they looked at our ID and asked Rob to give 2 of them a ride up to their HumVee. I will admit it was funny to see two soldiers with machine guns stuffed in with Rob bouncing his way up the rocks. To this day I don't know how Rob got his truck up those hills in the dark, big HP and a heavy right foot. Later the Captain says in perfect english "what are you crazy Americans doing out here in the middle of the night?" Turns out they had a plane up looking for a suspicious car and they spotted us. The Army guys were professional and friendly, these guys have a really tough job. We bid the soldiers farewell and pressed on. The new part of the race course we were on is a mess from the rain, I can see why on race day they decided not to use it but it was really torn up from all of the prerunners. If you are skilled and looking for a challenge I would recommend running the summit backwards as we did.....just do it during the daylight. We struggled our way out to Hwy 3 finally and had a pretty good haul into SF. We rolled into our villa at 1:30AM Sat.
The rest of our trip went perfectly, Mikes on Sat. night and home on Sunday. I've had some time to reflect on that crazy night and have counted at least 100 things we did wrong. I hope our little story is not only entertaining but a lesson that complacency really can be dangerous. Buck and I have literally decades of Baja experience and it worked against us as we thought a simple ride to SF didn't warrant our full attention and we paid dearly for it. Of course things could have gone even worse and I am thankful they didn't. We always hear stories of things going wrong on rides but I can tell you I'm going to do a better job preparing so I can avoid situations like this if at all possible. Ride safe everybody, cheers.
Complacency rears it's ugly head.......
Our mixed group of bikes and prerunner trucks had been planning an easy run to SF for about a month and I was looking forward to it as I had not been to SF since my last race there in 2002. I suggested since we had vehicles capable of hauling fuel to make the run east out of Tecate and down La Rumarosa. From there, there are nice easy trails south skirting Laguna Solada to Borrego, across Hwy 3 and down to SF. I was not the ride leader on this one, there were others doing most of the planning so I simply prepared my bike and gear as usual and looked forward to the coming ride. I packed the usual survival gear and was prepared to spend the night in the desert if I had to for some unknown reason. Friday morning came and I met up with the group that had suprisingly dwindled down to 2 bikes (including me) and 1 V8 powered go fast ranger prerunner. I was not concerned about it as the other rider (Buck) was a go fast guy with real skill and lots of Baja experience. The prerunner driver Rob was on his first outing in Baja but is an experienced wheeler and an all round outdoorsman from Wisconsin so I had complete confidence in my team heading south. Unfortunately, the guy handling the route and GPS dropped out last minute so we were heading down without set routes. No problem for me and Buck, we are experienced professionals right? RIGHT. For some reason, we make terrible time getting to the trail head at Rancho Ponderosa and we didn't get rolling until after 9AM. We were nearly at the bottom of La Rumarosa (awesome trail btw) when Buck gets a front flat AND the prerunner shears off the centering bolt in one of the leaf packs. We make trailside repairs and hit the road again and now it is almost 1PM. I tell Buck we need to really get on it, it's getting late. We twist the throttle and head south with Rob and his ranger hot on our tail. We were having a blast. Fast, smooth tracks with berms in the corners, we were railing and putting in some quick miles. Buck and I both knew we needed to head South by SouthEast to work our way down to Borrego......we missed by about 25 miles WEST. No problem I thought, I'm sure we can find a road East to get around this giant mountain in front of us. We tried one road which dead ended in about 10 miles, then found a second road headed due east that was wide and obviously well traveled. "This is it" I thought, we charged EAST many miles into a well travelled wash. My GPS indicated we were 15 miles NORTH of Hwy 3 and only 3 miles from Hwy 5 and heading straight toward it. The wash deteriorated from the recent rains and it was tough going but we were nearly to Hwy 5 so we pressed on. Two miles from Hwy 5 we came to a 50 or so feet waterfall.....another dead end and it was nearly completely dark. I thought to myself...... "This is getting serious"
As I mentioned earlier, Buck is a very skilled rider although unfortunately he hasn't been riding much recently. One of the reasons we wanted an easy route was to take it easy on Buck's first long ride in some time. Fatige and darkness are now real issues for all of us, but we press on. Getting back out of that wash was a real challenge but we made it out and sniffed out the race course from a week ago. We jumped on it and headed south and unfortunately I knew where we were.....the back side of the Summit. "There must be a road around this to the South" I thought to myself, I was wrong. The road up the back of the Summit is a tough trail for just about anybody on a bike. This trail in the dark with not so great lights AND being tired is a monster. The slow pace combined with the lights and cooling fans running killed both of our batteries so we had to kick our bikes back to life if you stalled. My bike is an easy starter, Buck could no longer kick his so Rob and I took turns kicking a bike that is a terribly hard starting machine. Even with his skill level Buck was having a hard time of it, he was just completely wiped out. As we stood there kicking his bike for the 1000th time, something approached us from the darkness. Buck turned to me and said "Dude, there is something out there".
I turned my light on and saw a man with an automatic weapon jump behind a rock about 30 yards in front of us. I won't print the words that went through my head at that moment. We took the light off of him hoping he was legit Army, we put our hands out where he could see them and did not move. He put lights on us and we heard the slide drop on the FAL he was carrying and 5 more soldiers appeared on our flanks. I won't lie, it was tense for a few minutes but I was confident these guys were legit. After looking through every pocket of every bag we had, they looked at our ID and asked Rob to give 2 of them a ride up to their HumVee. I will admit it was funny to see two soldiers with machine guns stuffed in with Rob bouncing his way up the rocks. To this day I don't know how Rob got his truck up those hills in the dark, big HP and a heavy right foot. Later the Captain says in perfect english "what are you crazy Americans doing out here in the middle of the night?" Turns out they had a plane up looking for a suspicious car and they spotted us. The Army guys were professional and friendly, these guys have a really tough job. We bid the soldiers farewell and pressed on. The new part of the race course we were on is a mess from the rain, I can see why on race day they decided not to use it but it was really torn up from all of the prerunners. If you are skilled and looking for a challenge I would recommend running the summit backwards as we did.....just do it during the daylight. We struggled our way out to Hwy 3 finally and had a pretty good haul into SF. We rolled into our villa at 1:30AM Sat.
The rest of our trip went perfectly, Mikes on Sat. night and home on Sunday. I've had some time to reflect on that crazy night and have counted at least 100 things we did wrong. I hope our little story is not only entertaining but a lesson that complacency really can be dangerous. Buck and I have literally decades of Baja experience and it worked against us as we thought a simple ride to SF didn't warrant our full attention and we paid dearly for it. Of course things could have gone even worse and I am thankful they didn't. We always hear stories of things going wrong on rides but I can tell you I'm going to do a better job preparing so I can avoid situations like this if at all possible. Ride safe everybody, cheers.
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RyanDS650X
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Wow! Glad all is well and lessons that were learned are not soon forgotten... Sounds like a helluva ride!
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guard
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
What an exciting adventure, sorry I missed it! Kind of... haha
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Rmc
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
That's some crazy shit.
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yikes
- Founder
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Holy smokes! I would have been really nervous seeing automatic rifles in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Mexico. BUT, I still wish I could have made it. Glad it all worked out.
Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Wow!! That's all I can say. Wow!!
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Quailhunter
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
No please!
Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Being from Wisconsin I have dreamed and heard stories of the Baja. I have watched the Dust to Glory video 100 times. I have been off road coast to coast, crazy trail fixes, late nights, water crossings gone bad, rigs rolled over, transfer case in pieces on Hells Revenge, truck frame split in half rolling on 54" tires with big HP, I have lived good, thought I saw it all, I was reminded how little I have seen. To quote Buck "this was the best and the worst trip I have ever been on". I can't think of two other guys I would have wanted to guide me through this though; Rodney and Buck are true Baja. Thanks again for putting together the ultimate Baja trip!!
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SteveG
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
This trips is the stuff legends are made of. Sounds like a great time. Thanks for the trip report!
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bajabuck
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Well I have a different take on this ride all together. Since this was Robb's first real Baja trip we set up an epic adventure. All went according to plan. Everything worked out beautifully. Tomorrow I'm going to try walking again.
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SteveG
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Well played, sir. Well played!
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yikes
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Haha! Nice Buck! Howz the foot?
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bajabuck
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Foot is doing well, thanks for asking Brian. I think I cured myself by traumatizing my entire body. Ready to Ride!yikes wrote:Haha! Nice Buck! Howz the foot?
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flyinbronco
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Re: Baja Norte March 7-9 recap.
Glad you all made it home safe.
I remember when Tom drove through the military check point on Compadre truck trail in the green mamba at warp speed one trip. He then radios back to us what he did and that we better stop. It was the first time the military guys ever POINTED their weapons at me when we pulled up. It was a little tense for a minute until they asked if we had any cervesa. Beer breaks down almost any tense situation even better than steekers.
I remember when Tom drove through the military check point on Compadre truck trail in the green mamba at warp speed one trip. He then radios back to us what he did and that we better stop. It was the first time the military guys ever POINTED their weapons at me when we pulled up. It was a little tense for a minute until they asked if we had any cervesa. Beer breaks down almost any tense situation even better than steekers.