Chimney Peak Road, Sherman Pass and crap I get myself into!!!

Okay, this weekend I was supposed to go and ride the Donner Rail Road Tunnels with a group of riders from the Northern California Area.  The ride was being hosted by Cycle Specialties in Modesto.  I was going to go!  I guess mother nature had other ideas.  The weather appeared to be getting bad so the ride on Sunday was cancelled and they did the ride on Saturday.  I could not make that work so I did not make the trip up.  I was prepared though.  I had new shoes put on the beast so I would be ready to ride in the mud, dirt or what ever they threw at us.  Here she is waiting for her shoes and then with them on!

Ya, my garage is a mess.....get over it!!!

Of course I had to go scrub the new off Friday afternoon.  This is the only picture I took.

My plan for the day was to ride Chimney Peak Road.  I mentioned it in the Death Valley RR and wanting to ride it before the snow sets in.  Well I'm not going to Donner, might as well give it a shot before it is to late!  The trees are starting to change color, even here.  This picture is heading up Hwy. 155.

The weather appeared to be holding for the moment.  I shot over to the start of the Chimney Peak Road off of Hwy. 178.  Shot a couple of quick pics and headed up!

The road climbs pretty fast!  The surface is not to bad.  A little sand a little washboarded.  You just have to keep your speed up and things smooth right out!

Don't know if this is Chimney Peak or not but the rocks look pretty cool from the road.

Found my way to Chimney Creek Camp Grounds.  There was nobody here today.  I guess it was to cold and cloudy.  Looks like a nice camp ground area.  No trash laying around, new looking tables and fire rings at every camp site.  Might have to make it back up here in the spring and camp.  Looked like a lot of riding could be done up here!

Well, I thought I was in for 28 miles of dirt road between Hwy. 178 and Kennedy Meadows.  Turns out, I was wrong.  It was only 13 miles of dirt and 15 miles of tarmac.  The Dirt road ended way to soon for me!  This is at the top end of the dirt road.

I stopped in at the store in Kennedy Meadows thinking I could get me a little something warm to eat.  Once again, I was wrong.  I was the only person there with the exception of the store clerk.  I asked him if he knew anything about the conditions over Sherman Pass.  He looked at me a little cockeyed and said, "Nope!  But I bet it is gonna be cold up there."  Really?  Thats all you got for me?  It's gonna be cold, I could have told you that by looking out the window!  Oh well, guess I will go find out what the conditions are like!

So I took off to Sherman Pass.  Shot a couple of pictures along the way.  Pretty sure you can figure them out.  I also discovered there was someone else up in the mountains on this cold and blustery day.  He is way higher on the the crazy scale than I am!

Stopped as I was passing by the Dome Land Wilderness Area and took a couple of pictures.  This looks like a pretty cool area.  I think it might have a little fire damage also, but still cool rocks!

Found my first snow of the year so I had to stop and take a couple of pictures of it!

Made it up to Sherman Pass.  It was cloudy, wind was blowing and the temp. was 43.  I have been up there when it was worse so this was not to bad!  Olancha Peak in the back ground.

Okay, now we are going to get into the stupid crap that I do!  It started out innocent enough.  I found a road which said something like Mosquito Meadows, 3 miles.  I knew I was only a couple of hours from the house and I was not really done with riding for the day so I thought to myself, "It's only 6 more miles.  Got plenty of time!"  So off up this road I go.  It is kinda paved and no big deal, however, I spy a single track off to the south of the road.  Really not more than 100 feet off the road.  It appears to be no big deal, just a nice smooth single track.  I get to the end of the road and here are the signs I see.

Alrighty!  I have already made mistake #1.  I have told myself it is okay to ride this single track because it "looked" like it was not a big deal for the 1 mile stretch I was going to be on it.  I made mistake #2 when I stopped to take this picture and did not head the warning "Most Difficult".  So off my dumb ass goes down this trail by myself, in the mountains where nobody is around and a storm is moving in.  I iz smert!  Everything was going along just fine.  Came to a section of exposed roots on a down hill.  Stopped, looked at it and went.  Cleaned it, no big deal.  Everything was going along just fine until I came to a point in the trail where the trail went between two trees.  It looked tight for having the panniers on but doable.  Not so much!  First contact was with the tree on the right with my right hand guard.  Second contact was the right pannier with the tree on the right.  Third contact was the right side of my bike with the ground.  Turned it off and picked it up before I took a picture, sorry!  Here it is after picking it up!

You can not really tell it in this picture but the bike is going down hill and the dirt is really soft.  I tried getting in front of it and pushing it up the hill.  Did not work out so well!  Option #2 was to go down hill into a flat area, turn around and work my way back up to the trail.  I had to move a whole lot of downed dead tree branches to make that work.  After I had cleared a path I started on this endevor.

The trees!  Looking at it from this angle there appears to be plenty of room.  I swear it was tight!  I walked it through the second time and it was a sqeeze!

This is the damage to the poor tree!  As you can see I am not the first one to bounce off of it!

So I get the bike back to a safe place, put my gear back on and take off again.  About a half mile later I was back on the road.  Lesson learned from this.  Don't do stupid shizz like this when you are by yourself!!!  This next picture is taken headed down the south side of Sherman Pass.

Stopped along the way to take a few more fall pictures.  I had a great ride on a blustery day and learned a few things along the way! 

Well, that is the end!  Thanks for checking out my ride report!  If you every want to go with me and try and keep me out of trouble send me an e-mail!

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