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7th Annual! FB event page here and registration link here. Description: (Limit 80 riders) In the heat of summer, experience the cooler temps (6800' elevation) and epic big bike riding in the High Sierra. Gourmet catered meals (2 dinners, 2 breakfasts), professional photography, firewood, adult beverages, hot showers, bathrooms, nearby hot springs, general store. Vendor-sponsored raffle prizes! All to benefit Motorrad Angels(motorradangels.org), a charity that provides clean water filtration kits around the world. Trails for all abilities from scenic pavement to easy, intermediate and expert dirt. Highlight is riding to the 12,400' summit to see the White Mountain Research Station whose gate is open this one day per year. Beat the traffic and be home Monday for Labor Day with your family. New this year: T-shirts, Silipint cups & two breakfasts! You are an adult paying for a good time at a campout and are free to explore the area on self-guided gps tracks on public roads and public trails at your own risk. XLADV, Motorrad Angels and Brown's Owens River Campground accept no liability for your safety. By signing up and paying for this event you are in acknowledgement of these terms and waive any right hold hold aforementioned parties liable. Only registered riders can attend. No exceptions. Do NOT invite your friends to come free. Do NOT "rogue" the ride by camping nearby and shadowing us; it's in poor taste given this is a charity event and a lot of work goes into it. Refund Policy: This year it's one month out, or by end of day, July 31st, 2018. Absolutely no refunds after that date. It's extremely hard to organize an event this size with countless last minute cancellations and then a scramble to add in last minute additions to fill the gaps. This is a volunteer deal and it benefits Motorrad Angels so consider that if you have to cancel within two weeks of the event. $199 this year but I'm adding in tshirts, silipint cups and two breakfasts! Sponsors (so far): BMW MOA Attendees: @Vlad John MacDonald @renaissancerider Beth Dolos Vuthy Lat Olivier Cornet Tom McQueen Cosmin G Shane Bearly Moisey B Ross Wood John Howard Moshe Alex Scmauss @WarpedRotor Kevin Carpenter Mark Daniels @Sandro Andre Marino @greedyg @Rogers Steve Andujar Kurt Wyrick Bill Osmer @mthomasadv @motochefarwi Mrs. MotoChefArwi Joseph Bradley David Morgan @Clink @Jason R Ross Wenger Tim Stewart Todd Tenhet Todd Tenhet guest Jeff Parker Dennis Hagerty Peter Wallace ConnieSue Dickinson Delaney Prince Daniel Prince LTS Rodney Hennis William Briner Dean Voyer Daniel Bartolucci Rick Giroux Norm Mackay Richard Lee Bill Osmer Pat Thaiwongse Michael Snyder Antonio Wong Pratima Bhuttarowas Edward Bell Edward Bell guest Steven Healy Randy Commans @Doug Printz Paul Dawson Mathew Carman Dries Van Loon Gareth Evans Cam McConnell Nicholas Jones Steven Green Ron Anderson Kevin Fellon Steven Cocking Chris Hangos Chris Owens

Jackson Ellis, Jerry Gordon and Bart Muhlfeld at the top of the steps. Hard work getting the 3 bikes down, but worth the effort with the fantastic single track and double track leading both up to and after the obstacle.

I wouldn't want many of the 43 bikes again, but would certainly love to have some of them back. For instance: KTM 950 SE, KTM 990 Adventure, Triumph Tiger 1050, Honda XR650R, Honda Elsinore 125, Yamaha TT500, Maico 400, and my first bike, 1973 Yamaha RD350. The ones I would not want back: Gold Wing (not sure what I was thinking when I bought that), Suzuki DR250 (gutless), Yamaha (Star) Stratoliner (too long, too heavy, and I did that twice), and I am sure there are others.

Another fantastic ride at the tail end of desert riding season!! Mojave National Preserve is freeking huge and vast. At 1,600,000 acres (2500 square miles), it is one of the largest units of the National Park System in the contiguous United States. What can I say, Nice people, great riding area, and the food was fantastic! Tracy and Debra deserve a lot of credit. They worked their butts off feeding everyone! I'm just sorry I could only stay for the one day Saturday. I’m used to events where I don’t know anyone. For this one I had a hard time finding someone to ride with that wanted to ride at a mellow pace yet advanced tracks. I ended up going at it solo. I'm hoping in the next few season's I'll have my beast, actually ride it to the event, and ride with like minded riders! To give you an idea of what kind of bikes are running, here is typical of what to expect. This is a KTM 1290. It’s the trophy truck of adventure bikes.160 horsepower and the only time you see it is when it’s parked. The guys who own these are very fast and skilled young bucks and they average over 60mph across rough desert. In some spots they do in excess of 100mph!! It can be a unforgiving bike when ridden slow. It’s meant to be ridden fast and hard. Come to think of it, it’s also unforgiving when ridden fast. When something goes wrong on a 500 + pound bike in the dirt…….. It’s not hard to figure out! One thing to remember is your wallet cannot purchase the experience and skills needed to ride one of these slow or fast!! Some of us had just run of the mill dual sports. I trucked mine in but a few guys actually bagged up the XR's, KLR650's, etc and rode here!! I'm still very Impressed how well a KLR can be setup for travel. It has the added bonus of being reliable as an anvil!! I'm sorry I forgot your name but I really liked your very well sorted KLR!! For most of the guys this is the ride of choice. BMW GS. There were more of these at the rally than any other bike. Great for the road and pretty fair in the dirt. 125HP and close to 600lbs stripped. Hope he removed the panniers before venturing in the dirt!! And here is the bike I’m saving for. Yamaha Super Tenere!! Just about 100HP and 600lbs. Mine will be setup different but I’m very impressed what this bike can do!! There was only one of these at the rally. The guy who owned it was just an average rider like myself. He was able to go anywhere the KTM’s, BMW's or myself could go. I met up with the him at lunch and he was enjoying himself and loving the ride!! BTW all that luggage was stripped off for the ride. And it looks more loaded than it is. His helmet and jacket are set on top to dry. This is a very well sorted Tenere. And the IMS footpegs!!! WOW!! The ride was interesting to say the least!! It was a mixture of deep sand, a few short sections of whoops, cactus, rocks and rolling unimproved 2 track roads. The views are breathtaking!! But you have to be stopped or riding really slow to enjoy them. When you're on the throttle you have to give 100% of your focus on the trail ahead. Looking as far ahead as possible for obstacles and focusing on a line around them. When riding deep sand it’s all about steady throttle, very light grip on the bars, standing on the pegs, staying centered on the bike, and letting it move underneath you. As I age (I’m pushing 60) loss of motor skills and slower reflexes are the reality of life. So I have to ride a bit slower and adjust for reaction time accordingly. Rocks are part of any good advanced ride in the desert. And this was the easy section. It was the only rock section I could stop and take pictures!! It's right at the entry to the lava tubes. This was the first time I’ve ever ridden through lava rocks. You DO NOT want to fall. They are razor sharp. I actually ran a gear high and lugged through them. Did not want to chance dropping my bike or cutting my tire and getting a flat. I rode at least 2 miles through a pretty tough section (easy on my Beta but would be hard on a 500lb beast) of them. There was one brutal rocky hillclimb/downhill I was actually able to navigate a easy way through. I want to mention that Eric laid out a really good course that was well marked on the GPS. Unfortunately my Basecamp did not communicate so well with my outdated 76CSX. I ran out of tracks at the lava tubes. I saw a group of jeepers and they were zero help. The dummies gave me bogus directions that likely would have caused me to run out of fuel. It was almost 90 degrees with the sun beating down on me with just over a half tank of fuel and a small 2 liter emergency fuel bottle. The problem navigating off road with just a map is it does not tell you the condition of the road or trail. Wind, rockslides, and flash floods can make any road or canyon impassable at any time in the park. There are so many roads in the park that the short staffed BLM, US forestry service, or rangers just can’t keep up with the closure notifications. I decided to trust the map and take the longer route to the Shell station but shortest route to the pavement. I ended up backtracking through the lava rocks and followed an old mining road out to paved Cima road. The mining road was pretty smooth but had a few miles of very soft sand that was "deep grooved" from other riders on the big bikes. It made for a twisty unnerving ride!! Come to find out I unknowingly followed one of the intermediate routes out of the park!! I made it to the Shell station with under a half tank. Total miles about 88 miles of dirt and 10 miles of pavement to Shell station. Due to the time and what I already went through, I called off the hard sections going back and took the direct easy way (paved/fire roads) into camp about 40 miles away. After getting back to camp I figured I had a damn good ride and decided to pack it up and head home.