Leaderboard

Post your pics, videos and stories here! We will have photos from Stephen Gregory (Gregory Imagery) shortly in the gallery. My observations…. Really happy to see lots of old friends and make new ones. We had about 28 people this year and lots of ideas thrown around on how to increase that next year but it will hinge on two things I think: I need volunteers and will be promoting the event via Google ads vs FB/Instagram. When you post on the socials with your content, please tag #xladvhighsierra2023 My experience: very different weather this year! Our first rain Saturday morning and temps were much cooler in the day as well as much warmer (upper 40’s) in the morning. I was impressed with these new Trailmax Raid tires from Dunlop. Had them in both deep sand and well as steep rocky climbs. Food was super hard to come by for this particular weekend but the street tacos were super delicious, imho. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Stephen Gregory took all the sick photos and on top of that rode some new High Sierras tracks. Thanks for the great shots. Oh did we mention the how epic the weather was up in the elevation too? Awesome. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Got home yesterday at about 4:00 totally exhausted [emoji1787]. Slept 12 hours. Lost $85 but it’s all good. Heads up! Please post your pics/videos in the Ride Report thread and not here. Thanks [emoji120] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I just paid up. See you guys there.

Join Brian, Ed and mself on our ride around the Great Divide to the amazing pearls of the National Parks of the West; the North Rim, Mesa Verde, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, The Great Sand Dunes, Rocky Mountain, The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. Get some bugs on you and find out why they ride and how those reasons change on the road.

It's my handle across a number of forums as well as a character analysis. I ride a '14 Triumph Tiger Explorer 1200 XC, maybe not quite XL, but that's the biggest Tiger Triumph makes. I covered over 30k miles in 2023 and hope to exceed that next year with a run to the Arctic Circle and back to my place in Utah where we'll evaluate whether to complete the Panamerican stretch. I'm here to learn, to be inspired and to share. #dashbetweenthedates

Thank you Eric for all the effort you put in to get this rally up & going. It was a smaller but great rally. The weather was different but made for an unusual beautiful atmosphere in the area. It was a pleasure working with you & thank you for all the support. Hope we can get it together for next year. paul

Registration link: click here Here we go! 12th annual High Sierra! Event description: Three dinners this year! Salsa’s Taqueria. Professional photography by Stephen Gregory. I will lead a beginner group ride the first morning for those who are new so that should make it less daunting for you. Sponsors: GIVI USA Rigg Gear Dunlop USA Klim Motorcycle DoubleTake Mirrors Cardo Systems Attendees [mention=689]greedyg[/mention] [mention=261]Jason R[/mention] Leo Esparza Olivier Cornet Kenneth Kornbluh [mention=5129]Barry W[/mention] [mention=2299]Dennis Hagerty[/mention] Roman Krajewski Maxime Masraff Gary Graham Donald Funes Brent Needham Kiho Kim Richard Lee Sal Sal’s son Jairo Monterroza Warren Wright Brian Schieber Maria Odense [mention=512]motochefarwi[/mention] Pascal Vaguelsy [mention=4278]Stephen Gregory[/mention] Paul Costello Chris Owens Taurino Tadeo

Photos in the gallery now. share your photos and stories over in the ride report.

Photos by @Stephen Gregory can be found in the gallery. Some great ones as usual..

Jairo came from El Salvador just for the rally which I thought was cool. He and I have some mutual friends from my trip through there in 2021. he sent me these pics…

Ok, Ok Let's not get hasty! 🤪 Stand by for further communication...

A dead forum? Say it aint so! I thought @motochefarwi and I posted enough to keep it going...🤣

Hey Eric, well we are driving in the pick up from the East Bay (SF)probably heading down on Wednesday. If there is anything Maria and I can do let us know. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Bringing my swimsuit and water socks to stomp around in the river, might be running strong after this storm. Wonder how cold it’ll be 🥶

Im gonna take a nap here again... 😴

Dad is coming back to High Sierra! Hopefully he doesn't break his leg again... 😐

Yes sir Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Fish Slough is fast and fun. I did a run on the 990 to scout it out before taking the Pan America on that loop (Casa Diablo). 990 topped out at about 108. Pan America considerably faster (122). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Some garbage route East of Mono from Benton up to 167 right on the CA/NV border. We explored that area when all the forests were closed. Never made it to the destination of Aurora ghost town because Big John @Trailzrider roasted his clutch on the 890 back there somewhere.

You wanna do the 10 mile rock garden again Barry? 🤪

Maybe I should bring 2 bottles, one for Olivier and one for Chef Arwi. I might be in gourmet heaven! [emoji2] One a different note, I've been trying to contact Rich DeWolfe by text and FB Messenger, but have not heard back. I believe he camped with you, Eric, in 2021. He caught my fancy because, aside from being a cool guy, he also rode an FE501. [mention=5]Eric Hall[/mention] is he still around or riding? Let me ask him Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Maybe I should bring 2 bottles, one for Olivier and one for Chef Arwi. I might be in gourmet heaven! 😃 One a different note, I've been trying to contact Rich DeWolfe by text and FB Messenger, but have not heard back. I believe he camped with you, Eric, in 2021. He caught my fancy because, aside from being a cool guy, he also rode an FE501. @Eric Hall is he still around or riding?

Ticket purchased! I look forward to riding again with @Jason R @motochefarwi Olivier Cornet and others. Last time I did High Sierra in 2021, many trails were closed due to fire, so I'm looking to ride those and other fun routes. 👍

Yo! XLADV fans. Share your best routes! I can’t wait to ride this year with my friends! Here is a snip of a pretty good day on the donkey! Warm up at Crowley Lake, do some donuts on the beach. Then follow @greedyg and @raster through some gnar! Oh and don’t forget to bring extra gas for me! For the love of a thirsty 990. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

New hot spring = more old nekid bewbs

My dude!

Are you hosting the event this year? I'd love to join.

I, along , with a few hundred other riders, just spent $499 to camp out in the Mojave and get ride tracks. This also included pretty good food, but we had to buy our beer. Somehow I think High Sierra camping would be MUCH better and less sand riding. Go for it! I've heard great things about your rally, I've been searching for it for the last few months. I say bring in food trucks or stands for people who want to buy food, with plenty of beer and a bar. I'll bring at least a few, and maybe many, riders if it happens this year! Warren 2021 Pan Am

Good morning to everyone !For me guys this is the best sound (until today)from exhaust in Tenere 700.A sunny and quick ride out to one of the beaches in my area.Kavala Greece.Turns, narrow roads, bridges and a crazy provincial straight that I reach top speed somewhere in the 8th minute.There is also an unexpected confusion from 2nd to 3rd gear in the speeds, a small thing.Here's the video

I rode my Super Tenere 1200 with the Trailmax Missions on my first trip to mainland Mexico in 2022 and among other rides I did Highway 23 from the Coast to Durango in very rainy conditions. I live in Las Vegas and we run for the nuclear fallout-shelter when wet comes from the sky (what manner of sorcery is this?) so I was a VERY tentative rider in the rain, but as I gained confidence I gained speed and if you're familiar with that road, it's super twisty. By the end I was riding it almost as if it was dry pavement. As far as I am concerned those tires are awesome in the wet.. Re the handlebar buzz on the Triumph.. I know there are a lot of people that think it is buzy and a lot of others who say its not an issue, but for me it's definitely there and I have added bar end weights and grip puppies, neither of which did much. Mostly I put it on cruise and grip the bars very lightly to alleviate it. It's an amazing bike though... well except for the TFT which Triumph totally failed on, what a waste of a great display.

Nice to see some new activity here. I've been running the MIssions on my Super Tenere 1200 as well as on my Tiger 900RP and I am getting around 13k miles on the rear and I think I got about 19k on a front. I am not a very advanced offroad rider, but they seem to work pretty well for my level of riding. More importantly they are a great tire for long distance riding to Mexico and Central America. They will last the whole trip and on those occasions when the roads disappear, Im not worried about traction. I also found the TM made me a better road rider compared to the street tires that were on before (dont remember what they were). I was thinking perhaps a good combo might be a TM on the rear and the Raid on the front ? BTW I have the exact same bike as you, same colors, model everything. I like the bike a lot, but the handle bar buzz at 4kRPM and above is annoying.

Well said. I don’t know why these companies can’t do both? Why not some trail maintenance/advocacy groups too? You’re spot on about the sxs’s. Many of the companies have some rabid extreme views where they’re against even “human powered” exploration such as mountain bikes. And they’re super anti-gas powered anything. I’ve got a buddy who admits that MSR is rabidly anti-motorcycle. It’s a balance of interests and we have to work together. I’ll buy from people who are more vs less reasonable about it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hello all, I'm planning a solo North Baja ride on a loaded Husky Norden 901 and curious on route planning that includes easier dirt and some pavement. Appreciate route suggestions or anyone willing to share your tracks. I'm currently considering GPSKevin's route or the Baja Divide bikepacking route. Prefer to avoid long deep sand sections or steep big rock / big rut sections like those near Mikes. Thanks!

So good. Year after year this ride always keeps me yearning for more. You can spend a lifetime exploring this area. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for the nice words. Brandon had reached out to me about sharing another post of Upshift Online's shortly after he started there but this must be like 3-4 years ago. I was kind of shocked to hear that he didn't want their posts shared but I was like "okay!" After that I just unfollowed them. I wasn't mad; I just was like "welp, I guess they don't want things shared." I thought it was super weird and thought it might be personal but since then I've learned they do that to everyone. I know there are many small-time accounts out there and mostly in other countries who will share content without attribution and asking them not to may make perfect sense. But there's a few pretty big accounts I know of including this one who've found themselves in that situation. I share content for ADVPulse quite a bit mostly because it's just good content. Rob Dabney doesn't give me anything to do so either. I've shared Brake Magazine stuff too. And then going back to the only other people who've asked me not to share what this guy from the PNW who fancies himself a photographer. He messaged me asking if I was going to pay him? I was like well.... no. Sorry. He said "well I see you run ads on your site and it's commercial so you can afford to pay me." Well, not exactly lol. The ad revenue amounted to maybe $15/month and the costs closer to $30/month. But I took his photo down and just stopped following him. Last year I shared a guy's video of him nearly falling off his moto on the side of a hill. He asked super politely that I not share it and I immediately deleted it. I think he felt it made him look bad which I totally understood. But the usual response has always been "thanks for the share!" One thing I never understood about their site is the whole digital viewer as if it's a real paper magazine. The problem is individual stories aren't linkable. If you google "xladv site:upshiftonline.com" you get zero results. But if I go to the June 2018 edition I can find the Mojave Rally story. Search engine referral traffic can in many cases be the large majority of a site's traffic. 93% of all web traffic is from search engines. To forego that seems odd but it does explain their domain authority score is so low relative to other adv websites. Given that one issue, I'd be like "share and share alike!" as much as I could to try and overcome that. I was very prominently posting stories about this spat on my histories at IG too. People need to think twice about coming after XLADV. "Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel." - Mark Twain

I fly to LA this Sat the 26th. Still trying to organize getting myself and all the prizes, beer, water, etc there. Dennis’s motor home is busted and he’s doing another ride with friends even further north of High Sierra. Peter from SD helped me last year and offered to again but he’s got some mechanical issues coming back from Louisiana. He was also going to give Paul a ride so he doesn’t have to cope with the heat. He may or may not be able to resolve that in time. I can always simply ride the 990 but have all the rally stuff so if anyone has suggestions then I’m open to that. Thanks. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Maybe I should bring my landing net for some fresh trout... or to simply amuse everyone as I try to catch them. 🤣 I was with @Dennis Hagerty today at the airshow and mentioned that we should coordinate some food & beverage outside the meals provided. We'll have a FB chat soon.

Just bought my ticket! Looking forward to it. I see it ends on Sunday - do we get thrown out of the campground or can we pay extra to stay Sunday night? I just rode home from the Mammoth Blues Festival and the 400 miles to SD were not bad at all!

I will update the first post to include a guided beginner ride for Friday morning. Should make it easier for riders who are new when they show up Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Been too long! Had a quick one week trip to Chile to ride with @MotorradAngels (Tom Palmer) and @Dennis Godwin of Motorrad Angels. We tried to get over the pass to Mendoza but there was a big landslide they were fixing. We had heard it would open the next day and were hoping it was open to motos which is usually the case. But the army guy said ten more days! So we made the most of Chile. From Santiago we went about 2 hours nw to Papudo on the coast. Really cool town with an old california central coast feel. Next day we went to the pass and got turned back and ended up in La Ligua. Next day was to Terma de Socos, a hot spring hotel. Next day I had to turn south and the other two headed up to Atacama then over into Argentina for a few water projects. I went south to Santa Cruz, a wine region and did the whole foodie thing solo. That 1250 GS is amazing! My first time trying. Chile is very interesting! More like Europe than South America. Very well put together, organized, great roads, drivers who know how to drive (unlike Peru). People are more European in origin it seems. Lots from Italy and Germany. Geography is basically desert, mountains, ocean and glaciers surrounding them. It's a long finger like country. They say the wine region suffers less pest problems because of that. It's also quite a bit more expensive than other S American countries. I was going to keep going south but love it here in Colombia and am working a full time gig so have to make hay while the sun shines as they say. They went far enough north to get a photo at “the hand.” I said you’re not a real adventure rider until you get a picture at the hand! [emoji1787] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

okay so like I said, we got food now and @Stephen Gregory has agreed to shoot photos again! Registration link above in first post. Tell a friend

Really good news today. I got us food!!! Really good food too. Street tacos! Affordable and close (Mammoth vs Bishop). 20 minutes vs 45. Super hard to nail this one down. Labor Day weekend is huge up there and everyone has like 2 weddings and a baby shower booked a year in advance. We were going to have Cudby shoot photos again but he’s booked. I have another photog I’m talking to now so want to finalize that before I set the price and start registrations. Not losing money again this time [emoji23] Thanks for your patience. Should have a link up early next week. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks Warren for the ideas. There are mainly two factors driving difficulty getting food there. One is that it’s not that close to nearby cities. Mammoth is about 20 minutes; Bishop 45. Another issue is the weekend, Labor Day. It’s a huge tourist destination and they get booked up more than a year in advance. That being said, I’m tracking down one more food option and am close to having a registration link. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for the feedback. Event costs have both declined (since we stopped having catered meals) and risen (from last year). 2021 was $128 and that was a huge decrease from the year before. 2022 was $160 but Owens River CG jacked up camping fees and then we added a silipint and added cost for water/beer since June Lake Brewing isn’t donating kegs anymore. They do only cans now and gave us canned beer in 2021 because they felt bad. Last year that had to be added as a cost. I also ended up short in 2020 when I set the ticket price before I knew the food cost went up. I understand the value perception year to year and catered vs no food. But if you look at other corporate events like ADV Fest at $499 then I think High Sierra is still a bargain. I like the idea of a waypoint competition and if that’s something you’d like to take the lead on then feel free too. I typically have little spare time at the event to track that kind of thing in real time. I have a bit of concern like with the ADV Rally in Julian of people getting in over their heads so maybe we limit it to the easier trails and points of interest. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here's my observation. Event costs went up and the amount of amenities provided for that cost when down (catering, shirts, mugs, kegs etc.) Makes it harder to justify for a lot of folks, especially considering the addition of fuel costs to and from. For myself and several other gents that have been faithful attendees but missed last year, coincidentally, we all had scheduling conflicts. I love riding in the area and meeting up with guys I only get to see once or twice a year. The raffle for Motorrad Angels is wicked cool. What about an event refresh to add the "team / waypoint" friendly competition style?

Sunday was very muddy! Rained the entire day! In my class only 3 other bikes showed up, and I was the only bike to finish. Wasn't enough competition, and my 1st place finish didn't feel earned. Some hill climb sections had worthy challenges, but next year I'll move up a class and do the full 25 mile loop. This is a combination of all red loops riders on Sunday. I did include the electric bikes but note they needed to only race a minimum of 3 laps to make a finish.