Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

. -- - - - - - - - - - ---- - --- - After the fire road d ust , riders cooled off zig-zagging through the stream. n o way around. Now yo u know why all those rid ers wer e going back down the course. Yo u edge down in to the depression and tr avel across the level stre tch of sunken road to the point where you must climb out to reach the no rm al road bed. It's straight up and it's at least ten feet high. You try to ride up only to fall back down. Finally getting th e fr ont wheel up onto the lip of the road after many tries you leave the bike hanging there like some kind of trophy nailed to a wall, crawl up and then, grabbing the wheel and pulling, drag th e bi ke up . Fro m th is point on th e course was relatively sm ooth and easy . Nothing co uld mat ch that slip-out; not even the pucke r bushe s, or the w ater cros sing, o r the swam py area on the edge of Lake Pillsbury whi ch cam e next. At las t it was over. Your mileage meter reads 79.7 miles total and the guy who takes your card apologizes be cause they had hoped to make the course one hundred .miles long but the snow on top of the mountains was too deep. You nod ti redly and thank the gods for the nice, d eep snow which even in May has made th e Hayward Motorcycle Club 's layout crew shorten the course a little. They did it all in 80 miles. . .res ults will come soon. • The Cowbell Enduro Deep water, landslides, swamps, and blessed snow ••• arrows. .By Kinse lla & Doody SODA CREEK STA., CAL., MAY II It was a long time coming, but the Hayward Motorcycle Club finally brought off the .D-36 Cowbell Enduro. The event was originally set for November 10 of last year, but heavy snow postponed the event twice. It was a worthwhile ride for the 16 450 bikers who made it up to the rugged Coasta l Ran ge mountains around Lake Pillsbury. T he first few m iles led along very smooth access roads and then slowly turned into very diffic ult woods paths which were run up and along fairly steep ridges. At o ne point the arrows ran up a hill , doubled back and ran ba ck downhill parallel to the co ur se going up so close that the riders going up passed within arms length of the riders on their way down. This kind of layout caused some confusion and lost minutes to quite a few pe ople . As the co urse wen t on the ri ders were to find a few more ins tances of ina de quate or confusing markings. From this poin t to the first check the trail followed along a mountain side contour. T he trail was broken every few miles by slip-outs (land slides) w hich were very difficul t to traverse. The slip-outs were like "V" shaped holes from six to ten feet d eep , often with a small rivulet at the bottom . One had to crawl cautiously d ow n in first gear and then at the b o ttom gas it at j ust th e right m ome nt to get up the other side. After the firs t check the course ran through small meadows which were ' boggy from the snow melt run off and peppered with rocks; then the co urse wo uld shoot up a ridgeside where large patches of snow m ade traction difficult, especially if one had to slo w to go over or under the ma ny logs that st raddled the trail. About the time a rider became weary of the woods he would hit a st retch of fire road and be able to take a break. Just before the second check and gas point th e course zig-zagged back and fourth across a stream which was nearly cylinder head deep in some pla ces . It was almost a relief to splash through after riding in gale s of dust on the ro ads. Afte r the mandatory half-hour layover at the gas point the trail continued on ip about the same pattern as the first hzl ~ con tour trails and ridge cli mbs relieved by fairly good roads. About sixty five miles out the road led along the Eel River down a very scenic canyon. For a few miles it was like touring rather than riding an en duro; one j ust flew along in the sunshine taking in the sigh ts 'and calculating the distance to the next check w hen "Whoa!!" the road bed just disappears into the can yon below. You're hitting the brakes, th e co mp ression release and downshifting frantical ly in a desperate effort to avoid hurtling into a void. When you stop you see that the road surface has dropped ten feet or so for a length of forty feet . It 's a king of super slip-o ut . There is Mak in' up time at the Cowbell endUl'o wh ich var ied from cruising to push and Pull on foot. timekeepi ng instead of the obviously wrong check, you were 10 min utes early to the next one. So mu ch for ti mekeeping! Some super-rutted, silty downhills and uphills added to the first loop course made up the second loop, .along with a steep, grassy. downhill (read "slick") st art, some rain, and a few assorted American gas hogs on roads used in th e co urse. Roads made up much of the enduro, ranging from dusty dirt to plain dirt wi th big ru ts to plain asphalt to a co m bi na t ion of still -we t oil and gravel smear ed ove r hard packed so il. When the second loop r ain came down, it wa s possible to sp in t he rear tire of a DKW 125 in fourth gear on an oily straight slippery it was. Neat narrow trai ls winding between trees, along the edges of ravines and cliffs, through streams (an d in one stream bed in one place) were really scenic. A th ick bed of pine needles covered most of the slopes below the trails, so if on e overcooked a comer (which some did), the landing was a little bit cush io ned . Along those neat little trails, though, were some unusual hazards. Since the trails wound through areas of selective logging, bulldozers had been there in the past. They left ridges of di rt up to fo ur feet high, the width of a dozer blade, now h ard packed and plant covered, at intervals along the trail. They were semi-sloped on the up side. straight down on th e down side, and the worse ones were marked b y downward turned ' W hoopiel iSOT here I come: ' There wa s this easy familV loop. Frozen oil slicks and Buicks on the High Sierra Enduro By John Ulrich OAKHURST. CAL., MAY 19 The Pathfinders Motorcycle Club was the official sponsor of the First High Sierra Family Enduro held here in pine logging country 3,500 feet above sea level 50 miles northeast of Fresno. But the ru n was really put on by (and for the benefit of) young members of the Dry Creek 4-H Club. Loggers both m ad e the enduro possible and also sabotaged it. One logger and saw mill owner, Milt All en. . (who also owns Allen's Cycle Park, where the end uro started), helped with the course scou ting and ro u ting, cleared the paperwork w ith t he Forest Service, provided campi ng areas, and handl ed the p ost-ru n anti-erosion work. Other loggers (identities unknown) felled trees across what enduro o rgani zers called "the best trails" planned for use . With giant trees blocking the route one day before the event, frantic re-routing to ok place, with sections b eing altogethe r deleted. Recalculations and re-routing frenzies resulted in the small, ine xperienced. but en th usiast ic 4-H crew forgetting 10 place one critical course arrow. With that arrow missing, riders on the second lo op passed a co urse juncture and re-entered the co urse in a logi cal looking place . just in time to be 10 minutes early to the first check of that loop. They threw the check out, but if you believed your own Another kind of ha zard was seen when th e co urse followed a downhill stream for a while. It was just strong enough to "t ake away the dirt and leave the ro cks, not enough flow to not be muddy, but enough to be slic ker than snot. La te r on the trail was a dry bed, no water. no mud, no dirt, just rocks trying to go the sam e direct ion as the motorcycles, namely down. There were plenty of what would have be en killer uphills in the dry de sert, but the traction was superb and the hills climbabl e. Some were heavily ru t ted to c o m p l i c a t e th ings. Overhanging bushes and trees tried to brush you off into ruts big enough to swallow you alive as you fought to get by. The hill right after the second loop start was the worst. With a good run and a clear shot it was not too bad, in spi te of ruts and silt. But the incline was covered wi th riders pushing up the IO-feet-at·widest face, riders looping it , riders falling off and rolling down backwards, riders getting side ways, and riders just plain out 'o f control with a too -heavy throttle hand . Stop on the face and it was push time. Riding in on the roads from th e .seco nd loop, two new haz ards were found. One was a Buick filling up th e only line between two horrendous ruts after a blind corner. (We missed. Whew .) The second was a berserker coming down the co urs e the other way at an insane speed, lusing it and sliding into a ditc h after a near-miss wi th riders on the course . It was a neat ride. It was no t a highly organ ized enduro run by a highly organized promoter. The Dry Creek 4-H Club and the Pathfinders had t heir pro blems. but tried hard. The sce nery was neat, some parts of the co urse divi ne, some boring. Next year they plan to hold another one, an d th ey'll have a chance to put together a _ dynam ite enduro. I can h ardly wait. Results next week. So that's what you call thatI

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