Another day of good riding on some really interesting trails, winding through scrub & sand & up into the mountains before dropping to the Indian Reservation area of Fort McDermitt.
 |
| Windy Gap looking down into Fort McDermitt |
Yet another 6am start to avoid the heat of the day, breakfast in the motel was the usual waffles & coffee for me, cereal for the others, then out onto the road heading north. This soon changed to a gravel county road before heading off across a bunch of what we think were fields, with a very vague track heading into open desert. Tumbleweeds were rolling around the scrub & catching in the fences, as were we as we kept encountering old bits of wire lying in wait in the scrub. I caught 2 bits that nearly had me off & later in the day Brian had a piece wrap around his rear hub & nearly tore off his chain guard. Not good...
 |
| The most obvious section of wire today |
 |
| Wire trapped round the hub of the KTM |
After the open desert we had some fast gravel road then a left turn to take us up into to Coyote Mountain at 7109ft, which was very apt as Kevin saw a Coyote as it crossed his path whilst he was leading earlier in the day... The surfaces leading upto Coyote Mtn were on horrible rubble for a lot of the time & the bikes felt like they weren't really in our control, but we got past that section without mishap & came out onto a col that dropped us to the Indian Reservation on some fab switchbacks before the final bit heading back into open desert & a final run into town on a tarmac.
McDermitt boasts a casino, 2 motels, 2 fuel garages & a rodeo this weekend!! (which we arrived to late to see), so we checked in & went for some lunch at the casino whilst waiting for the room to be ready.
The lady at the desk took a shine to Brian & started to take the mick out of him every time he asked for anything, apparently he looks like a funny guy!! :-)
Once settled in we changed the knackered wheel bearing in Geoff's front wheel & then started to look at tomorrow's route... all 200 + miles of it... we may well mix it up a bit at the end & follow some of GPS Kevin's route into a town called Cedarville as it shaves about 70 miles off the day as per Sam's route. We'll then have to make that back up the next day, apparently though there is a fire burning in the mountains nearby to Cedarville according to the person on the desk at the motel there, so that could really screw things up for us & require some serious re-routing... some internet searching to do tonight it seems!!
Results of Internet searches below:
Nevada Fire info -
Active Fire Info -
Geomac website -
Results of Internet searches below:
Nevada Fire info -
Active Fire Info -
Geomac website -
See you all tomorrow maybe...
