Throttle Up, Cowboy
Words Nic Bovee
Images Eli Dale & Wookie Jones
I’m not sure what time it is, and I don’t really give a shit. It’s dark, I’m freezing, I’m soaked, and I can feel the humidity of a thick putrid aroma lingering around me. My mental clarity sluggishly oozes back into focus and I start to remember where we are. I now understand my situation, but I’m not ready to accept it. Weak from sleep, I crawl across the slick floor of our shelter to find my headlamp. It’s dead.
I reach past the boundary of our shelter to the forest floor and drag myself out of my sleeping bag into the cold glow of moonlight. I can see the pannier on the side of my dirtbike and remember that it has my spare headlamp. Somehow I manage to dig it out and flip it on. My eyes adjust to the light and I discover that what was once my warm fleece underlayer is now a cold matted mess of bile and freeze-dried chili mac. My ground pad and sleeping bag are a swamp of whiskey and beef stroganoff. When we left on this trip I knew I would probably need a change of clothes so I came prepared with one extra t-shirt and a fresh pair of underwear, but I didn’t anticipate needing a new sleeping bag, ground pad and additional warm clothes. Until now, those things had stayed safe inside waterproof bags away from the dust and mud we knew we’d ride through on our dirt bike trip across Colorado.
When I was 10, I rode my buddy’s Suzuki JR50. I can still remember twisting the throttle and feeling the thrill of the seemingly unlimited power that propelled me forward over the grassy lawn. I was gliding without a care in the world, trying to keep my eyes open as wind rushed past me until I slipped on the grass and seared my bare calf on the exhaust pipe. That’s something I love about riding dirt bikes. There’s a point while I’m riding when the world dissolves around me and there’s nothing in the universe except the bike and the trail in front of me. I slip into “the zone,” nimbly floating over rugged terrain at breakneck speeds. It’s surreal and peaceful until an unexpected rock, root, or drop brings me and the tread of my tires back to earth.
Growing up, I never had a bike, but had lots of friends who would take me on rides with them. Getting out for a day here and there was always fun, but I loved the idea of taking a trip on bikes with camping gear and making it a multi-day adventure. I honestly didn’t think a trip like that would be possible until later on in life when I could afford to dump $50k into the nice bike and all of the gear I definitely needed. It wasn’t until recently that I realized this was a trip I could do with a borrowed bike and $500 for a pannier.
Three of us got bikes, loaded them down with camping gear, and fueled up. Our only goals for our trip were finding some cool campsites, riding some fun trails, and maybe coming back with a story or two. Our first destination was a massive collection of boulders up a windy dirt road west of Colorado Springs. The extra weight took some getting used to, but we quickly adjusted once we got into some more technical singletrack terrain along the road. We left pretty late in the afternoon, so it was dusk when we dropped down into the town of Woodland Park to fuel up and grab some dinner. It felt a bit like we were cowboys finding water for our horses and clomping into the local saloons with our dust-covered boots. After dinner we left in the pitch black to find a campsite. It quickly became evident that our bikes were not outfitted for night riding. Between the dim lights, flickering, and a headlight that pointed almost straight up in the air, our ride through the dark forest was a trust exercise that made each of us hope the person in front could see the trail ahead well enough to not lead everyone off of a cliff. We set up our three-person tent near a rocky overhang and sat around the fire for a few hours talking about bikes and cars and sharing parts of our stories.
The next morning we drank coffee, broke camp, loaded up the bikes and started out on the next leg. Although we still didn’t have a concrete end goal in mind, the constraints around our trip were clear. Our bikes could go at most 100 miles before we got stranded, which meant we would need to hop from town to town to keep them from getting too thirsty. The max speed for the bikes was about 68 miles per hour with the throttle fully pinned so we really wanted to avoid the highway if possible.
We took a dirt road out of Woodland Park to the next town over and continued on a maze of dirt roads. After a few hours of riding, while taking a wide corner outside of Lake George, a fawn jumped directly in front of my bike. I slammed my front brake and started to swerve out of control as the fawn bucked from one side of my front tire to the other, its airborne hooves coming within inches of me before finally jumping off the road and descending into the forest.
The weather for the rest of the day was looking questionable with a high chance of an afternoon downpour. We were 30 miles away from Hartsel, which didn’t have the greatest places to camp, so it looked like we would need to push the whole 70 miles to Buena Vista where beautiful dispersed camping would be readily available in almost every direction. It was going to be a long stretch, almost twice as long as what we had ridden already, but the three of us agreed that it was worth braving a storm to reach some of the best scenery the Front Range has to offer. The sky started to get dark overhead as winding county roads took us past the Eleven Mile and Spinney reservoirs. The wind picked up, tossing our bikes from side to side, creating waves on the surface of the bodies of water we passed, and droplets of rain began to fall. We could see a break in the clouds ahead and we gunned it through a long patchy stretch of pavement in hopes that we could outrun the storm. We came across an abandoned farmhouse and just as we pulled off to look at it, sunshine broke through the clouds, casting brilliant beams of light across the prairie.
The old two-story building was now bathed in light, revealing a stark contrast between its white exterior and the blackened structure from the fire that claimed it. The outline of an old set of stairs was barely visible on weathered wallpaper that flaked away, revealing a discolored and cracked plaster. We sat near the house for a while and wondered how old it was, what caused the fire and why no one bothered to take care of it after so long. Eventually we got back on the bikes to finish our ride into Hartsel to fuel up and take a look at what routes we might be able to use to get to BV.
According to some forest service maps, we could gun it down the highway briefly and cut off into some county roads that lead all the way to a road at the top of Trout Creek Pass. We took off down the highway, our bikes fully pinned and our eyes peeled for the turnoff. Eventually we saw the road we were looking for as well as a gate and a huge sign that read: “no trespassing.” With no other option than to keep pushing forward, we continued on until we found another road that was also closed. This cycle continued and every time we found another road we could take to bypass the highway, it was closed. Finally, we found a dirt road that wasn’t closed and pulled over. As we slowed down, the smell of burning oil caught up to me.
My motor was covered with oil that had been leaking from who knows where and was burning up in the heat. We let the bikes cool down and tried to see where it was coming from but there was just too much oil everywhere. The bike started up again, but I wondered if it could make it the rest of the way, or if we were going to get stranded somewhere.
We got back on the highway and rode slowly, signaling drivers to pass us as we went. After a long ride wondering if my engine would blow up on the highway due to the lack of oil, we finally found a turnoff for the trails that would take us to some awesome campsites. My concerns about my bike melted away as we started to ride through the rougher trails our bikes were made for. We climbed higher and higher until we reached an overlook with a stunning view of the Collegiate Peaks and the city of Buena Vista. We made our camp for the evening and prepared for a storm we could see approaching from the south but it never came. Around the fire we ate a buffet of Mountain House chicken teriyaki, beef stroganoff, and chili mac.
I don’t remember climbing into my sleeping bag, but I can recall snapshots from earlier in the evening. Over cigars and whiskey, we talked about our work, parenting, and other profound things I can’t quite piece together. Our adventure began with three people who barely knew one another, but after a few hundred miles of riding, some cigars, and too much whiskey, our time by the fire felt like a reunion of old friends. These felt like people I could trust with my life. They’ll wake up to the stained tent floor and the sour smell of drinking too much at high elevation but I’m pretty sure they won’t hate me for it. That's the thought I'm taking comfort in now as I change into my only dry shirt and flick the chunks of chicken off my sleeping pad.
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