Monday, November 14, 2016

Adventures of the Hillbilly Hippies: Riding Bishop's White Mountains


   Somehow we managed to leave town and go camping two weekends in a row, something that has not happened in quite some time. For our first trip, over the last weekend in October, it was looking like nasty weather in Tahoe but quite nice in Bishop, and neither of us felt quite ready for winter yet so it was a great opportunity to escape. Although we packed climbing gear, the first item on our agenda was a return trip to Poleta Canyon to ride the Woodcutter Trail: a narrow sliver of singletrack starting at an open mine and winding across a steep sidehill, then becoming a smooth, flowing, stupendously fun trail leading high into the White Mountains and ending at the Black Canyon jeep trail. 

Waiting for Kit to find the right road to the Poleta mine.

   Ever since our first motorcycle adventure in the White Mountains two years ago we had both been wanting to go back and ride the trails we found, plus explore a little bit to try and find more. I was particularly interested to find if the narrow sidehill parts of the Woodcutter Trail got any less scary with a couple of years of riding experience, or if it was still terrifying because I was on a larger, much more powerful bike… as it turns out, I was still pretty scared at times but I felt much more confident in my riding skills and bike control and definitely got through it faster than the first time.


Heading through the sketchiest part of the Woodcutter Trail.
   I was cruising along, cleaning the few small technical rocky bits and feeling so good that I was ready to throw myself at the rock waterfall partway through the upper single track—that is, until I dumped my bike three times in a row in the last 20 feet approaching the waterfall. Nope, still not a mountain bike! Mental momentum was crushed, and I got frustrated, so I gave my bike to Kit and sat back to watch. Unfortunately I pushed the wrong button on the GoPro to record all the fun. He had cleaned it on his bike this time around so I thought it might be a cake walk, but it took him a few tries to get up all of the steps, and he was about ready to chuck my bike back down the whole thing out of frustration. Apparently my bike wasn’t quite as cooperative to ride as his newer more upgraded machine… go figure!


Back to being Miss Dumps-a-lot. Dreaded waterfall section looms in the background.
   From there my silly grin returned as the trail wound higher and higher into the White Mountains on flowing single track, dodging junipers and low hanging pine branches and occasionally catching glimpses of the Sierra Nevada to the west. Just under an hour later we reached the double track, the trail flying past so much more quickly than before, and stopped for a snack break. With a decent map and some help from fuzzy memory, we found the descent route via Black Canyon and started downward. At one point we detoured onto a fork in the road to find an old mining camp with a cool stone bath house built over a running spring. 


Snack time, with a grand view of the Sierra!!

Old mining camp.

The bath house.
   Back on the main route and further down, we stopped at an intersection where a fork of the road went back up in the direction we came from. Kit wanted to do a little more exploration since it was still early in the day, and I thought it was a fine idea, remembering that the rider we met up here last time mentioned some more single track trails up in this area. So we went up a sandy road, then took a fork to the west and uphill, turning into a narrower trail that dropped into a canyon. It still looked like a legitimate trail at this point, and we followed it downward over small rocks that became larger waterfalls, until they became so tall and steep that the several other tracks we followed at this point went up and around through loose rock. The last large drop we came to was a good 40 feet of sheer cliff with no way to get down, and the trail seemed to disappear after going up and around to the top of the ridge. Kit went exploring on the ridge top as I struggled in the loose jumbled rocks still trying to follow, when tipping over to the downhill side and slightly tweaking my wrist pushed me to the point of utter frustration. Quickly losing my sense of adventure I left my bike laying in the rocks and angrily stomped up to the top of the hill, finding a place to sit and eat some food, figuring that being hungry never helps these situations.


Time for a frustrated snack break, looking over at the Black Canyon, which we hoped to get back to.
   From my seat on the ridge I spotted what looked like a road and some tracks below. While I didn’t feel completely lost, I sure as heck didn’t want to retrace our route back up this canyon with all of its obstacles at this point in the day. Kit came back from his mission without a lot of inspiring news; the trail he had found further up the ridge had a hill climb so nasty that he barely was able to make it up. Then the sound of a motorcycle echoed off the canyon across from us, coming from below where I had seen the road. Looking at the slope below us it seemed like the best option to get back to the road, though it was steep and loose and quite frankly looked terrifying with my amateur descending skills on a dirt bike, and I wasn’t in a mood for any of that at this point. So, I made Kit hike back up and ride my bike down, which I felt a little bit guilty about but at the same time I didn’t want to wreck again and make the same idiotic move of putting my hand out to catch myself. Though my wrist thankfully wasn’t terribly painful, it didn’t seem like a great idea to put it through too many more hazardous situations.

   There was a short piece of trail with a couple more waterfalls to navigate at the bottom of the canyon we dropped into, but shortly we were back out on the road and descending through the Black Canyon. Between the high rock walls and tunnels of yellow and bright green trees, even the double track jeep trail was a spectacular experience. Extremely rocky as well, though the suspension on my new bike gave a much better ride than the previous trip down it on my tiny TTR125. 


Finally heading down the Black Canyon Rd.
   The road became smoother and wider, eventually dropping down into the Owens Valley, and we navigated back to the upper Poleta OHV parking area where we had set up camp. Relieved and exhausted, we cracked open beers and stuffed ourselves with snacks to celebrate a successful adventure into the unknown and back, without any major mishaps or mechanical breakdowns. Quite the memorable ride as well--from the fun to the hopeless flailing, this is a sport that will continue to challenge me for years to come. Also amazing is that we saw nobody at all the entire ride, only hearing the one rider coming through Black Canyon while we were on the ridge above figuring out our situation. We will certainly be back to see if there are more trails up there that we didn’t find, because it is one spectacular place to ride dirt bikes!


Safely back in camp! (notice zero other cars in the parking lot)