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It Really Was Beyond Epic

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Trail Boss

Trail Boss

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Joined
Jan 1, 2005
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Location
Buda, TX
First Name
Rich
Last Name
Gibbens
The 2011 Beyond Epic rally is now in the history books. I'm officially starting the post ride report and picture posting thread for all attendees, so please add your stories and pics.

And, while we were just kidding around with the "Beyond Epic" name, some riders actually had a beyond epic experience. I'll start the ball rolling with this teaser shot. Story to follow.

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It was really great to see everyone, I had a great time and look forward to my next Arkansas Adventure ... Thanks Richard for all you do . Thanks to
MOTOADV for the support !!!
:clap:
 
:tab I lost count when we were at something like eight turn arounds in the first thirty minutes of the Saturday run led by Richard... The day only got better... The 65 F on Monday morning while loading the bikes had me working hard to come up with excuses to stay longer... :-P

:tab I had a great time. I just wish I could have met a few more of the folks to put some faces with names, screen names anyway because I am horrible with real names :doh:

:tab After some of the DS riding on Saturday, I am thinking it may be about time to retire the venerable KLR and get something a little more "modern" :ponder:
 
I want to thank Neil Christie for being such a good roommate; and sharing the hooch and a nice cigar......a real class act!
I also want to remind everyone that Jim, the owner of Arkansas Cycle Works on 110 main street (hwy 64) loaned me a bay and tools in his shop and helped me get my broken KLR repaired......and would NOT accept payment!! This man has earned my future business in Arkansas! What a gentlemen!
And those roads.....123, 374, 43, 21, 23, 7, WOW!!!!!!
Thank you Richard, and Scott I thought you were 20 years older than you actually are!!
:clap:
 
Beyond Epic, Alot of Fun, great ride, routes and Scenic Views ! Really enjoyed everyone had a blast ! And even won a Gift Certificate for MotoADV,
How about That ! Arkansas is just a great place to Dual Sport !

Hope everyone made it home OK and the I also hope the Bastrop Guys found their homes OK when they made it back to Tejas !!!

See everyone at Roll The Bones !!
 
Tourmeister said:
:tab I lost count when we were at something like eight turn arounds in the first thirty minutes of the Saturday run led by Richard... The day only got better... The 65 F on Monday morning while loading the bikes had me working hard to come up with excuses to stay longer... :-P

:tab I had a great time. I just wish I could have met a few more of the folks to put some faces with names, screen names anyway because I am horrible with real names :doh:

:tab After some of the DS riding on Saturday, I am thinking it may be about time to retire the venerable KLR and get something a little more "modern" :ponder:
Click to expand...

Just to rub it in a little, it's 55 this morning with a high of 80 and looks like the same for the rest of the week :lol2:

As for getting something more modern, I think you mean LIGHTER :lol2: I have to tell you that DRZ's, WRR's, WRF's, KTM's, and Husky's work great here. Pretty much anything that weighs in around the 300 LB or less mark. Really can't go wrong with any of those choices.
 
I will ride the TAT next year and thought it would be good to have this Atlas as well..

Gary
 
A dozen posts, and one pic so far.... A teaser shot at that!
:rider:
Will check back looking for stories and pictures of epic adventures.
I suppose riders are working today or something like that.
;-)
 
had a great time. Dan (Bastrop) lead us around (me, Centextom, Dan's dad Vick) Friday/Saturday/Sunday. The trails were great, as usual video and photos dont show the steepness of some of the spots we ended up in.

here's a short video of some of the stuff we got into



Saturday was some of the best riding ive ever been on, i forget the number of the route, 3 i think. about half way through it Vick took a hard spill and smashed up his finger, he needed stitches and it was broken so we took him down to the local emergency room and waited for him to get patched up.

here's Dan and i in the waiting room:

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Then we went back to the motel to drop him off, and god knows where Dan took us after that, i think it was the small loop that is part of route 3.

Dan had really wanted to go trail riding at night, but Tom and i thought that was a bad idea. So we follow Dan into the woods and i am totally expecting him to "accidently" make a wrong turn and before you know it, it'll be dark and we'll be 40 miles from anywhere ;-).

As it turned out, we got out just before dark, and i think it was the best trail i'd ever ridden. Steep nasty uphills and downhills, one of which Dan vanished over the drop side of the trail, thankfully not too far. We got his bike back on the trail and just sat in the twilight in the peace of the forest while we caught our breath. One of those times when you're just really glad to be out there.

Sunday was over quick, about 500 yards up a trail Tom punched a hole in his side case with his shift lever and the trip was done. i raced back to the hotel to get the truck, we packed up and headed home.

Big thanks to the folks who helped get my bike started on Saturday morning, GreenEggsandHam, Mrs'C, Vinny for offerring up a spare battery. and to Dan, Vick and Tom for helping and waiting for me to get it going.
 
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I had a great time with my riding buddy Bob and all the folks I met in Clarksville including Mark Drumm (Gravelklr). Mark and I chatted at 6 am breakfast. It was nice running into a friend that I did not know would be there (Richard K.) and meeting his Dad, too. Thanks to all involved in putting this event together. :clap:

We were riding a R1200GS Adventure (me) and a F800GS (Bob). We were riding paved roads, unlike most of y'all. Well, except for 7 miles from Oark to AR-21. The weather was fantastic, especially with Sunday being cooler than forecast and no rain. We rode 23, 123, 21, 7, Push Mt Rd, 16, 125, 103, 215, 43, etc in Arkansas and 86, 76, 160, and 125 in Missouri.

I have a link to pics from our 4-day 'Epic' ride on great paved roads!

http://motomark.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=18894712&AlbumKey=hh8KxT
.
 
I was honored to meet you too, sir! Great pictures! I see the Peel ferries are now white- they used to be orange. The wind on Mt. Magazine about blew me away on Sunday night coming home......'cause I don't ride a big 'ole Beemer. Someday.........
:sun:
MRD
 
Had a fantastic time but very sorry to hear about Bastrop loss.

It was good meeting new riders and seeing friends.
Had 3 full days of riding (970 miles), Neal (nchristie) led part of the first day, Jerry took us on the second day and Tourmaster had to 'drag' us (Jerry, Solorider and myself) on the third day to finish a real Beyond Epic ride.

Did not take many pictures as Jerry and Scott were always too far ahead . . .

Here we are having breakfast at the Oark [Solorider and Jerry:
Breakfast.jpg


There was no need of routes or working GPS...
GPS.jpg



We also went on a short ferry ride on the last day...
Ferri.jpg


Thanks Richard for another great event and ultimately to Scott Friday for maintaining this site the way it is.


PS - Need to go back to get the Pig Tail sticker...
 
Friday: I trailered up on Thursday so that I could have an extra rally day. My plan for the rally was to explore new roads and trails in the national forest, looking for new routes that could be added to the ride guide. On Friday morning 7 of us teamed up and headed northwest to see if the dirt roads west of the Pig Trail were any fun for dual sport riding. I explained to the group that I didn't have any intel on the roads I planned to ride that day and that they might be boring gravel or excessively challenging class 4. Everyone agreed that whatever the day had in store for us would be fine.

The Magnificent Seven, minus one (me taking the photo). 2 father-son teams (Donnie & Taylor; Marcus & Daly), Milton Otto, the worlds' most interesting dentist, and Steve Denham, a skilled dirt rider but a dual sport newbie.
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I have to profess a little envy at the father-son teams. I wish my boys were interested in dirt bikes like the 'ol man, but alas, I guess that's not what God had in mind for us.

Donnie and Taylor
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Marcus and Daly
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Steve
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Milton, world's foremost adventure dentist
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We enjoyed a nice warm up on the forest road that runs north from Horsehead Lake and then rode west to Turner's Bend for a short break.

Then we got serious about finding some fun dirt to ride.
 
Before leaving for the rally I had plotted a few routes solely from looking at the map. There is really no way to tell by only by looking at the map which roads will be fun dirt and which will be boring gravel superhighways. Roads you think will be fun might turn out to be boring. Roads you think will be well-travelled gravel might be rutted, rocky, and challenging. To find out you have to go ride them.

The first dirt we jumped on out of Turner's Bend was gravel. Then we encountered a "road closed" sign and had to make a u-turn. That's the other thing the map doesn't really tell you. The road may be there, just like the map says, but it might be closed. When this happens all you can do is consult your map and find an alternate. I did this the entire rally. My groups probably had to turn-around a dozen times during 2 full days of riding. Such is the nature of exploration.

As luck would have it, the bypass was a really wonderful, steep class 3 road. Sweet!
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Man, I was loving this road. I was thinking, "gotta add this one to a route". Then, at the southern end of the road we saw the dreaded "road closed" sign.
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The forest service had closed this road. The guys told me there was a "road closed" sign on the north end too but that I had missed it. If I had seen it we would not have ridden this road, so my apologies to the forest service. But I do have to say it sure was a fun ride.
 
We went around the barrier to get back on a legal road. Unfortunately the legal road was one of those boring gravel roads.

After way too many miles of gravel and dust we stopped for a Kodak moment on a hill overlooking Shores Lake. It was a stunningly beautiful view of the lake; my photographs simply don't do the view justice. Sorry.

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Back on the bikes, we circled around the lake and then headed north on another gravel road. Would we ever find any interesting riding? So far we had enjoyed 2 good dirt roads and a lot of less-than-satisfying gravel. The fun:boring ratio was skewed way too far to the boring side of the equation.

Little did we know that was about to change in a big way.
 
Pay dirt! I had included a seasonal road on the route. I reasoned that a seasonal road would be lightly travelled and likely not well maintained. Turns out I was right. This seasonal road hadn't had any traffic in quite some time. It was overgrown with vegetation and was quite challenging. Just what we were looking for.

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Rocks, ruts, logs, and vegetation littered the trail. It was more like riding an enduro through the woods than riding on a road. Very fun.

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Then things got tough.
 
The biggest challenge with the unmaintained and seasonal roads in the national forest is downed trees. Some big storm comes through and knocks down one or a dozen trees. It's a law that every tree that falls has to fall across a road if there is one nearby. And the law abiding trees in this forest were glad to comply. After luring us in a ways the road presented us with the first tree across the road. Could we get around it?

We scouted the area and figured out a way around the tree, but it wasn't an easy path. We grunted, pushed, cursed, moved boulders and logs. Bikes were dropped multiple times and incriminating pictures were taken. But, finally, all 7 riders and bikes were around the tree and back on our way.

Until we reached the 2nd downed tree a short distance later. More cursing, dropped bikes, boulders moved and logs overturned. Exhaustion began to set in. Temps soared to the mid-90s and there was no wind. We were consuming our water at an alarming rate. But, after an hour of work all 7 riders were on the other side of the 2nd tree.

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Does it really count as a fall if your bike pins you against a tree but you and the bike aren't actually on the ground?
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After finally getting around the 2nd tree we flopped to the ground, trying to recover. After a short break we scouted ahead and spotted the 3rd downed tree.

No mas! We decided that this was not going to be a road we were going to include on a route (the main goal of the day was to find new roads that we could include in new routes), so there was no reason to continue. We unashamedly made a u-turn and headed back the way we had come. Of course, we had to go back around those 2 downed trees. But we persevered and finally made it back to those gravel roads that seemed just slightly less boring now.

One last shot of the trail and then on to the end of the day's story.
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Unfortunately, the heat and trees had taken their toll and a couple of the riders were heat casualties. So we headed east for civilization and liquid refreshment. It took a while but we finally made it to Oark where we hung out for about an hour rehydrating. I was reminded of the importance of carrying sufficient water. Luckily, we all lived to tell the tale, ready to ride the next day.

Back at the hotel, Robert, CC, and Uncle were keeping my beautiful wife Connie company as she handled registration duties. Thank you, Sweetie, I couldn't do it without all your help.

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I asked Uncle, "Who is #1?"
"I am" he replied. :-P
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Some Tex-Mex and a few beers and it was off to bed for me. I needed my beauty rest for more exploring tomorrow.
 
Richard thanks again for a GREAT!! weekend, amazing trails, awesome vistas, and best yet some of the most fun people to hang around with. Can't wait until the next ride!! :clap::clap::clap:
 
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