[We’ve gone riding! For 10 days Bike Intelligencer is mountain biking in places so remote an iPhone 4 can’t even find a signal to drop. We’ll report back on our return, but in the meantime we’re running some “BI Classics” from past adventures. See you on the trails!]
[In Which Our Intrepid Heroes Get Lost Repeatedly In The Name of Route-Finding; Confront a Vicious Badger on His Own Turf; and Daringly Traverse the Forbidding Estate of a Famous ’60s Songstress]
After breaking camp in Ketchum, the plan for our motley tribe was to connect back up at the Salmon River campground north of Stanley along, suitably enough, the Salmon River. In true BBTC fashion, things got a bit bollixed. Jim and I scanned the crowded Salmon River and Casino Creek campgrounds without finding Steve or Jason, then found a nice spot at the Riverside Campground further up. En route we passed Steve heading the opposite direction. That left only Jason, who we figured would come tooling along eventually.
A couple of hours later, with night falling, Steve determined that he should try to find Jason. He took off down the road and within half an hour was back. Jason had been waiting for us at the first campground – the one we’d passed earlier without seeing him. We’d figured Jason would come looking for us. Jason figured we’d come looking for him. And so it goes. While I’m not going to point any fingers, the mixup was clearly my fault.
In any case, Riverside proved a hospitable locale. Despite being close to the highway, its proximity to the rushing river pretty much drowned out passing traffic. What little there was – Stanley isn’t exactly an interstate crossroads.
The next day called for the most mondo shuttle I’ve ever done in support of a bike ride. The plan was to ride Fourth of July to Ants Basin to Warm Springs Creek to Robinson Bar. On the map it looked like a medium intermediate ride. The map can lie.
We all drove north to the campground road at Robinson Bar, where Moby and Steve’s truck stayed parked. Then we drove back south all the way to Fourth of July turnoff, off Highway 75 south of Stanley, and up a long fire road to the trailhead. Fortunately we were in Jason’s Forrester, which ate up washboard like it was cotton candy. Unfortunately, it was still a long-ass haul.
By the time we got rolling it was 11:30 a.m., two and a half hours after we left camp and a bit on the late side for a ride of undetermined difficulty. Right off the bat we made a wrong turn, climbing a fire road instead of the trail. But we figured it out soon enough and were back on track within 15 minutes.
The trail up to the lake is gentle and rideable, although starting at 8,000 feet it still left me puffing on numerous risers. We meadowed out at the lake and took our bearings. The trail itself heads southeast to Washington Lake. We wanted to go northwest over a saddle to Ants Basin, but neither trail nor saddle was readily apparent. Steve, a professional surveyor, gave a guess where the trail passed over. Jim and Jason guessed a different point. Me, I’m just about always lost on these expeditions. I couldn’t even guess who might be right.
Eventually we figured out there was no trail to be taken at all from the lake. We had to backtrack down to a Y and head off to the right. At that point the trail starts some serious altitude gain. Soon we were hike-a-biking switchbacks, with Jason and Jim giving me lessons on how to carry a bike, and me proving a poor pupil. Somehow when I carry a bike a bolt or component always winds up sticking me in the neck or shoulder. Or the pressure pops my drinking bladder. Or the weight distribution is all wrong. I’m waiting for a BBTC “How to Carry Your Mountain Bike” boot camp to come along. Then I’ll get it right.
As we made our way up the ridge, we turned away from the gap Jason and Jim had favored. Score one for the surveyor. Somehow Steve’s read had gotten it right. If you’ve ever ridden with Steve, you quickly appreciate his quiet approach to things. He doesn’t say much but what he does say is worth paying attention to. And the man has a unique style. His Giant full suspension rig had a rear rack carrying most of his gear. And he wore long-sleeved pinstripe dress shirts, ostensibly to ward off UV but hey, it added a touch of class to the proceedings.
Finally we crested, with another set of world-class views. In Sun Valley you’re smacked with so many of these things that your normal state becomes “stunned.” And just when you think it can’t get any better, the topper is always just around the next corner. We had a bit of lunch and then looked for a way to get back down the other side. The answer was yet another series of accordion switchbacks, really steep, really loose, really unrideable.
That dropped us into Ants Basin. When Jason had wondered aloud why it was called that, I suggested it was probably because it made you feel like an ant. Down in the bowl you seem small and insignificant. We traversed more rocky trail, doing some walking and some riding, before pulling up as we entered a grove of pines. “I think we’re headed the wrong way,” Jason said.
It certainly seemed that way. We were proceeding off to the right, northeast. It was obvious we wanted to be going left, west, down valley to The Meadows and the Warm Springs trailhead. It seemed we had missed a turnoff. But where?
Thereupon ensued a series of walk-offs and head-scratchings over the many and varied maps as we tried to figure out where we’d gone wrong. Please don’t talk to us about maps. We must’ve had four among us, and they were all wrong. None had a clear route from Fourth of July to Ants Basin, and none gave us a clue how the trail we were on was configured. We must’ve spent 45 minutes pondering our situation before Jim finally made the call. Let’s continue on the trail, he said. Eventually, at least, we’ll be able to tell if we’re lost. Best case: The trail hooked around and went down valley. Worst case: We give up and backtrack to Jason’s car.
It turned out to be the right move. Ten minutes later we were at the Born Lakes, and Jim was exclaiming excitedly: “Tire tracks!” We’d struck gold, in more ways than one. Not only had we found the right trail, we were headed almost all downhill from there.
But it was a long, long downhill. The trail itself was rideable but quite technical in places, sucking up all my 6 inches of suspension on the sections I didn’t dismount and walk. At one point the trail was washed out completely and rerouted around a massive gash in the hillside. I kept expecting to break out into The Meadows Any Time Real Soon Now, but mile after mile passed with no sign of the flats. When I’d ask Jim, he’d say, “Another two miles, I imagine.” It eventually became a joke between us.
The Meadows is as appropriate a name as it is prosaic. It’s huge – a great grassy field spliced by a cold rushing creek. A trail cut through it as well, but it wasn’t much, and it soon faded into a wisp of slightly matted grass. Once again it was time to put our heads together and figure out how we were going to hook up with Warm Springs Creek trail. After much cogitation, Jason and Jim were at loggerheads. Jason figured we could bear west and pick up Martin Creek trail to a crossroads that connected to Williams Creek trail. Jim thought the crossroads was quite a bit down valley. For the sake of some forward progress, we tried Jason’s route.
Jim had been right. There was a trail all right, but it ended in the woods. We had to backtrack once again, including a very wet creek crossing. Although rideable, it put the bike in water past the hubs. As it turned out, it wasn’t a good move to ride it.
We reconnected with the trail and found yet another obstacle. A badger planted himself right on the path and was not going to budge. If we approached the badger would trot ahead of us, then turn and square himself, flaring out at the sides like a linebacker going down on set. It was like the little feller was saying, “Hey, this is my trail! Go find a trail of your own!”
“You don’t want to mess with badgers,” Jason kept saying.
The others went cross-country but I liked the critter and figured hey, if I get too close I can always bail. Finally he skittered off to the left, leaving me free to go ahead. I’ve never seen a badger that close before. Heck, I’ve never seen a badger before.
By this point in the ride we’d been out around six hours and things were getting a little frayed. We were headed in the right direction but didn’t know how much climbing and “route finding” remained ahead. Jim had one encouraging observation. The trail pretty much followed the creek, and since the creek naturally lost elevation down to the river, we probably weren’t going to be climbing much more. The caveat was, as Jason noted, river trails often climb and drop and drop and climb along the bank. So we could still have some hammering to do.
Warm Springs was a pleasant enough trail, but the kind lacking what we call flow. About the time you got any speed up there was a blowdown or a creek crossing or a riser or something else sucking all the momentum out from under you. Within the first hundred yards my rear derailleur began throwing the chain into my spokes. Not good. I eyeballed it and decided it was either a bent hanger or a whacked cage. I did the fist fix, gave the derailleur a good yank, and started back out. From that point the chain didn’t go into my spokes, but it didn’t go into low gear either. I figured I probably slammed it against a rock on one of the meadow creek crossings, which is one reason why it’s never a good idea to do those things.
Warm Springs went on for what seemed like forever. We were all pretty tired. What had looked like a relatively light day on the map had turned out to be a death march. Finally we broke out on a piece of developed property. We knew now where we were: The estate of Carol Kane, the kinky-haired movie actress with a flair for quirky roles. Hollywood had been good to Carol – the spread looked mighty opulent, in a back country kind of way. But word had it that she was none too gracious to mountain bikers.
So we strategized for a while. The trail headed up a steep ridge and beyond, to exactly where we did not know. I decided I’d had enough route-finding for one day. Line of sight told me that if we walked a short but overgrown trench to the ranch road, we’d get out on the main dirt road down to Robinson Bar in short order. While the others stroked their chins and furrowed their brows, I started out, pushing my bike over the rocks and weeds. The place looked pretty empty. The worse that could happen would be some cowhand waving his arms at me, and me shrugging back like Whaaaa? And if the starlet herself came out, I’d already practiced my lines about how great Carol was in “Young Frankenstein,” or was it “Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother”? And wow, she hadn’t aged a day!
The trench was probably an old diversion ditch, Jim later speculated. At one point a big black rock blocked the path, but there was clearance around it. After that it was just a matter of negotiating the fence adjacent to the ranch road.
The others eventually followed along. We lifted the bikes through the fence, then broke down the road toward the main gate. Not a wisp of movement anywhere on the ranch. I was kind of disappointed.
The sun was all but gone by the time we reached our vehicles back below the Bar. We’d been out more than 8 hours, gaining nearly 4,000 feet overall, but at least an hour and maybe an hour and a half had been spent in what Jim called “dithering.” Jason and Steve still had a haul and a half back to Jason’s car. No way would they get back to camp much before 10 p.m. It’d been a long day. But we’d learned a lot in the process. I wouldn’t recommend this exact route because of severe logistical challenges. But Ants Basin and then down Williams Creek, that’d be something. Or Boundary Creek and then down Warm Springs might work, assuming you were bored with Williams Creek. In any case, this is a ride where you’re glad it’s done and glad you’ve done it. But it may not be one for the do-again list.
I later was relieved that we hadn’t run afoul of Carol. It turns out she wasn’t even in Young Frankenstein — OR Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother. I know I saw her in some movie a long time ago, but have no idea what it was. That would’ve made a pretty lame compliment to a famous Hollywood actress.
UPDATE: We’ve since discovered that it was singer-songwriter Carole King, not Carol Kane, who owns the estate — and she’s selling! It’s yours for just $16 million.