I am joined by Clayton and Campbell on Days 4 of the Northern California BDR.
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0:00 Intro/Highlights
0:38 Video Overview
0:58 Thursday Bike Prep
1:13 Leaving/Arriving
3:10 Waking up/breakfast convo
4:03 RIDING BEGINS
5:56 Uncle Tom’s Cabin
7:08 Drag Race and Off Road Begins
8:44 we all get separated
10:20 Explaining the Rest of the Route
12:29 Arriving in Truckee
13:00 Heading back to San Diego
The full route is Kyburnz to Truckee but we trekked up to Union Valley Reservoir, camped and rode out the next day. We love camping up in this area as the mosquitos are not bad around the lake and there are many campsites, logging trails, and even a diner/convenience store/single pump. This is also a popular area close to the Rubicon off-road trail so the store does have some basic tools. There are a plethora of logging trails in this area which we did explore last year but many closed gates as you can see.
After a big breakfast and a slow morning we hit the road. We decided to find our own way to Uncle Tom’s Cabin since we thought it would be easy, but there were many closed gates. If you are doing this route, day 4 is all paved roads until the cabin, after the cabin you cross the bridge which is where the road transitions to dirt slowly. The majority of the time spent will probably be on this section. I used ONx offroad and looked at the BDR website to map the route and also create the section we hit all the closed gates on. It was a great application, but it has a hard time tracking with you and your progress on the route. There is no “turn left” or any instructions so you need to check it and adjust it often if you really need to be looking at it.
You will pass several campsites at the various lakes and meadows along the way and lots of dispersed sites but NO gas until Truckee. By this time of year (early June) the trees had been cleared and caused no issue as some had mentioned on the facebook group. There was some car traffic as you can see as we near truckee and there are more campgrounds. From where the video ends, the route was very windy and wooded and the river crossing is the end of the route, or pretty close.
We used Sena’s to communicate but as you saw, they were not super reliable around turns, or any distance, a radio system would work much better and allow you to avoid our almost hour long detour where Clayton chased Campbell for at least 10 miles before he caught up then they had to backtrack and I also road 5 miles at least before I saw them again. Little unnerving if you ask me.
From the end of the route, we hit the road to go back to the campsite since we did not have enough daylight to go back the way we came. The road is beautiful, windy, slow, and cradles the edge of lake Tahoe with spectacular views. I have a no-freeway agreement with my wife (drz has a hard time anyways over 60 with 15t front sprocket) so I waited a couple hours at a McDonalds while the lads got the truck, then me, and we headed home which is only about an hour away.