45 Days on a Gen3 Hayabusa - 2023 Pashnit Touring

[pashnit]

Nine Mile Canyon drops 3000 feet in the last 10 miles to Highway 395. The ride here is fast, twisty, and wide open sightlines. No guardrails, and it's a long way down into the canyon below.

Temperatures also go up about 10 degrees for every 4000 ft we drop.

We only ride in desert regions very early in the year, or very late in the ride season.

 

[pashnit]

 

[pashnit]

I've always had this weird thing for Joshua Trees. It all comes from the U2 album cover of Joshua Tree. The band was really big at the time. The famous cover photograph was taken at Zabriskie Point, which is one of the places we visit during our Death Valley Motorcycle Tour in March of each year. Just a couple of weeks from now actually.

I had this album, actually it was a cassette , as a 16 yr old kid in 1987, We didn't have CDs yet, they were out but super expensive, but I had never seen a Joshua Tree or even heard of one plus growing up in Wisconsin had no concept of desert terrain. Wisconsin is endless green and rolling farmland for hours. Nothing like the American Southwest.

When I moved to California years later, I finally got to see forests of Joshua Trees. And yes, this is a forest. They're not that big, although they can get as tall as 50 feet, these in Nine Mile Canyon are small and they're not really trees, they're cactus in very dry climates plus they only grow at certain elevation bands.

 

[pashnit]

Looking back up the hill, that's where we came from, way up there.

 

[pashnit]

Dropping into the high desert, we were at 7500 ft, elevations here at the base of the range are about 2800 ft. Quite a drop.

We're now in the Eastern Sierra Range. Straight ahead is Death Valley, but we won't ride that again till March.

 

[pashnit]

As a travel writer and a tour guide, one of my major pet peeves is riding past something really cool that I have no idea is there, sometimes mere feet off the highway and there I go zipping on by. I've been riding past our next planned stop for nearly 20 years(!), never knew it was there. And I've been leading motorcycle tours in this region for years, still didn't know this was there. Wasn't till I started working on an <unfinished> article about Highway 395 that I came across mention of a 'Fossil Falls'. Quick google search, zippity doo da, quick visit with google satellite and balls, it's right off the highway and I've been riding past it for 17 years. That's messed up.

We have to fix that & put balance back into the universe.

Yup, it's just a mile off the highway. Been riding past it for years. Not a clue.

Only problem is it's about a mile of dirt/sand. Kinda knarly.

This bike doesn't like sand.

This is what Suzuki engineers were thinking of when they designed the Gen3, right?

 

[pashnit]

But we made it just fine & had to check this place out. I had never been here, all new to me also.

Ancient waterfall sounded cool and it was a short walk to get to the falls.

 

[pashnit]

This place was wild. I thought it was super cool.

Waterfall with no water, it's all desert now.

This had to be one crazy waterfall back in fossil days, whenever that was, the drop is 40 feet.

 

[pashnit]

 

[pashnit]

Afraid of heights? It's straight down.

Chris for scale.

 

[pashnit]

Yeah, I know it's just a bunch of rocks, but it was really cool. All the knarly shapes created by flowing water.

How long do you think it took to carve these rocks? With water.

 

[pashnit]

 

[pashnit]

It was hot. It's a desert. The troops were getting restless. Yeah I got my shots.

Back through the 1-mile knarly road to the highway.

 

[pashnit]

They all survived. And everybody got ice cream. The kids were all happy again.

Mark demonstrates what to do with your gear while eating ice cream. Just threw it in there and retrieved it later.

This is Highway 395 and that's the Sierra Nevada Range at left.

 

[pashnit]

Space. Lots of it. You don't realize how much space there is out here till you ride it. This fall, we're doing a motorcycle tour across Nevada.

Long, lonely roads are not for everyone. If you want Endless Twisties, I know a guy. But, there's an allure of wide open road that's hard to describe. We last did a ride across Nevada on the nation's loneliest road in 2018 & it was a super fun good time. We stopped at every little frontier & mining town, check out the town, the local museum. Lot of space in the American Southwest, and a lot of wide open road. We're headed for Nevada in a few months & we've already got a full crew signed up for this motorcycle tour. If this is something you've ever been day dreaming about, do check it out. September 2024.
The Loneliest Tour in America | Nevada Motorcycle Tours

Good times.

The Loneliest Motorcycle Tour in America

The Loneliest Tour in America | Nevada Motorcycle Tours

Pashnit Motorcycle Tours rides Nevada's loneliest roads

www.pashnittours.com

 

[WuzzaCBXRider]

Where does the road meet 395, how far north or south of ?

 

[BigBSBusa]

I was finishing up my freshman year in college when U2 released that album. Very interesting time in my life.

 

[pashnit]

Where does the road meet 395, how far north or south of ?

Fossil Falls is 23 miles south of Olancha & 11 miles north of the Nine Mile Canyon / Hwy 395 junction.

 

[pashnit]

I had this idea to do something we called the 'Spider Tour.' We're in the Eastern Sierra and there's a bunch of cool stuff to check out.

The original plan looked like this:

We got close to the original plan. With Bishop as our base, the plan was to ride the 'legs of the spider' with all these out-and-back roads. Head off into the mountain range and see what's out there. And this map oddly has the elevation in meters.

Awhile back I had written an article about an abandoned tungsten mine.

 

[pashnit]

And I wanted to go see how close we could get to Rovana & the Tungsten Mine.

Rovana was built in 1947 when the US Vanadium corporation acquired the Foreman Ranch near the base of Pine Creek Canyon and built a company town to house those who worked at the nearby Union Carbide mine. By the early 1950s, 135 homes had been built all on streets that were the names of states matching the letters of Vanadium. Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, Alabama, Dakota, Idaho, Utah and Montana round out the street names. The town name comes from "Ro" for Round Valley and "vana" for US Vanadium.

Pine Creek Rd is paved for 10 miles to an abandoned Tungsten mine at the base of the Sierra Range at the 8000 ft level. The Union Carbide Tungsten Mine began operation in 1937 and operated through 1990. Tungsten is a heavy metal used to make things harder, it is super dense and almost impossible to melt. Tungsten is used in hardening drill bits, munitions and heavily used in light bulb filaments since its melting point is well above 6000 degrees.

More than 400 people once worked at this mine and were housed at Rovana and Bishop. The Union Carbide Tungsten mine was known as an upside down mine. Tunnels at the base of the Sierra Nevada went 2-1/2 miles straight level into the mountain range and then extended upwards. Elevators lifted the miners up 2700 feet, literally into the center of the mountain, then pulling the ore down, rather than tunneling deep into the earth like most gold mines in the Sierra Foothill Mother Lode regions.

Ore was then dropped into vertical shafts over 1400 feet high where the rock tumbled down a hole deeper than the Empire State Building is tall. The ore was then processed to extract the tungsten which resembles a white sugary substance when refined.


The Union Carbide Tungsten Mine at the end of Pine Creek Rd. Miners burrowed into the base of the mountain and then hollowed it out for the tungsten.

Pine Creek Rd to the mine