45 Days on a Gen3 Hayabusa - 2023 Pashnit Touring

[pashnit]

Mormon Emigrant Trail will always be one of my favorite roads.

I rode down it a few posts back, now we're headed the opposite direction and headed up in elevation to 6000 ft.

Through the 2021 Caldor Fire burn scar, wide open sight lines across the mountains the higher we go

Masticators are still chewing up all the burned logs and tilling up the ground, presumably for replanting

 

[pashnit]

When my kids were little, just babies, this road was a few miles from our house. Before starting the touring company, I needed to ride & would be on the bike before dawn and I'd ride up to the summit of the Sierra Nevada every weekend and watch the sun come up.

Mormon Emigrant Trail before the Caldor Fire

 

[pashnit]

Had just bought my '00 in 2003 - and joined this site in 2003 at same time. 20 years!

Plate this bike came with was 321CYAA. I put the PASHNIT plate on there shortly thereafter.

Before GoPros were invented, we were mounting Video Cameras on our bikes

Mormon Emigrant Trail - In the canyon at top is Highway 50 - main route between Sacramento & South Lake Tahoe, we're headed down into that canyon next ( & right back out the other side)

 

[pashnit]

Coming up here in the late 90s on my ZX-11D. Lifetime ago. Fun bike! Fun memories of this road.

Mormon Emigrant Trail is known for several very long straights through the forest

Before the fire. Busa loves these kinds of turns, fast & smooth.

 

[pashnit]

Long, long straights.

The same straights in present day

Near the summit, we turn north onto Silver Fork Rd & drop into the American River Canyon.

 

[pashnit]

 

[pashnit]

 

[pashnit]

Bit of sand patches along this road, quite a bit of sand actually

 

[pashnit]

Almost at the bottom of the canyon on Silver Fork Rd

Right back up the other side of the canyon on Ice House Rd

Ice House Rd you've seen several times in this thread. We've ridden it several times this season, it's an amazing motorcycle road. Long, twisty, curvy, and few people. And the views of the Sierra Nevada Range are spectacular.

 

[pashnit]

The order of the day: This is Ice House Rd. We rode it earlier this year.

Super fun ride. Our goal is to ride all the way up to Loon Lake, the reservoir at top right.

Regrouping at the summit

Not many people up here in the mountains, but there are always rock crawler trucks headed for Loon Lake Reservoir, where the start of the Rubicon Trail is.

 

[pashnit]

Stuck behind the rock crawler, but not for long

 

[pashnit]

Near Loon Lake Reservoir

Elevation here is around 6400 ft

 

[pashnit]

 

[pashnit]

Reaching Look Lake Reservoir at 6410 ft

 

[pashnit]

Loon Lake is a mountain lake at 6410 ft and dates to the 1870s when mining interests began building dams to store water high in the mountains, and subsequently building channels and canals through the Sierra Foothills to deliver this stored water to the gold mines. The water canals are all still there and so common, you often don’t even notice them as you explore the Sierra Foothills. When hydraulic mining exploded in use, Chinese laborers built 5,276 miles of flumes, canals and ditches throughout the Sierra Foothills over a period of 30 years to supply water to the mines 45 miles distant. The reservoirs from Gold Rush mining days were expanded greatly in the 1960s for power generation.

Here at Loon Lake, a tunnel was bored 1000 feet straight down where the generating station is located, then the reservoirs were all interconnected with penstocks, massive pipes which often pop out of hillsides at random places and connect to the next reservoir below creating a staircase of power. There’s no one up here as we’re 30 miles up a dead-end road into the mountains. Except the rock crawlers, there’s always a few of those passing by as we’re positioned at the start of the Rubicon Trail, a world-famous off-road route that spans 22 miles of 4x4 trail before it reaches Lake Tahoe.

 

[pashnit]

Hana might be getting tired of me constantly taking her picture. We've been riding together over 15 years.

 

[pashnit]

But it's peaceful up here. No sound anywhere except the wind

A train of rock crawlers coming on through

 

[pashnit]

This Jeep Rubicon is actually named after this region where we're at. The Rubicon region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains is just up the road.

 

[pashnit]

Our group shot of The Mystery Tour riders - they still have no idea where they are going or where we're headed next.
Tim, Gary, Hana, Tom, Luc, Gary & Mark. Great bunch of riders!

I've been working on my best Michael Jackson/Lionel Ritchie album cover pose.

 

[sixpack577]

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Our group shot of The Mystery Tour riders - they still have no idea where they are going or where we're headed next.
Tim, Gary, Hana, Tom, Luc, Gary & Mark. Great bunch of riders!

I've been working on my best Michael Jackson/Lionel Ritchie album cover pose.

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Did yall have to help up that old guy in front who fell?