Dual-sporting high in the Rockies

Switchbacks that are hard, and tight, and steep. Plunges that make you question your courage. Jaw-dropping scenery. This ride had it all.

I went out Friday to do some dual-sport riding in southwestern Colorado. The V-Strom I was on was provided by Kevin Smith, who runs Colorado Mountain Moto in Gunnison. I left it for Kevin to select our route, since that's his part of the world and he knows it well.

View slideshow: Dual-sport riding Cinnamon Pass

We left Gunnison and headed south on CO 149 to Lake City and then, a little south of town, turned off on Hinsdale County Road 30, which goes up and over Cinnamon Pass. Another road right out of Lake City goes up over Engineer Pass and meets this road over at Animas Forks, but Engineer is tougher than Cinnamon. Kevin wisely figured the easier road would be better for me in this, my first full-scale dual-sport endeavor.

I need to mention here that the leaves in the Colorado high country are at their peak color right now, so no matter where we went it was going to be beautiful beyond the everyday beauty of the mountains. But neither of us really expected it to be as incredible as it was. You can check out the slide show at left to see a bit of what we saw.

Starting off smooth

Initially, the road was broad and as smooth as a gravel road can be, and the V-Strom was perfectly comfortable on it. I'm accustomed to my Kawasaki Concours, which hates gravel, and this alone was terrific. But then the road started climbing, and as it climbed it got narrower and rougher. We cruised high above the valley we had left, on a shelf road cut into the steep hillside with nothing but air on our left. Air and beautiful mountain vistas, the sort of vistas I just can't go see on my street bikes. That's why I wanted to get on a dual-sport.

Eventually we were above timberline and had some serious climbing to do to reach the pass. Mostly it was easy traversing up the slopes but at one point we were faced with a quick, steep series of switchbacks. Obviously the easier route is to go as wide as you can but in the case of the first one, there was water running across the outside and I was afraid that could be a hazard.

So I took the inside. And I dumped the bike. Now, this 650cc V-Strom is light enough I know I could have righted it myself, but I was sure glad to have Kevin there to assist. As it was, we were up so high that I had to wait several minutes to catch my breath. Kevin suggested I should have taken the outer route, but I mentioned the water and he noted that exactly what I had feared had happened to him only recently.

So we got the bike lined up so I would have the easiest time getting through the turn. I made it through, went another 20 yards, and was faced with an even tighter, narrower switchback. I paused to study it and saw that the rock face sloping up from the bend had obviously been the path taken by numerous bikes, and the only way to do that was to goose the throttle and power on around.

Holding my breath, that's exactly what I did. And it went just fine. the rest of the switchbacks were challenging but I handled them all with no problem and pretty soon there we were on top of the pass. Kevin and I stopped on top of the pass and enjoyed the view and shot some pictures, and then talked about the ride down.

Now we go down

Don't use the front brake, Kevin warned me, just stick with the rear. And drop it into first gear to let the engine slow you down as much as possible. Don't worry about it stalling, and don't grab the clutch, even if it threatens to stall. As soon as you let off the brake a bit the engine will jumpstart. To keep it simple I just told myself to hang onto the grips and not think about grabbing either the clutch or brake levers.

It was a good thing we had that discussion on top, because heading on maybe 50 feet I came to a spot where the "road" made a sharp left and plunged straight down about 50 yards. No, we don't need no stinkin' traversing or switchbacks here, it was just straight down, and once you started there was absolutely no way to change your mind.

Keeping my fingers away from the levers was easy: I had a death grip on the grips. Over the side I went, pretty much standing on the rear brake the entire way down. Either I had that rear tire locked up and sliding the entire way or else that rear brake didn't do much to stop the wheel from turning. It certainly didn't seem to slow me down very much. But I made it down OK and we just kept going.

A bit more road, a few more switchbacks, and we were down to Animas Forks. One of the bottom stretches here would have taken us out to US 550 just south of Ouray, while the other looped around and would take us in the back way to Silverton. We went to Silverton and stopped for lunch. And that's where I'll end this narrative today. I'll follow up with the rest of the ride in my next report.