Great Roads: The Salmon Glacier
A short ride out of Stewart and you encounter one of the most jaw dropping landscapes the Province of British Columbia has to offer – the Salmon Glacier. Undoubtably, this is a destination worthy of member of OneWheelDrive.Net’s Great Roads collection.
Gonzaga – Friends in Far Places
Vince, a dirt and adventure rider from San Diego, issues a warm welcome, “Welcome to Gonzaga!”
Curiosity has brought him over from his encampment with six or so dirt riding buddies, to talk to us as Kevin and I decide which Palapa to set up our tent at, “At first I thought your bikes were V-Stroms, but at a distance the front end looked like Goldwings…”
Tropic of Cancer: San(d) Filipe
We take to the pavement, launching across the Valle Santa Clara towards the serrated edges of mountains on the horizon, dusk grows deep and purple as the Varaderos return to what they do best; long stretches of pavement, frequent pulls of the throttle and v-twin torque-laden passes. We roll into the military checkpoint at the junction of Mex 3 and Mex 5 as night falls, and our hopes of a daylight arrival into San Filipe are quelled.
Hard and Soft – Adventure Riding BC’s Sunshine Coast
B.C.’s Sunshine coast is no stranger to riders, so how to spice things up. Great food, great accommodations, a good measure of adventure, and a motorcycling celebrity know for his work on Race to Dakar and Long Way Round. No, not Charley or that other guy.
Tropic of Cancer: Paleolithic Repair
As Kevin picks up the rock and I secure the rim for another round of hammering, neither of us want to admit it outright, but we’re in deep trouble. The video will show a certain amount of Survivor Man bravado, but off camera things are more worrying. This morning we confirmed a suspicion with our host David, we’ve the only two Honda Varadero’s to reach Mike’s Sky Ranch, a Baja adventure and dirt rider Mecca. Today we’ll be lucky to get both bikes out again.
Tropic of Cancer – Mike’s Sky Ranch
The battle to get the Varaderos into Mike’s Sky Ranch begins, before the bikes are even fired up. That late start makes for a late arrival and the breaking of one of the Baja’s cardinal rules; don’t ride at night, off road, through territory you’re not familiar with.
Tropic of Cancer – Finally, a Start
Diving the Honda Varadero into the melee of a Tijauna traffic circle makes this tour’s stutter start preparation worth it. The act is a stinging belly-flop plunge into a different culture. It’s an act of faith that inserting the big adventure bike into the swirling vortex of squealing family sedans, rattle trap busses and braying taxis will work out. Miraculously, it does.
Arctic Adventure Video: The Dempster Part 2
In the final video of the Arctic Adventure online video series, the OutDrive.ca team reaches Inuvik, NWT. A ride that has carried us from Vancouver, BC to our destination 200km north of the Arctic Circle. Watch for our upcoming feature download and DVD exploring the Dempster Highway in detail.
Arctic Adventure Video: The Dempster Part 1
The OutDrive.ca team has made it to the Dempster, Canada only all season highway to cross the Arctic Circle, on the second to last leg of the Arctic Adventure video series.
Arctic Adventure Video: Telegraph Creek
The road to Telegraph Creek is one of British Columbia’s greatest roads, jaw dropping scenery, a hint of danger and a uncertain future. To steal a phrase every visit is potentially a last chance to see this great destination. So the http://OutDrive.ca team takes a two day detour on our way to the Western Canadian Arctic.
Arctic Adventure Video: Bugs in the System
This episode we’re dealing with some bugs as http://OutDrive.ca hit the road, riding from Vancouver, BC to Inuvik, NWT some 200kms North of the Arctic Circle.
Epilogue – Rush Hour
Crawling under the towering cables of Lion’s Gate Bridge, we’re rolling into Vancouver on the final leg of our return from the Arctic and our welcome is an automotive slap in the face. Traffic is ornery, pushy, and demonstrating the road selfishness we’ve not had to deal with for 10,000 kilometers. Mainly because for a major portion of that distance there was no traffic…
The Salmon Glacier
Stewart, B.C. – We are overlooking the Salmon Glacier, on a road that curls up the ridges overtop of the great flowing track of ice driven forward by its own weight. In the sun it dazzles the eye, gliding imperceptibly around a corner, with race stripes of medial moraine rock debris giving it black curves like a remnant alien roadway from the last ice age.
Valdez, AK – Everything for a Reason
“We’re going to get wet.” That’s pretty much Glenn’s end statement on the matter as we look down the Richardson Highway from Gakona and into a black wall of cloud veiling the mountains in the distance and Valdez, AK beyond.
Denali Highway – One Yurt, Hold the Testicles
Can you really go wrong with a morning that starts in a yurt? Especially if the evening before was 100% boiled goat testicle free and featured a nice red wine rather than fermented yak milk? The yurt at Carlos Creek Campground in Denali is a long ways from roughing it in Mongolia and is more Ikea does yurt…
Top of the World
Awestruck by views so broad, so expansive, that the landscape and sky can barely contain them, the Top of the World out of Dawson, YT is one of the few highways we’ve encountered that truly, fully and completely lives up to its name.
Dempster Resplendent
Is this even the same road? I know the sign fading into our rearview mirrors says “Welcome to Inuvik”, but the Dempster Highway is transformed. Four days ago the infamously challenging adventure highway tossed us around like Cerberus using three souls as chew toys, today what was once the Mud-Beast is now asleep in the sun.
Dempster Highway – The Mud-Beast Bares its Fangs
So you want to motorcycle the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, NWT? If you we’re smart you’d wait for a couple of nice dry days, but we never claimed to be smart. We head out onto the fabled road in the rain to experience its worst as we ride beyond the Arctic Circle…
Stark Places – The Dempster Highway
By the term “highway”, don’t confuse the Dempster with the paved varicosities that strangle our modern world. A product of its environment this is a filament of the south sent out like an infection, and the land does its best to fight it off.
Challenges
On a good day the road from Dease Lake to Telegraph Creek, BC is an ethereal dirt cavort through scenery composed of precipitous canyons sheered into lava by erosive rivers. Add one night of rain and it goes from being one the world’s greatest driveways to one of the most terrifying.
Off Course
We’re off course, and we don’t need a map or GPS to tell us so. We’re headed south-west rather than north-west thanks to a wrong turn off of the Blackwater Forest Service Road and onto Batnuni, above the sky is darkening and the sun diminished to a glowing red-orange ember. Below me the BMW F800GS [...]
Departures
With a personal riding history is littered with a disturbing pattern of rough departures, the OWD team heads north for the Arctic Circle, after a very slow start.
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – A Parting of Ways
Clear, the morning starts at freezing and is slow to warm, as I ride into the jagged boundary between Alberta and British Columbia. The ying to Newfoundland’s aged, rounded and spare yang, the Rockies complete Canada’s parenthesis of spectacle. Climbing the 93 into gray skies we reach Continental divide, the split of North America’s lopsided [...]
Touring the Alps by KTM Super Duke 990 – Part III
Day Five The next day we checked out the market in the main square before heading out for an early loop around the Gorge du Verdon. The loop around the Gorge breaks out into numerous spectacular viewpoints. It never ceases to surprise you with the turns, the scenery, the flow of the roads. Being mid [...]
