| Will Guyan December '09 |
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Secret Ravine Road There’s an impossibly compelling place east of the mighty Klamath, where the scant road hugs the crumbling rock cliff to one side, and the 150-foot drop to the eroded boulders below, boulders submerged partly in the pools of blue-green running water. The road clutches the crumbling cliff which erodes pebble-by-pebble over countless time. Waterfalls and deep, cold swimming holes are framed by 50-foot rocks from which brave hard riders drench sweating bodies in the water below after a hot summer foray. Ancient river canyons served by a road half goat-path and half racetrack for eager hooligans bent on shredding rubber and living life large. The mind fights between the desire to attack the road and wanting to stop and sight-see. Our own Skaggs Springs road is an interstate compared with this byway that lies 250 miles north. Nobody could ever afford to build the road today. It was born during the WPA days of the last depression, to create jobs for the suffering populace. The sheer hand-laid rock wall foundations below the road are testament to the men who braved death building this unique path, cut into the vertical cliff face by hand. One day it’ll be gone, and there’ll be no way to repair the road, so each time I ride here becomes an almost religious experience to one who genuflects to the gods of gasoline and soft rubber. Remember, nothing lasts forever. Big Jim, hero of counter-steering forays over the line with the barb wire scars and worn titanium knee pucks to prove it, said “If you have to choose between hitting a car or going off the road, hit the car.” Probably because the river bed, strewn with cabin-sized water-worn boulders, is 150 feet below the guardrail-less cliff-side lane that serves the few tiny rural enclaves in that beauteous spot in Nor Cal. We’d taken 96 by storm after we skated through radar-laden 299 unscathed thanks to Jim’s radar locator. The timeless river had carved the gorge eons ago and the road is a visual single-track delight. We were a train on sticky rubber hoops, twisting through the topography, passing anything in our way. This is the same route where Mr. Shepherd of Oakland broke both FJR1300 wheels by nailing the only rock in the road twice, on another ride in another time. Let’s also recall that if Arclight Peter hadn’t been along, we might never have gotten that bent and brake-locked hulk off the highway on that August rain-soaked blind turn. But we did. One of the remote st places west of Castle Crags - no food, no gas, monstrous logging trucks, Valhalla’s own swimming holes, and a most challenging ride awaits adventurers on any bike. There, down in the crystal-green waters below, swirl a few hundred three-foot salmon, beneath a waterfall in a living, swirling mandala. You can oft see salmon spawning here, and Steelhead beating themselves to death after winter storms, fighting to get back upstream from whence they came. I know how they feel. At the ruins of a long-gone storm-destroyed bridge across the ravine moved this fantastic living vortex of huge fish. Twenty bikes stopped to marvel at this seldom seen spectacle of flashing fish and dark silhouettes in the deep crystal liquid, trapped in a cold pool by the summer’s drought. When the rains flood the gorge again, they’ll be free, but not all will survive. A good thing to remember as we sport ride along the the cliff edge. Once on one of these summer forays we encountered an E Clampus Vitus soiree, and as we blew past above the speed limit, we saw an anvil levitating above us at its apex, and felt the concussion of an explosion. Of course we stopped quickly to see the bearded boys blowing a hollowed-out steel anvil, its base packed with black powder, far into the sky. The thing flew upward and the older lad who landed it closest to the center of the circle won the pot. Just a gathering of some good old boys in the pines to blow stuff up and enjoy the feeling of playing in a world quickly disappearing. Firing the anvil is an old pioneer tradition from a time when the ranches were self- sufficient. These people even had to make their own dog food. Nothing was easy. Men launched anvils for kicks, and still do in Nor Cal. Up the heavy anvil blew, cannonball like, defying reason, making you smile, floating for an instant as a cloud, a dichotomy in the air until it fell like...an anvil! These guys were all wearing single action black powder pistols, mule-skinner boots with britches tucked in, and most had a plug of chaw in one hairy cheek. Life is different up here, and delightfully so. They cast strange glances at these colorful characters on motorcycles, stopped to see their fun. Back on the bikes, we were again in the present, thundering onward to the secret place where the water hole is rare, deep and perfect, and the day was 112º back in September. There are places you ride to again and again, and the promise of the next time prickles the hairs on your neck in anticipation. This is a place and a ride that’ll forever be described with unabated delight when I’m in my rocking chair, next to the pot belly stove in my workshop, up on my beloved coast. Will Guyan lives up yonder with the wild folk. He also writes for a newsletter wot’s fer fellers who ride them funny-looking ferrin’ motorcycles that have them cylinders sticking out on either side. |