Right all, many of you have heard of the Trans America Trail (TAT) which runs East to West across the USA and is a brilliant dirt road. I've ridden it a few times and organised a couple of trips and its a mostly brilliant dirt trip. It's starts in Jellicoe, TN and finishes on the Oregon coast north San Francisco.
Anyone who has ever ridden it will tell you the highlight is probably the central section running through Colorado and Utah which has some of the best dirt riding anywhere. Great trails over very high passes and scenery which takes some believing.
A few of the downsides of doing the whole TAT are the logistics of bikes into the East Coast and out of the West Coast the time it takes which is 4/5 weeks and the constant riding as you need to keep on riding. It doesn't really give you enough time to appreciate where you are.
So, myself, Skygod and Murdoch have been talking about a 3 week trip covering some of the best bits of the TAT and some of the best dirt riding of your life.
The outline is as follows:
The trip will be in September 2016 which is a great month in the area. The weather is about perfect and the main tourist season is finished so there aren't too many people about and the trails will be deserted. The idea is to leave ABQ on Sunday 11th September and be back on Friday 30th September 2016.
The trip is purely for dirt bikes and not suitable for GS's unless you are built like Arnie and even then, you'd struggle t wrestle the beast up some of the tracks. Some of the passes are quite technical and I've ridden them on a KTM 640ADV no problem. Well, I had a few problems but the bike didn't! Any dirt bike that you are comfortable on would do as the whole mileage isn't massive!!
As I have said, we are working on the final route but rest assured it will be fantastic
The bikes will be shipped there and back in a secure container. If you are interested in this, pm me and I'll get you on the list and subject to us getting a good number coming, we can press the go button quickly.
Anyone who has ever ridden it will tell you the highlight is probably the central section running through Colorado and Utah which has some of the best dirt riding anywhere. Great trails over very high passes and scenery which takes some believing.
A few of the downsides of doing the whole TAT are the logistics of bikes into the East Coast and out of the West Coast the time it takes which is 4/5 weeks and the constant riding as you need to keep on riding. It doesn't really give you enough time to appreciate where you are.
So, myself, Skygod and Murdoch have been talking about a 3 week trip covering some of the best bits of the TAT and some of the best dirt riding of your life.
The outline is as follows:
- Start and finish Albuquerque New Mexico which is easy to get to with flight connections, we use a really good dealer for loading etc and is right on trees edge of the spectacular riding.
[*]To make the best use of time and to ride all the best trails, we will base ourselves in 3 towns, Salida Colorado, Silverton Colorado and Moab Utah. The idea is to ride out of ABQ, spend a few days in Salida and ride all the local trails, move across to Silverton for a few days, across to Moab UT for a few days and then back to ABQ. Doing this means we can ride all the trails with no luggage and you can have easy or hard days, days off if you want for R&R and bike maintenance.
[*]The route is yet to be finalised but we will work on taking in all the brilliant and famous trails such as The Engineer and Ophir passes and the White Rim Trail. All routes in the areas I have highlighted are brilliant riding and you get as high as 13,500ft.
[*]The towns we will be based in are small but full of things to do if you wanted a day off the bikes
[*]
The trip will be in September 2016 which is a great month in the area. The weather is about perfect and the main tourist season is finished so there aren't too many people about and the trails will be deserted. The idea is to leave ABQ on Sunday 11th September and be back on Friday 30th September 2016.
The trip is purely for dirt bikes and not suitable for GS's unless you are built like Arnie and even then, you'd struggle t wrestle the beast up some of the tracks. Some of the passes are quite technical and I've ridden them on a KTM 640ADV no problem. Well, I had a few problems but the bike didn't! Any dirt bike that you are comfortable on would do as the whole mileage isn't massive!!
As I have said, we are working on the final route but rest assured it will be fantastic
The bikes will be shipped there and back in a secure container. If you are interested in this, pm me and I'll get you on the list and subject to us getting a good number coming, we can press the go button quickly.
