'Backcountry Discovery Route' maps for Washington, Utah span print-digital divide

Utah BDR

Wash. BDR

Two innovative motorcycle-travel maps that depict "Backcountry Discovery Routes" in Washington State and Utah span the divide between print and digital publishing, providing cartographic data and smart-phone access to video.


And they're out now, in time to plan next season's backcountry ride or drive.


Butler Motorcycle Maps' information-packed Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WABDR; 575 miles) and Utah Backcountry Discovery Route (UTBDR; 871 miles) ($14.95 ea.) can help travelers more efficiently plan full or partial trips on these two off-highway road systems.

Namibia a land rich in 'Magic Moments'

Magic Adventures Namibia tour. (All photos: Magic Adventures)

My friends at Germany's premier adventure-motorcycling tour provider, Magic Adventures GmbH, are intent on teasing the world into discovering the southern Africa nation of Namibia.

Judging by the alluring photos they've just posted on the MA Facebook site, Namibia is indeed an enchanting desert land -- rich in wildlife, exotic scenery, friendly people, authentic-yet-luxurious accommodations and, as Magic's customers attest, the promise of endless "Magic Moments."


A sampling from MA's album of Magic Moments:

Butler Maps, Touratech chronicle new 'Utah Backcountry Discovery Route'

A 4Runner's moonroof
provides viewing access
to the ancient rock art of Utah's
Nine Mile Canyon, part of the UTBDR.

Just as I put my ADV motorcycle away for the winter, I learned that a north-south backcountry travel route through the wildlands of Utah is now chronicled in a new map and teaser video.


The recently developed, 871-mile Utah Backcountry Discovery Route (UTBDR) is the third trans-state adventure-motoring route in an anticipated network of linked routes through each Western state.


The UTBDR crosses eastern Utah from the Arizona line southwest of Bluff to Bear Lake on the Idaho-Utah line, just west of the Wyoming line. Portions of the route are chronicled in my guide to Utah's adventure roads, Utah Byways.


Butler Motorcycle Maps has just added a map of the UTBDR to its expanding catalog of references available to backroad explorers. Like its other durable, detailed and plastic-coated maps, it retails for $14.95. With a focus on the needs of adventure riders and drivers, I will review this and other Butler MC maps in an upcoming post.

Utah's magical Escalante canyon country seems lost to the Moab-bound masses

Note: To learn more about adventure driving in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, as well as Capitol Reef National Park, pick up a copy of my guidebook, Utah Byways. This post includes videos and a Google map.


ESCALANTE, Utah -- I may be done with touristy Moab, for there is something alluring about bypassed, overlooked, sometimes remote and often underappreciated portals to Utah's canyon country like Green River, Hanksville, Boulder and Escalante.

Table with a view at Kiva Koffeehouse & Kottage

To my traveled eye, these hamlets remain authentically Utah: rooted in the lore of Mormon pioneers; minimally or not at all commercialized; unwaypointed by auto navigation systems; away from it all. (Today's Boulder Highway, SR 12, wasn't even paved till 1985.)

That's how Escalante, a village of some 800 souls, seemed when my wife and I spent a long early-October weekend in this isolated land of sinuous sandstone canyons, flash floods and piney woodlands atop high plateaus.

Continental Divide Route travelers see global-warming impacts along the way

Travelers who pass through the northern Rockies on the backroads that comprise the Great Divide Route (a.k.a., Continental Divide Route) can see an ominous effect of global warming: expanses of dead and dying trees, primarily conifers and aspens.


Entire forest ecosystems along Union Pass Road, for example, are being reduced to ghostly tracts of beetle-killed, tinder-dry trees that stand like graveyard headstones.


Global warming is damaging the wildlands we backcountry travelers expend so much time, money and resources to enjoy. Just look closely at the photos in the many CDR or other Rocky Mountain ride reports on Web forums like Adventure Rider. What can we do? I wish I knew; I suppose reconsidering the vehicles we drive would help. But first, we need to be aware of the problem.


To learn more, read this recent story in The New York Times, headlined "With the Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors."


Also view the Times' accompanying interactive map, Changing Forests.

Red and gray conifers signal a dying forest on Wyoming's Union Pass.

Study: Global warming impacting prime adventure country of Greater Yellowstone

The negative impacts of global warming are being seen in the vast wildland known as Greater Yellowstone, world-class adventuring country that includes parts of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. A new study has taken a look at what's happening, and what is likely to happen as our children and grandchildren inherit our legacy.


Read about global warming's impact on Greater Yellowstone here.

Montana's Beartooth Plateau, part of Greater Yellowstone.

Usal Road: 'Main Street' through California's alluring Lost Coast

The following tour description is a sample from my guidebook California Coastal Byways, which I researched in a Toyota 4Runner, Toyota Land Cruiser and Lexus LX450. The guide details non-technical backcountry tours suitable to adventure motorcyclists and SUV-borne travelers. For information about the book, contact Wilderness Press @ 1-800-443-7227.

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Would you like a fuller sense of what it's like to explore America's loneliest shore? Read my magazine feature, Lost Coast Castaways, originally published in Road & Track magazine's spinoff, Open Road.

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LOCATION Usal Road winds through the North Coast's isolated “Lost Coast,” in northwestern Mendocino County and southwestern Humboldt County. It passes through Sinkyone Wilderness State Park and King Range National Conservation Area. Google Map

Lexus LX450 crosses Usal Creek.

HIGHLIGHTS This tortuous, historic little dirt road winds along high ridges amid a magical forest of redwood, Douglas fir, madrone, tanoak and ferns. The soaring King Range rises dramatically more than 4,000 feet less than 3 miles from the ocean. The site of historic Usal has a quaint wooden bridge and a gray-sand beach.

California's Old Coast Road: Big Sur's little-known 'Beatnik Byway'

The following tour description is a sample from my guidebook California Coastal Byways, which I researched in a Toyota 4Runner, Toyota Land Cruiser and Lexus LX450. The guide details non-technical backcountry tours suitable to adventure motorcyclists and SUV-borne travelers. For information about the book, contact Wilderness Press @ 1-800- 443-7227.

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For a more complete sense of what it's like to explore Big Sur, read my magazine feature, Backroading the 'Big South', published in Road & Track magazine's spinoff, Open Road.

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LOCATION Monterey County’s northern Big Sur coast, inland from California’s famous coastal Highway 1 between Bixby Landing and Andrew Molera State Park. Google Map

Bridge on Old Coast Road

HIGHLIGHTS Prepare for an enchanting drive through a misty coastal forest complete with redwood groves, mossy riparian woodlands, ferns and gurgling brooks. The late poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a cabin in Bixby Canyon that was frequented by Beat Generation writers in the late 1950s, including Jack Kerouac, who described his visits in his 1962 novel Big Sur. This is a peaceful and beautiful alternative, if only for a short distance, to the traffic on Highway 1.

Yellowstone's historic dirt roads provide glimpse of travel in park's early days

With summer finally arrived in the northern Rockies, I packed up my Kawasaki KLR650 dual-sport motorcycle for four mid-August days of exploring and camping in southwestern Montana. But to get there, I opted to ride through Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and visit the only dirt roads remaining in the park that are open to the public.

Toyota T-100 on Blacktail Plateau Rd

The first is six-mile, one-way Blacktail Plateau Drive Auto Trail, which, as so many roads do, generally follows the course of an old trail that Native Americans used long ago.  But as the name suggests, this single-lane 2WD high-clearance road climbs gently onto a plateau that offers sweeping vistas into the rugged wilderness of the Absaroka Range.

Looking to get legally high? Just drive Colorado's sky-scraping Imogene Pass

The following tour description is a sample from my guidebook Colorado Byways, which I researched in a stock Toyota 4Runner. The 80-route guide details non-technical backcountry tours suitable to adventure motorcyclists and SUV-borne travelers. For information about the book, contact Wilderness Press @ 1-800-443-7227. ISBN 0-89997-325-6

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NOTE: Check out my magazine feature about adventuring through Colorado's sky-scraping San Juan Mountains in Mercedes-Benz's exclusive Gelaendewagen (a.k.a. G-Wagen) SUV.

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LOCATION Between Ouray and Telluride, in the San Juan Mountains. Uncompahgre National Forest. Ouray and San Miguel counties. Google Map

G Wagens on Imogene Pass

HIGHLIGHTS This is one of Colorado’s most famous and scenic 4WD routes, with some of the best alpine scenery in the state. Named for a prospector’s wife, 13,114-foot Imogene Pass links two old mining towns that now rank high on tourists’ itineraries. The views of Telluride, Black Bear Pass (Tour 55 in Colorado Byways), Ingram Falls and Bridal Veil Falls are inspiring indeed. And the wildflowers are beautiful. But don’t pick them, so that other visitors can enjoy them as well. The Tomboy mine and town site, 3,000 feet above Telluride, are interesting. You can combine this tour with Yankee Boy Basin (Tour 52), which is particularly famous for wildflowers.

Olympic Park's Obstruction Point Road provides travelers a gold-medal drive

The following tour description is a sample from my guidebook Washington Byways, which I researched in a Toyota Sequoia SUV. The 56-route guide details non-technical backcountry tours suitable to adventure motorcyclists and SUV-borne travelers. For information about the book, contact Wilderness Press @ 1-800-443-7227. ISBN 0-89997-299-3

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LOCATION Olympic National Park. South of U.S. 101 and Port Angeles. Clallam County. Google Map

Obstruction Point Road

HIGHLIGHTS With its wildflowers and views of the Olympic Mountains, particularly glacier-capped 7,965-foot Mt. Olympus and the park’s deep river valleys, this short, narrow and winding ridgeline road packs a powerful scenic punch as it climbs to 6,150 feet. It runs both just below and on top of Hurricane Ridge (named for the winds that blow in winter), and ends above tree line at the base of 6,450-foot Obstruction Peak. The parking area at the end of the road is the trailhead for a number of day hikes, including the steep, 7.6-mile (one way) Grand Ridge Trail to Deer Park (Tour 3 in Washington Byways).

Adventure riders, drivers find remnants of pioneer trails on Wyoming's South Pass

PARTING OF THE WAYS, Wyoming, USA – Alone in the heart of nowhere, I imagined the farewells among 19^th-century pioneers who, after surviving a thousand miles or more together, knew they might never see each other again after leaving this fork in the emigrant trail.

Motorcycling legend Eddy Hau visits
Parting of the Ways on a BMW F800 with
German tour company Magic Adventures.

At The Parting of the Ways, not far off State Route  28 northeast of Farson, hundreds of thousands of emigrants on the California-Oregon Trail faced a critical choice on their journey west:  They could follow the longer but better-watered left branch (as two-thirds of them did), or take the shorter but waterless right branch, the Sublette Cutoff.

It was decision that could, and probably did in some cases, affect the outcome of their journeys.


So I found it a place of poignant history, one worth including in the 2,800-mile motorcycle trip I was helping to plan for friends from the eastern USA. The journey would use segments of the popular Great Divide Mountain Bike Route for bicycle travelers. But the trip would focus on the advantages of backcountry motorcycle travel.

Digging through primordial past just one reason to explore Utah's House Range

The following tour description is a sample from my guidebook Utah Byways, which I researched in a stock Toyota Land Cruiser and 4Runner. The 65-route guide details backcountry tours suitable to adventure motorcyclists, four-wheelers and SUV-borne travelers. For information about the book, contact Wilderness Press @ 1-800-443-7227. ISBN 978-0-89997-424-4

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Trilobite fossils

NOTE: Read a magazine feature article about digging trilobite fossils in the House Range.

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LOCATION The Great Basin, west of Delta, north of U.S. 6/50 near the Nevada border. Google Map

HIGHLIGHTS These mountains are full of surprises. Marjum and Dome (or Death) Canyons are noted for high, terraced walls and side canyons. The 4,000-foot-plus west side of 9,655-foot Notch Peak [N39°08.590′ W113°24.560′] is famous for its sheer, roughly 2,000-foot cliff. Hikers who climb to the summit are rewarded with a 360-degree panorama at the very brink of the cliff. Near the summit is a large stand of bristlecone pines, among the world’s oldest living things. Sinbad Overlook also provides top-of-the-world views. The gravel road through Marjum Canyon is a relic of the original unpaved U.S. 6/50, replaced by the paved highway in 1950.

Driving a 4Runner to Dome Pass

If you have the time, add the drive up to verdant Amasa Valley, on Sawtooth Mountain. There you will find granite boulders and outcrops, aspen groves, creeks, meadows, and the vista from atop 9,290-foot Pine Peak. The range’s dramatic uptilted west side has canyons worth exploring as well.

Mackay, Idaho: The next Moab?

MACKAY, Idaho -- Move over, Moab. This scenic old central Idaho mining town is hot on your wheels. That's the impression I gained during four days of riding adventure motorcycles in the lofty mountains surrounding this yet-to-be-discovered rival to Utah's mecca for dirt-road adventure.

Located on the Big Lost River in Custer County (Google Map), isolated little Mackay (MAC ee) is accommodating to ADVs, ATVs, SUVs and mountain bikes. So a fellow adventure rider, Dave, and I allocated four days to exploring the region's mountains and valleys via a vast network of dirt roads. We traveled on dual-sport motorcycles, he on his Honda 650, I on my Kawasaki KLR 650.


Dual-Sport Friendly

Wagon Wheel Motel

We unloaded our bikes and checked in at the Wagon Wheel Motel -- convenient, comfortable, reasonably priced and well-kept. After a long day of exploring, we could sit out each evening and gaze at the towering, 12,000-foot-plus Lost River Range just east of town.

Washout fixed, Canyonlands National Park reopens famous White Rim Road loop

MOAB, Utah--A big hand to the National Park Service at Canyonlands National Park in Utah, site of the world-famous White Rim Road. A massive washout in August 2010 that I thought could take years to repair is fixed well enough for spring adventuring, although work is expected to continue for some time yet. Go for it!

Along 'Forever West', relics of Old West

The ultimate Wild West ride:
Idaho ... Montana ... Wyoming ... Colorado ... Utah ... 

It's here! The adventure-ride report for Forever West -- the epic 2,800-mile, 98.6-percent dirt motorcycle journey through some of the American West's most remote, spectacular and historic wildlands.


It was researched by myself and Frank Reinbold, a.k.a. Dockingpilot, America's leading long-distance motorcycle expedition planner and leader. Frank wrote the saga, using his photos and photos by his crew. So read it ... and let yourself be carried away on one of North America's greatest dual-sport motorcycle journeys.


It's on the No. 1 forum for this unique mode of backcountry travel, ADVrider.com. 

August '10 washout temporarily closes Canyonlands' famous White Rim loop

From the Canyonlands National Park website:


"On August 19, severe storms caused flash flooding and rock falls that blocked or washed away roads throughout the Canyonlands area. One of the more dramatic washouts occurred on the Mineral Bottom Road switchbacks (see photo), where signifcant portions of the road were obliterated. This damage will affect all groups traveling the White Rim Road or planning river trips that launch or take-out at Mineral Bottom."


Mineral Bottom:

Bridge projects impose temporary 2010 closure on Wyoming's Greys River Road

The Greys River Ranger District of Bridger-Teton National Forest (307-886-5300) has closed the southerly segment of Greys River Road until Oct. 1, 2010. The reason is to replace three bridges.


But you can still make the north-south ride or drive by detouring over Thompson Pass (road 10128) and McDougal Gap (road 10125), which are linked by scenic road 10046 over Bare Pass.

I learned about the closure recently when I rode my KLR 650 from Idaho Falls, Idaho, to Smiths Fork Road southeast of Afton, Wyoming. With Labor Day weekend approaching, I thought I'd pass along that information -- and more.

Canyon Country backroad mishap offers lessons in resourcefulness, awareness

Downtown Moab

NEEDLES DISTRICT, Canyonlands National Park -- The day was full of promise -- until "it" caught up with us.

My wife, Lynn, and I had arrived for a long, early October weekend in Canyonlands National Park's relatively unpeopled yet spectacular Needles District, a long way from touristy Moab. The weather was clear and crisp, the kind that makes October so busy in that mountain biking and four-wheeling mecca.

Our 1990 Toyota 4Runner, a trusted veteran of many forays deep into canyon country, was loaded up with camping gear and food. It would see its 20th birthday -- and 215,000th mile -- amid the Needles' intricately eroded, color-banded sandstone labyrinths, which for millennia were home to Anasazi and other native peoples.

Sunset, Peekaboo Springs

After driving more than 500 miles from our home in Idaho, we'd spent a cold night in a tiny, sandy and exposed commercial campsite ($20) at the privately operated Needles Outpost. It's just outside the Needles entrance station. Now we were ready to revisit the wilds of the Needles. We'd accumulated family memories with our kids here, many years before.

On the dash lay our $30 Canyonlands backcountry-camping permit. It was good for two nights at one of only two remote sites at the Salt Creek Canyon's Peekaboo Springs (Google Earth view). We felt lucky to have the reservation.

Autumn makes up for wet summer of '09

The summer of 2009 will be remembered in southeastern Idaho as a wet one. So when a September dry spell finally arrived with the colors I look forward to, it was time to mount my KLR 650 and ride mountain roads that were new to me.

I packed tools, spare tubes, a hand pump and other items for roadside repairs. I also stowed clothing for inclement weather, a possibility anytime in the northern Rocky Mountains.

Most important, the bike had a new rear tire. Having dealt with flat tires far from help in the past, that inspires confidence, because I often explore alone.