death valley daze non-event
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 11:11 am
Please keep posting on this. It is definitely a possibility for me. The dates are when?
Robert Wichert P.Eng. LEED AP BD&C +1 916 966 9060 FAX +1 916 966 9068 ===============================================
I recognize that ‘tis the season for oil threads, tire threads, even political threads. So ‘cuse me for wanting to talk about a riding opportunity! Starting about a decade ago a group of southern California BMW street riders started showing up at Death Valley National Park in late January. Over time the event picked up a name: Death Valley Daze (DVD). Then many of the street BMW guys started riding GSs and KTMs and the event became less about paved road riding and more about riding many of the lovely unpaved “roads” that date back to when the Park was an active mining area. This SoCal group typically stays a weekend in the park or maybe makes a three-day weekend out of the trip. Many of this SoCal crowd can be found on ADVRider.com. A couple of years ago, the Park Rangers became aware of a post on a we bsite that purported to show a sand dune in the park defaced by trenching with the trench filled with gasoline and set alight. The flames spelled “advrider”. Needless to say the Rangers were less than pleased. The (chief) Park Ranger demanded to know who was in charge of the Death Valley Daze event and demanded that this organizer purchase a Million Dollar liability policy indemnifying the park for any damage caused by this organized group. The reality was that no one was really in charge, DVD was not really an organized event, no dues were collected, it was more about like-minded people showing up at about the same time. So the unofficial event called Death Valley Daze was *[b]officially[/b]* cancelled and (surprise!) the same folks showed up anyway. According to one telling of the burning dune story, there was no trenching, no flames, the entire dune incident was nothing more than a Photoshop-modified photograph of the (undamaged) du ne. A hoax. Or maybe the flaming dune *did* happen and the idiot(s) responsible fabricated the Photoshop tale when the rangers became upset. A group of KLR riders from the Seattle area would frequently come down but we make a week out of it arriving Sunday and leaving Friday. But lately most of the Seattle folks have aged out of wanting to ride that type of event. Last year I went alone and the weather was terrible (floods!) and the park was deserted. I was unwilling to ride the back county alone so rode some pavement and lamented making the 1600 mile round trip from Seattle. Late January is a wonderful time to ride in Death Valley National Park. The daytime high temps are typically in the mid-60s, the overnight lows are in typically in the mid-40s. This same area has daytime highs in the 120 degree range in the summer! In late January most of the snow has melted in th e higher elevations, there are few tourists about and the park and the riding is excellent, it’s perfect KLR-country. I have some pics of previous events on my smugmug site: http://johnbiccum.smugmug.com/Motorcycles/Death-Valley-2012/21234406_sJmHQk#!i=1690235896&k=6sHsqhv Who is interested in attending this non-event? I’d probably trailer down from Seattle if there was others attending. We could go at the same time as the ADVrider crowd (January 30-Feb 2nd) or pick a different week. Even if we showed up coincident with the ADVRider “crowd” you will be unlikely to even see another bike unless they are part of your riding group: the park is that large and there was some many miles of “roads” to ride. I mentioned the burning dune incident/hoax only to note that if you show up in January and a ranger asks if you are attending the Death Valley Daze Event the factually correct and only acceptable answer is that there is no such event, DVD was cancelled a few years ago.On 12/6/2013 4:59 PM, John Biccum wrote: