In the Clouds of Heaven and in the Vault of the Firmament ...

"When he heard these great cries together
with their sounds and reverberations
in the clouds of heaven
and in the vault of the firmament
he looked up
whereupon turbulence
and darkness
and fury, and giddiness, and frenzy, and flight
unsteadiness, restlessness, and unquiet filled him ...
likewise disgust
with every place
in which he had used to be
and desire
for every place he had not reached ..."
-- Sweeney Astray, O'Keefe's 1913 translation of the ancient Irish epic poem ...



Well, I hadn't yet sprouted feathers and taken up residence in
the branches of a yew-tree like Mad Suibhne, the 7th century
pagan King of Ireland, but I had a couple of "mental health"
days at work I could take, so I did ... :laughing :ride

Wow where is that? Looks awesome as per usual with your adventures!

The highest and best use of a motorcycle ...





is to go camping ...

... and of course we go camping so we can ...



see the sun rise ...



... and watch the sunset ...



... and ride all day in between ... :ride



... and have a campfire with our coco before sleep ... :laughing

:love

I'm so stoked about this thread. Need moar now. I love the poem at the beginning, too.

This ride report is good for mental health..

Cabrito said:

This ride report is good for mental health..

Click to expand...

This. Great pics and RR as always John :thumbup:thumbup

So spill the goods - where is this beautiful place? Eastern Sieras?


T

1962siia88 said:

Wow where is that? Looks awesome as per usual with your adventures!

Click to expand...

Hey 1962siia88,

The pics so far are mostly from right out Hwy 108, Mount Patterson, just north of Bridgeport ...
about four hours from San Francisco ...
nice weather and not too hot since it's up high ...

two wheel tramp said:

:love

I'm so stoked about this thread. Need moar now. I love the poem at the beginning, too.

Click to expand...

Hi TWT,

Boy, I needed to get out and ride ...
must have been a little depressed, couldn't get off the couch
with the new little doggie recently ... :laughing

Mad Sweeney is our family's patron saint ...
gotta love a Irish pagan poet-warrior King who fights with the Catholic priests
and is so crazy he can fly like a bird and lives in the trees to get away from people ... arty

Cabrito said:

This ride report is good for mental health..

Click to expand...

Hey Cabrito,
for me it's HO's 2015 Baja ride report that just keeps on giving ... :laughing

Titus58 said:

This. Great pics and RR as always John :thumbup:thumbup

So spill the goods - where is this beautiful place? Eastern Sieras?
T

Click to expand...

Hi Tim,
It's just Mount Patterson again, you may recognize most of the places I went on this trip from past ride reports ...
I had big plans to get down to Cerro Gordo, and some places I've never been, but maybe next time ...
I guess it's the Eastern Sierras, althogh Mt. Patterson may be in some other range, technically ...
I have a pic from an airplane I'll try to post and Mt Patterson looks kind of like an island to itself ...

Thanks everyone for reading and posting ...
I work weekends (I'm at work now, ha!) and so ride by myself alot,
but always sort of feel like I have company thanks to BARF Adventure Riding ... :laughingarty

Here's that pic of Mt Patterson from an airplane I was talking about:

Got a pic from an airplane in October of 2013 ... Mt. Patterson and Bridgeport Reservior from 30,000 feet ... Mt. Patterson is the snowy island in the distance ... you can ride a bike to the top of Patterson because it's in NV, I guess ...

Click to expand...

Gorgeous.

SFMCjohn said:

Hey 1962siia88,

The pics so far are mostly from right out Hwy 108, Mount Patterson, just north of Bridgeport ...
about four hours from San Francisco ...
nice weather and not too hot since it's up high ...



Hi TWT,

Boy, I needed to get out and ride ...
must have been a little depressed, couldn't get off the couch
with the new little doggie recently ... :laughing

Mad Sweeney is our family's patron saint ...
gotta love a Irish pagan poet-warrior King who fights with the Catholic priests
and is so crazy he can fly like a bird and lives in the trees to get away from people ... arty



Hey Cabrito,
for me it's HO's 2015 Baja ride report that just keeps on giving ... :laughing



Hi Tim,
It's just Mount Patterson again, you may recognize most of the places I went on this trip from past ride reports ...
I had big plans to get down to Cerro Gordo, and some places I've never been, but maybe next time ...
I guess it's the Eastern Sierras, althogh Mt. Patterson may be in some other range, technically ...
I have a pic from an airplane I'll try to post and Mt Patterson looks kind of like an island to itself ...

Thanks everyone for reading and posting ...
I work weekends (I'm at work now, ha!) and so ride by myself alot,
but always sort of feel like I have company thanks to BARF Adventure Riding ... :laughingarty

Click to expand...

:thumbup And it is right here, at our doorstep :thumbup

Surj said:

Gorgeous.

Click to expand...

Hey Surj! :thumbup
Got familiar with many of the roads on this
trip from Bungee Brent! arty

louemc said:

:thumbup And it is right here, at our doorstep :thumbup

Click to expand...

Hey louemc,

You all are lucky to have so much great riding right
in your back yard! :ride

We have to slog a bit from San Francisco ... :laughing



Sonora Pass is 196 miles and 3 and a half hours from Lower Haight ...



Topo of Mt Patterson ... Guess it's maybe 30 miles from Hwy 395 to the summit
of Mt Patterson ...

So, anyway, I left South of Market at 2pm on Monday, 8/24,
heading for the Bennett Juniper ...





Campsite just north of the big tree ...



View to the east Monday night ...





Sunset and sunrise from same camp ... Talked with Ken, who's
been the caretaker at the Bennett Juniper since 1988, and who
told me the tree is so big because it gets a lot of water, and that
it's probably 3000 years old ... (I'd see estimates from 4000 to
6000 years on the Internet) ...



View north of the Dardanelles, I suppose ...

I didn't really have a plan, but Monday night was dead-calm,
so I thought I'd see if I could camp on top of Mt Patterson,
if I could get to the top ... I'd gotten some reports that all the
thunderstorms in Nevada this season had washed away
parts of the road ...

On Tuesday I took Hwy 108 to a left onto
Silver Creek Road to the Marine Training Base
to Bircham Flat Road ...

Up above Bircham Flat Road and below Lake Lobdell ...
looking southwest toward Sonora Pass ...

So you go by Lake Lobdell, make a sharp right and ford Desert Creek,
and basically charge up a fairly well used, but also well-eroded, steep, loose,
rocky, high-clearance 4x4 dual track route ...
on a big bike "charge" is the
byword, for me, anyway ... arty

(and by "charge" I mean first or second gear, near red line ...
I'm not much of a dirt-bike rider ... :laughing)



... let the fun begin! :laughing



... two views of the same tip over, about 3/4 of the way up ...
this is what happens to me when I forget to charge, or the conditions
get tougher than my n00bie ability to charge them ...
... this spot is probably close to 10,000 feet ...
I have enough experience
dropping and trying to pick up loaded-for-camping KLRs (I'm probably carrying close to five liters of drinking water at this point)
that I simply unloaded the bike,
picked it up,
reloaded it,
and was on my merry (ha-ha) way ... arty

KLR's fall down well don't they?

You aint a noob in my book... You got crazy skillz... Emphasis on the crazy part..

Unload, pickup, re-load, repeat as needed eh?

Ahhhhh, I can practically feel the cool mountain air...

You're making my throttle hand itch, john. Time to load up the KTM and head out! Great photos.

btw, I picked up a klr 650 for work duty in the city. I'll post some pictures one of these days.

Leo

Wow another awesome ride report showing us what the pig can do!

Cabrito said:

KLR's fall down well don't they?

You aint a noob in my book... You got crazy skillz... Emphasis on the crazy part..

Unload, pickup, re-load, repeat as needed eh?

Click to expand...

Hi Cabrito,

Why yes ... yes they do! :laughing
The KLR is also easy to abandon in Baja, which is one of the
reasons I got one (at least compared to late-model BMWs or KTMs) ... :ride

I'll agree with crazy, but I'll always be a n00b, unfortunatley,
think you have to have grown up on/grown up racing dirt bikes,
the way some of us did,
to be a real dirt bike rider ... :afm199

And, hey, I fell down 50% less this trip than the one last year ...
Managed to avoid falling down going back down ...

Momo-san said:

Ahhhhh, I can practically feel the cool mountain air...

Click to expand...

Hey Momo-san,
Yes, it was triple-didgits in Sacramento at the end of last week,
and much, much cooler up at 11,500 feet ...
Enjoy Nicaragua this season! :ride

Leo_jb said:

You're making my throttle hand itch, john. Time to load up the KTM and head out! Great photos.

btw, I picked up a klr 650 for work duty in the city. I'll post some pictures one of these days.

Leo

Click to expand...

Hey Leo,

Would love to see pics of the KLR! :ride
Did you get one just to help off-set the KTM's
service intervals?
Have not forgotten about Reiff/Rayhouse/Buck Island, just simply have
not been back out there this year ... will have to
see about the fire damage, I suppose ... :|

see you all around the campfire!
-- SFMCjohn

HadesOmega said:

Wow another awesome ride report showing us what the pig can do!

Click to expand...

:laughing:laughing Fighting words, coming from a DR650 rider! :laughing:laughing

Hope you get a chance to ride Patterson someday,
I'd love to see some of your 3D tracks of the routes
up that mountain ...