WYBDR: Poison Gas En Route To Shoshoni

The day before had been ridiculously eventful. That night I carefully took care of myself with rest, food, hydration, Ibuprofen, etc… It wasn’t enough. I had something like a hangover. Muscles ached like I’d been trampled by wildebeests and my head was sore.

My overpriced hotel room came with all sorts of cutesy crap. I’d like to say I didn’t want or need it, but the truth is I deeply appreciated everything. I needed to sleep in a warm dry room on a real mattress. That doesn’t mean it sucked to have a fluffy bathrobe provided and fancy soap to wash off the grime. Also the hotel breakfast was absolutely delicious. I found a few chocolates in the room, clearly left there for sweet female tourists and not muddy bikers. They found their way into my snack bag. I’d been lucky.

Even now, I’m disappointed I had to resort to the hotel but there’s no doubt I’d made the wise choice. It had rained on and off most of the night. I’d have been miserable in a tent and everything would have stayed damp. My stuff (carefully arrayed in the hotel room) mostly dried out. A hot shower eased seized muscles.

I packed (with a great deal of wincing and complaining), topped off the bike (which was running on fumes), and rolled out into a cloudy day. For once I wasn’t “behind schedule”.

The map indicated one of the “duller” sections on the BDR. That’s to be expected, every mile can’t be glorious. I was happy with “dull”. Almost ecstatic. I’d had far too much excitement so far. My plan was going to roll to Shoshoni on dull flat dirt roads and it should be an easy short ride. I’d call it a night early.

Nothing is as simple as it seems; hence my use of the word “adventure”. At the first juncture I had an option to go on a merry little trip through a canyon and that’s what the map recommended. The road surface was good and I was all for it. But a big cloud was already dumping on that area. Rather than ride straight into rain, I stayed on a “main” (still dirt) road a few miles longer. I planned to cut across to the canyon on a side road a few miles ahead.

A few miles later I realized the cross road was private. Damn!

Not a lot of people have been to truly empty places like Wyoming so I’ll elaborate:

There are places where private roads still exist and it’s ok. Please don’t get your panties in a bundle because it sounds weird. If you live in some generic place like Cincinnati you’ve probably never seen a road that exists without State / Federal funding. But it’s a big world out there. Maybe I grok a private road because my driveway at Curmudgeon Compound is several hundred yards long. It’s a short road but it’s a road. It’s 100% my problem, it exists 100% on my property, and sometimes I’d give my left nut to have someone else plow the fucking thing.

In most occasions private roads are open for public use. Agencies like the Forest Service often negotiate to facilitate this and other agreements tend to pop up. The day before I’d been on a private road for about 3 miles within a gap in a National Forest. Also, if the private entity is a large corporation they’ll usually offer public access anyway. “The Octan Corporation provides public access to this road at the user’s risk. Don’t forget Taco Tuesday!”

Private roads are not just for ranchers in Wyoming. The Golden Road, in Maine, is about 100 miles long and it was built by a paper  company. I’ve been on that road. I paid a fee for the privilege. I saw a “superlegal” truck (meaning too huge for public streets). It had a bumper sticker that said “We drive like we own the road because we do!” Here’s a link about it (the link is 30 years old but giant log trucks don’t generally make the papers).

This private road looked old school. “This isn’t Octan Corporation’s facilities. It’s Black Bart’s road and Bart likes nothing more than capping errant biker scum.” It was marked private and looked unwelcoming in some way I couldn’t quite define. It didn’t have a gate. I’m pretty fearless going anywhere and there was naught but a cattle guard, but I hesitated. Then noticed the big nasty cloud over the canyon route I wanted to access was getting uglier. How convenient! The place I couldn’t get to was going to suck anyway. I stayed on the “main” (dirt) road.

Rain hit and I rode through it. It would have been worse further out near the canyon. I was just on the edge of the big cloud. Eventually the rain ended and I started to dry out. Eventually the canyon route I’d skipped merged with the road I was on.

A few miles later I met the second of the three BDR motorcycle groups I’d meet on the trail. A little platoon of 6 bikes; 2 dual-sport and 4 ADV bikes. They passed going the opposite (“correct”) direction. They were bristling with cool gear and cameras. Honestly, I can’t help but be impressed how “hobbies” create such bitchin’ arrangements of people and gear. They were moving like a team of professionals; a well oiled machine. I’m sure every helmet was Bluetooth linked to every other helmet. I’m sure everyone had GPS on their dash. There are probably tactical groups in advanced militaries less perfectly equipped than these guys. My mule of a bike with a paper map seemed pathetic. The good news is I’m probably on someone’s epic YouTube video.

As they passed, I noticed one guy was standing on his pegs. As I understand it, standing on your motorcycle pegs is “style / technique” useful for maintaining balance in rough terrain. I have no style and don’t stand on my pegs ever. My bike and I are equally slow, stout, and dumpy, we roll along like a tractor, not a jet ski. The mystery is that the guy standing on his pegs was on a smooth ass road! This section of road could be traversed by a Honda Civic. Why would a top-of-the-line ADV and kitted out rider be standing on that? If there’s a reason, solo guys like me aren’t in on the secret.

Soon, I caught up with a road grader. It took up 90% of the road, spewed enough dust to obscure my view, and it had no intention of doing anything to let me by. After eating shit a few miles I spied a slightly wider spot in the road and zipped on by. I was covered with dust.

Then the rain hit for real. I was (once again) in a place with no shelter. It wasn’t nearly the gale of yesterday so I stoically kept riding. At first it was drizzle with occasional lightning. I was on a big long boring climb to Cottonwood Pass at 6,700′. This long slow ride through the rain was on a spot called “Lightning Ridge” and yes the lightning grew in intensity with elevation. Fuck me!

Since I started covered with dust from the road grader I was now covered in mud. Meanwhile the rain hit hard. And harder. And even harder!

This was my “boring day”?

I didn’t see a sign when I crossed the pass. By then it was raining at the rate of eleventy billion buckets per hectare. I sometimes couldn’t see where the front tire was hitting the ground. But I was on a pass or a ridge or whatever and there wasn’t much to do but keep riding as muddy water sprayed in my face. It was raining so hard that the water couldn’t flow off the road fast enough but the road was well maintained (probably by my buddy the road grader). Puddles forming on the gravel-ish road were only a few inches deep, maybe six inches max. Visibility sucked and the thunder was loud but traction wasn’t half bad.

Eventually all that shit ended and the sun came out. Whew.

Then I came to the next interesting thing; poison gas areas.

I’d been informed I would encounter this. Some places in Wyoming have a sign that says “do not enter when lights are flashing”. I’m pretty sure the sign means it. If you disobey any such sign you’ve earned what happens to you. Of course, it wasn’t flashing and it probably almost never happens, so 99% of the time it’s no big deal.

In the shadow of the friendly death sign I stopped to take a photo and put on dry socks.

I’ve never seen “poison gas signs” but I remember poison gas in the plot of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That makes me appreciate the movie even more. I’ve fond memories of Richard Dreyfuss making a likeness of Devil’s Tower out of mashed potatoes. I’ve been to Devil’s Tower. I didn’t see poison gas signs there.

I assumed the risk was sulfur dioxide; presumably associated with natural gas extraction. But I don’t really know anything. When I wrote this post I Googled it. The answer isn’t obvious. Google is less factual than it once was, tourist sites seem reticent to discuss “poison gas”, and lets face it… nobody goes where I was.

Google refers to a Wyoming Poison Gas Area that the BDR does indeed cross. It’s where uranium is mined and it sounds like they use the word “poison” when “radioactive” should apply. I could be wrong. Regardless the Wikipedia reference is for Carbon County, and I was hundreds of miles away.

A group of antelope seemed curious about my presence. One looked like a nice trophy, all looked tasty. So what the hell was I riding through? No idea. I asked the antelope and they wouldn’t tell me.

But I lived.

I meant to wrap up my “boring day” in 1,500 words. I failed. More to come.