LYCAN
Race Dog
Lundean’s wartrail….only for Volunteers
It is Day 5 of our Ben 10 Eco Challenge timeline, and we have some work to do
2 of our Expedition members are out of the challenge, FrancoisTz and Natasha.
They will spend the day relaxing, and getting their things ready for the lass road back home.
Natasha is walking straight again, though with some difficulty.
It is Rynard’s first long bike trip, but the Young man is doing exceptionally well. He is struggling to stay awake at night, and the morning awakenings are slightly slower than the previous days.
He has started listening to our advice, but you do find some time to still let him realize that he doesn’t know everything as of yet…
But the advantage of inexperience, is that he doesn’t know what might go wrong….only that his dad, Aaklige Attie, recommends LOOK UP AND THROTTLE OUT of most problems
Plan for the day:
• Leave Rhode toward Barkly East
• Roughly 30km down this road, take the Lundean’s / Wartrail turn off (At Moshesh’s Ford)
• Follow this road up to Lundean’s Pass
• Track back to the 4 way crossing
• Turn towards Volunteershoek Pass / Tiffendale
• Complete Voluteershoek Pass
• Glass of Courage at Tiffendale Resort
• Track back to Rhodes via Carlisleshoek Pass
Now Aaklige Attie and myself realized early this morning that we were not getting into our riding zone, our MOJO was not kicking in this morning. Thus, it will be an easy ride and we should be able to complete this route by early afternoon….
Rhodes Roads….
The road out of Rhodes was till a pleasure to ride, and the road surface is hard…2 days ago a guy in a big machine remodelled the road surface around 10km outside Rhodes…so we had nice loose earth and pebbles to play with for a few kilometres.
After the second metal bridge on this road, we reached the turn off to Lundean’s, and this short pass went nice and easy.
We encountered a farmers and his pack of dogs on the back of his bakkie, one of these dogs was a Horse of a Great Dane….who did not appreciate the deep rumble that is the 1200 GSA…
As I was ridding behind the bakkie, this Greatness Dane was minding his own business…When I passed the bakkie…all of a sudden a whales head moved into my peripheral vision displaying his large dagger teeth and showing off the inside of his throat….luckily the cattle rails were high enough to keep me out of his reach….the same scenario apparently played off later when Aaklige Attie went past the bakkie
Lundean’s Pass….
The first portion of Lundean’s Pass is fairly nice riding, up to about 4km from the summit.
This point is marked by a small streamed, and then the technical portion starts…I did mentioned that Attie and My own riding MOJO was lacking today?
Seeing that I was already picking crap lines, I decided to sharpen my slow technical riding skills and continue on with the crappie lines till the top.
2km from the summit we asked the guard station if we may proceeded to the summit, they agreed and up we went. The road continues with its rutted nature, but it is still fairly ridable.
Close to the summit we initially passed the challenge board, and took some pictures with the original pass board that was lying on the ground.
On our way down, we did find the challenge board, and documented it as well.
Back to the cross road, and of to Volunteers pass.
Wartrail and Volunteershoek Pass…
A day or two ago, someone told FrancoisTZ that Volunteershoek Pass is a very Beautiful pass….and he was not lying…
Approaching Volunteershek Pass from the bottom, we were treated by spectacular trees and small streams, a couple of time I just stopped to take in the scenery.
We found a beautiful spot under some big trees where a table and chairs were cut out of big logs, and had a sat down and admired our surroundings.
Then we passed through a farm gate and the war trail started to climb the towering mountain, steadily at first…and at a bend we met the farm owner coming down the trail, very polite guy and adamant that his farm is not for sale…so we should not try to buy pieces of it with Ass-to-ground approach that some bikers take
He however did not inform us about how drastically this steady climb is about to change…a few switch backs from our meeting site….and we found ourselves in the middle of a war with this trail
The trail suddenly and violently increased its angle of ascend, with some loose rocks and earth…..and sections of tyres placed over very bad spots on the road….
Now in the 50 meters from seeing the tyres, we first had to believe in what our eyes revealed about the road ahead (this was a short interval of time, as you do not dare stop due to fear not being able to pull away again due to the steep angle of climb)…and then lots of videos started flashing through our minds where we saw people riding over tyres, though we never took in the finer details of this skill and those tyres were always on level ground…..what the hell is to be done?....shit, I am on top of them already………
Tyre Talk session
These tyres are intended to give added traction to 4x4’s when crossing these rutted or loose surface.
They are all fastened together, and filled with dirt in order to aid the 4x4’s wheels over them, with the added benefit of weight pushing the wheels on to the tyres…
Currently though, most of the tyre did not have dirt in them due to being washed away during the rains. And this makes them crumple in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways…
Added to this; even though the 1200 GSA is a heavy machine, the weight is not enough to aid in gaining traction on these tyres while moving over them…thus the back wheel once more travels much further than the odometer would like you to believe…
Trail wars continue…
Both Attie and Myself decided to open the throttle and see what happens, and after much back wheel movement and placing the front wheel in the tyres with the least amount of dirt in order the anchor the bike better…we made it through this section of tyre road… notes made and lesions learnt
These lesions were hammered home with many more tyre sections on our way up, this road climbs sharply for a short section…. At the start it is roughly 1900 meters above sea level, and at the top you end up at roughly 2500 meters… this give your fore arms a very good work out
Do to the slow strong climb in 1st gear, my Air cooled GSA needed a few minutes of rest and cool down period at the top
This road is maintained by the local farmers, and at the top of the road is a donation spot to aid in the road maintenance … and the views are stunning from the top.
This is notably not the summit point, and we needed to follow the road further, and do a few short climbs to reach the summit point which is marked by another Challenge board that has not yet blown away.
On the a fresh High altitude Captain Morgan..
We followed the Volunteershoek road till it brought us to Tiffendale once again, and a cold one was much appreciated.
After a few laughs and thirst quencher, we head once more down Carllisleshoek pass… got Rynard his challenge photo, and headed down to Rhodes for the last time this week
Back in Rhodes, we tapped FrancoisTz and Nastasha’s fuel for our bikes, and made our way to our accommodation… good day of riding done and dusted
It is Day 5 of our Ben 10 Eco Challenge timeline, and we have some work to do
2 of our Expedition members are out of the challenge, FrancoisTz and Natasha.
They will spend the day relaxing, and getting their things ready for the lass road back home.
Natasha is walking straight again, though with some difficulty.
It is Rynard’s first long bike trip, but the Young man is doing exceptionally well. He is struggling to stay awake at night, and the morning awakenings are slightly slower than the previous days.
He has started listening to our advice, but you do find some time to still let him realize that he doesn’t know everything as of yet…
But the advantage of inexperience, is that he doesn’t know what might go wrong….only that his dad, Aaklige Attie, recommends LOOK UP AND THROTTLE OUT of most problems
Plan for the day:
• Leave Rhode toward Barkly East
• Roughly 30km down this road, take the Lundean’s / Wartrail turn off (At Moshesh’s Ford)
• Follow this road up to Lundean’s Pass
• Track back to the 4 way crossing
• Turn towards Volunteershoek Pass / Tiffendale
• Complete Voluteershoek Pass
• Glass of Courage at Tiffendale Resort
• Track back to Rhodes via Carlisleshoek Pass
Now Aaklige Attie and myself realized early this morning that we were not getting into our riding zone, our MOJO was not kicking in this morning. Thus, it will be an easy ride and we should be able to complete this route by early afternoon….
Rhodes Roads….
The road out of Rhodes was till a pleasure to ride, and the road surface is hard…2 days ago a guy in a big machine remodelled the road surface around 10km outside Rhodes…so we had nice loose earth and pebbles to play with for a few kilometres.
After the second metal bridge on this road, we reached the turn off to Lundean’s, and this short pass went nice and easy.
We encountered a farmers and his pack of dogs on the back of his bakkie, one of these dogs was a Horse of a Great Dane….who did not appreciate the deep rumble that is the 1200 GSA…
As I was ridding behind the bakkie, this Greatness Dane was minding his own business…When I passed the bakkie…all of a sudden a whales head moved into my peripheral vision displaying his large dagger teeth and showing off the inside of his throat….luckily the cattle rails were high enough to keep me out of his reach….the same scenario apparently played off later when Aaklige Attie went past the bakkie
Lundean’s Pass….
The first portion of Lundean’s Pass is fairly nice riding, up to about 4km from the summit.
This point is marked by a small streamed, and then the technical portion starts…I did mentioned that Attie and My own riding MOJO was lacking today?
Seeing that I was already picking crap lines, I decided to sharpen my slow technical riding skills and continue on with the crappie lines till the top.
2km from the summit we asked the guard station if we may proceeded to the summit, they agreed and up we went. The road continues with its rutted nature, but it is still fairly ridable.
Close to the summit we initially passed the challenge board, and took some pictures with the original pass board that was lying on the ground.
On our way down, we did find the challenge board, and documented it as well.
Back to the cross road, and of to Volunteers pass.
Wartrail and Volunteershoek Pass…
A day or two ago, someone told FrancoisTZ that Volunteershoek Pass is a very Beautiful pass….and he was not lying…
Approaching Volunteershek Pass from the bottom, we were treated by spectacular trees and small streams, a couple of time I just stopped to take in the scenery.
We found a beautiful spot under some big trees where a table and chairs were cut out of big logs, and had a sat down and admired our surroundings.
Then we passed through a farm gate and the war trail started to climb the towering mountain, steadily at first…and at a bend we met the farm owner coming down the trail, very polite guy and adamant that his farm is not for sale…so we should not try to buy pieces of it with Ass-to-ground approach that some bikers take
He however did not inform us about how drastically this steady climb is about to change…a few switch backs from our meeting site….and we found ourselves in the middle of a war with this trail
The trail suddenly and violently increased its angle of ascend, with some loose rocks and earth…..and sections of tyres placed over very bad spots on the road….
Now in the 50 meters from seeing the tyres, we first had to believe in what our eyes revealed about the road ahead (this was a short interval of time, as you do not dare stop due to fear not being able to pull away again due to the steep angle of climb)…and then lots of videos started flashing through our minds where we saw people riding over tyres, though we never took in the finer details of this skill and those tyres were always on level ground…..what the hell is to be done?....shit, I am on top of them already………
Tyre Talk session
These tyres are intended to give added traction to 4x4’s when crossing these rutted or loose surface.
They are all fastened together, and filled with dirt in order to aid the 4x4’s wheels over them, with the added benefit of weight pushing the wheels on to the tyres…
Currently though, most of the tyre did not have dirt in them due to being washed away during the rains. And this makes them crumple in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways…
Added to this; even though the 1200 GSA is a heavy machine, the weight is not enough to aid in gaining traction on these tyres while moving over them…thus the back wheel once more travels much further than the odometer would like you to believe…
Trail wars continue…
Both Attie and Myself decided to open the throttle and see what happens, and after much back wheel movement and placing the front wheel in the tyres with the least amount of dirt in order the anchor the bike better…we made it through this section of tyre road… notes made and lesions learnt
These lesions were hammered home with many more tyre sections on our way up, this road climbs sharply for a short section…. At the start it is roughly 1900 meters above sea level, and at the top you end up at roughly 2500 meters… this give your fore arms a very good work out
Do to the slow strong climb in 1st gear, my Air cooled GSA needed a few minutes of rest and cool down period at the top
This road is maintained by the local farmers, and at the top of the road is a donation spot to aid in the road maintenance … and the views are stunning from the top.
This is notably not the summit point, and we needed to follow the road further, and do a few short climbs to reach the summit point which is marked by another Challenge board that has not yet blown away.
On the a fresh High altitude Captain Morgan..
We followed the Volunteershoek road till it brought us to Tiffendale once again, and a cold one was much appreciated.
After a few laughs and thirst quencher, we head once more down Carllisleshoek pass… got Rynard his challenge photo, and headed down to Rhodes for the last time this week
Back in Rhodes, we tapped FrancoisTz and Nastasha’s fuel for our bikes, and made our way to our accommodation… good day of riding done and dusted
