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I did this ride on a Husqvarna 701 enduro. My buddies did it on a KTM 450 and Suzuki DRZ400. Think a DR650 or the Husqvarna 701/KTM 690 are the more ideal bike given the long distances, but still light enough to deal with the rougher and sandy terrain in places. In the past I did this on a F800 GS adventure, but that was more challenging in the sandier areas. See that video here: www.stephenfischerphotography.com/videos/Baja_Dec2017_shorter_crsnd_1280lq.mp4

You can see the track and map at my website: caladvrider.com. The route from Ridgecrest to Pahrump cuts through the southern portion of Death Valley as shown here: caladvrider.com/GPStracks/DV%202024-01%20-%20Ridgecrest%20to%20Pahrump.jpg

Thanks. This is one of my favorite rides and wouldn't mind doing it again.

For the most part the hikers have been pretty cool about sharing the trail, while myself and other riders have tried not to antagonize things when riding by them. On a previous ride I did have a more confrontational conversation at the top with some complaining "it wasn't fair to ride the motorcycle". I explained it is probably harder than hiking in terms of technical difficulty, especially when having to slow down to go around the various "obstacles."

You can ride up from either side, although the lower approach from the East side (Sweetwater) is more rocky. Both are double track routes.

The 690 has a lot of power. I also have a 701. I think with good knobbies you can do it! It is just bigger pain to pick it up if/when you drop it :^o

It's possible. I made it up on my DR650 with Shiko 244's, 50/50 tires. Can't wait to blast up on my 500XCFW. Edit: *Shinko

The rear is a DOT rated Tusk Dsport Adventure. The front is not DOT rated, and is the original that came with the bike I bought used: Bridgestone Battlecross X30F. While the spacing on the knobs on the rear probably could be bigger for terrain like this ride, it is a very tough tire and a longer wear. In general I have been relatively happy with the performance of both tires.

@@sfischerphotography I'm a very old DS rider. Started with a DT-1 in 1970. I never fell for the too tall, too heavy, too wide, too expensive "adventure bike". In all my years DS I always used illegal rear knobbys even though it was an almost monthly expense. In SoCal we all rode our DS bikes like street bikes when we weren't finding the next set of trails. There is no comparison to a street (DOT) legal tire in the rear for traction. I think you would of only needed one attempt at the crest if you had a rear knobby and a few more RPMs (lower gear maxed out). They of course are hell in the rain or wet on the street. Even today with my plated in CA HONDA CRF 450 I still use a rear knobby. Over all the years me and my buddies got pulled over lots, but as long was we had valid registration, working lights, signals, and mirror (and not a stupid open expansion chamber or uncorked straight pipe on a four stroke) Law Enforcement on the street never gave us a ticket for our rear knobbys. We tried different brands and usually the cheapest (hardest) ones that were not as good for offroad racing were best for DS use. I really enjoy your TH-cam adventures. Thank you for sharing.

@@benkanobe7500 Thanks for the feedback Ben. Yes, over time I have also gravitated toward lighter is better in terms of bikes. I definitely can appreciate the better knobby of the non-DOT tires, as my front has been solid and seems to hold the line pretty good. I will give to give your suggestion a try when it is time to replace that rear. I also need to do some improvement on the fuel mapping, as my current setup is a DJK piggyback fuel tuner and tends to degrade less gracefully at altitude (excessive popping on decel and won't idle).

Yep, best done in the late fall, winter, or early spring.

Scott mentioned this, and also that your reported the normal way through Aurora was blocked due to the river changing paths into the road. Our alternate route over the top ended up being well worth it.

@@sfischerphotography if you're curious what Bodie road looked like, there's a short video of the conditions on my profile

@@alvk3996 I would agree, after watching that video that road via Aurora doesn't look passable.

Yeah, it was tough in some of those rock gardens on the 701, but we were riding all the way from Sacramento. At least I wasn't Greg riding that 790, weighing in at least another 100 lbs 😅.

Thanks. Some other caretaker was at Ballarat. This time we skipped the stop at Barker Ranch as all of us have been there a few times in the past, and we had a lot of ground to cover that day.

It looks like we skipped that. It has been a while, so I don't remember the circumstances at the time. Some reasons for some detours on this route: 1. We were running behind schedule. 2. Route detours due to some fires in the Montana resulted in some closed-off areas. 3. Warnings from others to avoid due to some excess difficulties. We were getting some intel from a group of riders a day ahead of us.

One of the fork tubes near the top.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes this was a good canyoneering trip and one that I would not mind doing again. We were lucky in that the route was relatively dry, as it is more notorious for requiring some swimming. It was also a long day, as the return loop route required traversing up and down two more canyons before getting back to our starting point.

This time I took my 2019 FE 450. Much better for the rockier terrain and single track, while still having enough legs for the pavement.

@@sfischerphotography good choice. Watching your 701 sink in the deep silt was painful

Thanks for the feedback Jeff. I also took a hard crash at 20~30mph on the 2nd day in that rocky terrain between Amargosa Farms and that rather straight dirt road that reconnects with 95 to Beatty. Apparently my front wheel snagged a rock and turned the wheel sideways, sending me over the bars. Along with some bruising to my ribs and some moderate damage to my left rotator cuff, It severely bent my left foot peg. But I was able to walk away and continue the ride, albeit in some pain and a bit slower pace. As far as Fish Canyon, I think we did this on the first day when dropping into Panamint Valley at the south end after Trona and before reaching Goler Canyon. It is quite rocky down there at the bottom, as those lava rocks are unforgiving. Scott suggested the red route bypass, but it looked a bit iffy, without much definition of a trail on a fairly steep downslope. I will be glad when the NPS can get some of the rest of the areas open to do more riding out there, as I never seem to tire of rides in Death Valley.

@@sfischerphotography Yes I crashed in that same straight stretch! That track in Fish Canyon is fine and not too extreme, and the advantage is that you do not have to deal with the lava rock of hell section at the end!

If you can source the music from TH-cam itself, then apparently it is already watermarked to be allowed (usually). The trick then is how to download it off TH-cam and import it into your favorite video editor. I currently use ytmp3.cc/b538/, but it seems they have to keep tweaking this as part of the cat-and-mouse game with music folks. Lately they make it harder to download mp3 files, but you can usually download the mp4 and then strip off the video in your video editor (I use DaVinci Resolve v18). But keep in mind that if you use copyright music for your content, then you can't monetize it. For me that is not a problem as I don't have enough subscribers for it to really matter.

​@@sfischerphotography Yup,you're exactly right. I wonder if they have crawlers that eventually catch up to you using the song. But good job getting it to not show up as copyright. I normally just use the braap sound for mine 😊

TH-cam did block one of my posted videos a year after I posted it. It was one of my Demptser Highway trip to Tuktoyaktuk due to my use of the Black Sabbath tune Heaven and Hell. I don't know why it took them that long to do that, as usually if there is some music title they won't use (e.g. don't have the permissions from the copyright owner), they reject it after my upload. But they did give me the option to do a crude edit and overlay the blocked song title with some canned music from the royalty free library.

@@sfischerphotography I had a company send us a somewhat threatening email about a food stock image we had on our site from 5+ years ago. They had some service that crawled the cache and meta to see that we had used their image. We did have proof from our subscription to use it. I'm sure YT has some elaborate process that involves the music industry to crawl all these videos. Even if it happens a year later.

The dirt connector between Scott Road and Latrobe, with the tee junction at Michigan Bar road that heads south to the eventual pavement at Highway 16.

It seems possible. I have seen CT riders going over Mengel Pass in Death Valley before. But you just need to have enough gas for some of the longer stretches. Top speed of the CT110 may also be a challenge with some of the asphalt. But I think you could minimize pissing off other drivers by just riding in the shoulder when other cars get behind you.

The trickiest area for a bigger adventure bike would be about 10 miles of deep sand between the playa at Laguna del Diablo and the pavement to San Felipe. Unfortunately I didn't get video footage of this portion due to some problems with the memory card I was using at the time. All other sections I have done before on my bigger F800GS in the past.

Yeah it is well worth it for the adventure and raw nature of the area. A very different experience from stateside.

We got there in a regular 4wd long bed RAM truck that was not lifted. In general the sand was not deep on the route there, but there were a few tricky and rocky areas that required spotting. But in one location closer to the trailhead where we parked and base camped, there was a somewhat sandy slope that we had to punch it to have some momentum to get up and over. Make sure you have an air compressor to air down and some recovery tools like a shovel and potentially something to throw under the tires in case things go wrong.

@@sfischerphotographyhow bad was that sand hill and how far from the trailhead was it? We had a similar situation where we went down a sand hilll going down an abandoned sand track from the uranium boom. We could go down, but not up. What are good recovery tools beyond a shovel that would allow us to get up instead of rolling back down and trying again?

If I recall, the one sandier area was fairly short and by gunning it, we could overcome it. If you aren't successful the first time, then back down and try again, otherwise turn around park there. Maybe more of a hike for the return, but I don't think it would make a big difference as you will be hiking miles anyway. There are always risks with these type of roads, so you just need to decide what you are comfortable with. Also, sand conditions can change with the season, moisture levels, and previous traffic, so the situation could easily be different from what I am describing.