GS'ing in WV

Just wish to share a few photos from the fantastic GS ride I was so fortunate to participate in.
If you all agree BMW riders are some of the nicest folks you'll meet, this goes two-fold for the GS warriors...

Little Coal trail head's Park Ranger,"Big John" did a hell of a job guiding us through some of the best GS riding in the state, quite challenging, yet fun and rewarding !
You should have seen his eyes when he came out of the office to check out our bikes, "wow, this things are huge !!" "I didn't even know BMW made this things!!" needless to say he seemed even more surprised to see how efortlessly the 500+ lbs. beasts roared through the rocks and mud infested trails....

A word of thanks to the "Mountain Riders LLC" for going of the beaten path and putting this together for us, wonderful people and very friendly.
They even had a nice lunch and iced sodas awaiting us at the end of the day's ride, very nice indeed.

Enjoy...
Yayo.

Yes this is a river bed, and yes this is also the trail...

One of the 274 mud holes we crossed that day...

The two groups meet atop the hills, and that's Sonny from Texas on the white GS1100, they may not have mountains in TX, but this guy sure as hell can ride !

WOW

Great stuff.

Man my hat's off to yall. We did the same ride on ATV's. Did you all do any of the hair pin switch backs with the big rocks?

Awesome pictures!

That's what makes this forum fun. To me, at least.

Yayo said:

One of the 274 mud holes we crossed that day...

Click to expand...

The mud in WV was a BITCH! I wasn't able to go on the organized ride, but I did a bunch of off-roading in WV ahead of the rally (here is the thread ) and got into a couple of situations where I thought my bike might become a permanent part of the landscape. There is nothing as bad as a GS stuck in the mud. Except maybe quicksand (DAMHIKT).

It's nice to ride in a group, because at least you know if the mudhole isn't going to swallow you whole.

On my ride, I just stopped, got a stick and did some depth-sounding before splashing through.

Great pics... got any more (and make 'em bigger!)

Ian

Hey, gang glad to see you enjoyed the pictures !

Although we did not ride any of the trails designated as black,(most difficult) we did do three of the blue ones, one of them being a radical, steep climb which had nothing but big rocks laid over huge rocks, needless to say that kept us all quite focused.

I'll share a little secret though, Sonny's bike as well as mine were equipped with Metzeler Karoo sneakers for the duration of the rally, while lousy on pavement, they do make all the diference in the rough stuff, being the closest you can get to "full knobbies" for a big GS.
What I do in most trips like these, is have the tires shipped to the ride destination, slap them on, ride the trails like a fool, and then switch back to Metz. Tourances for the trip back home on the tarmac, simply re-ship the knobbys home and presto, ready for the next trip...

Here are a couple more pics (will make them bigger next time)...

You can't ride all the way out here without taking some soil samples home right ?
That's good old Zip with the newly "died" t-shirt
believe it or not, this man rode 15ft down a drop off, his R80 ended literally up side down and kept running for a few seconds. They had to use the winch on the ranger's quad to pull it out.
Of course two hours later we were laughing like idiots about the whole thing at the beer tent...