Sometimes you just have to “pin it” and see what happens.
The Wheaton River Valley has always been a favourite playground of mine. Whether it’s on foot, in a vehicle, on a dirtbike or horseback, there is adventure around every corner. I have made many memories back in that beautiful valley. This particular adventure almost had an ugly ending, multiple times.
The Wheaton River Valley is A place where you open the secret door to your own fantasy land.
The subdivision Road hosts few residents, and very quickly you are immersed in Folklore-type-beauty, shimmering creeks, dense forest and statuesque mountains that block out the sun. Being rich with mining history, there are trails here littered like an ant hill. If you are lucky to get past some slashed tires, very large grizzlies, monsoon weather, rock slides or avalanches, you will find yourself in a third dimension atop a castle above the clouds where the world robs a bit of your breath away.
The First time I made it to “Heaven” was before cell phones existed, but there are a few faded Kodak prints growing old in my photo album. That gauntlet of a rocky goat trail is now blanketed over with 30-feet of boulders. Needless to say, one does not venture here without being prepared.
Many of my good friends will recall my notorious 1989 Kawasaki KDX 200. I was so proud of that purchase as it was my largest dirt bike to date. I saved every penny, and I did not care that it used more oil than it did fuel. I frollicked home with my new purchase, thinking of all the new adventures that lay ahead in the following years. Little did I know that many of those adventures would teach me most of my mechanical knowledge and most of that I learned 20 to 40 kilometres back in the bush with eight, 10 and 12 millimetre wrenches and a pair of needle-nose pliers. A teardown of the engine and rebuild saw me back on the trails pretty quick, along with some custom-made black flames that I had cut out and applied myself for extra speediness.
My posse of dirt bikers and I headed up the Wheaton Valley that day, and decided to bank a right, up the Red Ridge Trail. Red Ridge, although absolutely picturesque and beautiful with its red shale rock, is also very risky with its billy goat trails and steep drop offs.
I was making my way up the side of the mountain on the main trail, when I heard a loud bang and I went to downshift and there was nothing there to shift my bike anymore. I pulled the clutch in and stopped the bike to assess the situation. Much to my dismay, it seemed a rock had come up and cracked the foot shifter clean off at the transmission, and now I was permanently stuck in third gear. My posse caught up with me once they realized I was missing, I bomb-started the bike back down the mountain and we made our way back to town.
A quick call to Listers Motorsports to order parts made me realize that I had left an $80 shifter lever on the side of the mountain. Back when I was 18, that was a lot of money and even though I had three part-time jobs, I was as cheap as they come. In the present day, with the price of fuel one has to consider how long the trip is and do a cost comparison. Back then at $.80 a liter for fuel was not really even taken into much consideration.
I decided I would take my chances on a work night and head back up the mountain to go get my shifter lever. For some unexplained reason, I could not find any of my friends that wanted to go on this incredible mission with me. Looking back through these more experienced eyes, I shake my head and laugh. Life is hard, but it is much worse when you are stubborn. Even harder still when you are stubborn, cheap and can’t say “no” to an adventure.
I still had my bike loaded in my truck from the weekend, So I headed back to the Wheaton River Valley. Of course the bike was cold now so it was going to be impossible to bomb-start in third gear. With the assistance of some local friends sporting a cowboy hat with a gunshot hole through the brim, a missing tooth and a ‘79 F250, we got a rope wrapped around my handlebars and after a few wipe outs down the Annie Lake Road, we were able to tow my bike to the point it started and off I went for the evening.
The dirtbike ride there was pretty uneventful despite having to pin the throttle through a few water holes, mud bogs, steep drop offs and hairpin corners. Half an hour later I arrived at the base of the Red Ridge Trail and dumped my clutch to turn the bike off. As soon as I pulled my helmet off, goosebumps blanketed my body as I observed and heard a noisy ruckus in the tall willows 30-feet from me. I obviously had disrupted some very large grunting animal, whether bear or moose, off through the tall trees up the side of the mountain. I never did get to see what it was, but by the looks of the swaying 12-foot willow tops, it was incredibly large and It was then at that moment, I realized how small, insignificant and stupid I was.
I knew I only had a matter of time before my bike would cool down and I wouldn’t be able to bomb start it again, and I was already starting to lose daylight. I had no time to worry about the monster in the bushes not far away, so I started running up the Red Ridge trail as fast as my little short legs would carry me. I was hoping memory would serve me well while looking for the grey, steel shifter lever amongst all of the grey rock.
A half hour later, panic was starting to set in a bit as I was losing more daylight and realizing my bike may not start once I get back down the mountain and I will be stuck in the middle of the Wheaton River Valley at night, completely by myself as a type one diabetic. We did not have cell phones to rely on back then, and not like it would have worked anyway being enveloped with a world of tall mountains.
My eyes, still frantically scanning through the rock and my heart-rate escalating, I realized this may be a failed mission. It was then that a silhouette of a man-made object hit the corner of my eye. I launched to the ground and grabbed my reward and the feeling of satisfaction and alleviation swept over my body. The sun was just dipping below the mountain tops as I stood on the edge of the mountain holding my found shifter high in the sky followed by the loudest “yeah baby!” that echoed through the valley. My God did I feel accomplished.
I raced down that mountain side, desperate to get my bike going before it cooled off. It was dark enough that I could just make out the trail in front of me. I wasn’t too concerned as I had a light on the front of my bike for the ride home. I slid to a halt beside the green dirt bike, pulled in the clutch and started running as fast as I could. My Kawasaki was about 220 pounds and I was about 160 pounds but I was strong as an ox back then. “Please start, please start, PLEASE START!” As I popped the clutch I let out a huge gasp of air as I heard my bike fire up and I held on for dear life as I pinned the throttle and hoisted my leg over. My moment of gratefulness ended quickly once I found out my headlight wasn’t working, and now I was pinned in third gear going through a gauntlet of water hazards, steep hills and overhanging trees in complete darkness.
Not even the moon came out to aid me in my kamikaze mission, and all that was guiding me was a few lighter shades of dirt on the trail and some varying hues of grey rock.
For the next few kilometers, my heart was pounding in my chest as I had narrow miss after narrow miss along the trail. The water hazards were my biggest concern as you had to be able to see great detail to get through them especially with the steep banks on either side of the creek. I managed to “ragdoll” it through those as well, getting tossed this way and that.
My breathing started to slow down as I was approaching the last kilometre of trail before I reached my truck. The forest started to open up a bit on even ground and that’s when the shock hit me that I was surrounded by a number of panicked-looking, glistening eyes in the night.
It seemed I had ridden right into a herd of escaped horses and I could not make out the bodies or how close I had come, just little hints of shiny eyes flying in every direction. I managed to not run into any of them or get kicked off my bike, despite seeing how close some of those eyes I got to.
A few minutes later I finally reached my destination, loaded up my dirtbike in the back of my trusty Chevy pick up and headed back home down the winding Annie Lake Road whilst shaking my head and laughing at myself. No one was going to believe me and you just can’t make this stuff up. But the point of the story is I accomplished finding my shifter lever.
I was born in 1982 and we were the last generation that didn’t have cell phones. They just started coming out when I was in my early 20s and they were the size of a satellite phone. There was no back up for any of us. No one to call, no googling to be had. Just fumbling throughout life getting into predicaments and using our heads and adapting to get out of a situation. A disconnect from the world and nothing but adventure at our fingertips. A few small photo albums make up your youthful memories if you were lucky to have a camera and a few rolls of film. We are a generation that will always survive as we are extremely adaptable. The ability to adapt to any situation is one of the strongest skills that one can possess.
I learned a few new things about myself on this particular trip—that I am so cheap it gets in the way of common sense, that I should really wait to go with a buddy as well as checking my equipment before I head out and thinking about the challenges I might run into with daylight and the weather. I actually know all of these things quite well but it really seemed like just a harmless quick trip at first.
Rest assured, the Yukon has a way of eating up people five minutes from your front doorstep.
Plain and simple, you need a decent skill set if you are going to survive up here, no matter how close you are to home.
