For the first couple miles, I had the a great view of the snow falling on the surrounding farms androads. Not much was sticking, but the roads were still wet.
After about an hour, I’d made it to the base of the final mountains pass. After getting about half way up, the formerly wet roads became snow coated, and before long, I was riding in the tracks of a car that had gone just before me.
That didn’t last very long, I low sided in a few minutes. Having slid about 30 feet, my bike was in the opposing lane and my cold weather gloves were torn, my clutch lever was bent, and my left frame slider had been ground down. Luckily, there wasn’t any lasting damage to me or the bike, but I was stuck on the side of a mountain with a 700 lb bike at about 06:30 in the morning.
I can barely lift the bike when it’s fully loaded, and I could only slide it around on the snow. With barely any traction in my riding boots, I fell a few times trying to lift the bike.
Having given up any attempts to lift the bike (and having no cell service), I gathered up some of my belongings and waited by the railing. If no car came in the next half hour, I’d walk down to thebase and ask for help.
Luckily for me, I’m about 5 minutes an off duty fire fighter was driving his Jeep down the mountain and saw the flashing red light I had placed on my bike. I had hoped it would make my bike visible to any semi trucks coming around the corner, but it worked to signal for help too.
It took about 20 minutes for us to get the bike on its way down the mountain. Neither of us had much traction, and the bike was extremely heavy. We dropped her three times before we managed to get off the snow and back onto the wet road, and one of those times the tires had spun out and the bike tipped over again.
The guy who had helped me drove off once I was at the base. I pulled over and got out my tool kit. I inspected the bike, removed snow that had been pressed into the fairings, front wheel, brakes calipers, etc. There was a small crack in the left fairing near the turn signals, but beyond that and the bent clutch lever, there wasn’t any damage. Thankfully the frame slider had protected most of my fairings, hard cases, and my shift lever/foot peg.
After taking off the clutch lever and using the bike frame to bend it back into usable condition, I got back on tried to go through the pass another two times, the second time following a snow plow. The second attempt had me stopping once I got to snow (not much had changed in the past 30 minutes). The third didn’t last very long, as the snow plow only went up about half way beforeturning around, at which point I turned around as well.
I rode down to the nearest gas station, which was only a few miles away. There wasn’t an actual station there, only pumps. There was a small bed and breakfast type diner. The owners were a husband and wife that were very welcoming. Aftera hot meal and a shower I started charging my devices and planning a route. They had guessed the storm would have let up around noon, but by 11:00 it only looked like it would get worse.
I decided to take a 150 mile detour south. No matter what, I’d need to go through the mountains, but hopefully the roads would be clear enough to continue on my trip.
I didn’t have cell service, so I marked out the route on the map. My main goal was to go as far south as possible, nearly New Mexico, then go north until I hit I-75.
It wasn’t an easy road, they had sanded them due to the snow chains, and they were very wet, but after a couple hours I was out of the mountains. By 21:00 I had made it to the Kansas border. It was dark by then and I spent a few hours resting.
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