Butte, Chapter 1
We arrived in Butte, unwittingly triggering an epic sideshow that became one of the defining adventures of our trip.
As we descended a long grade on the highway into town, the famed "Richest Hill on Earth" loomed on our right. Today the hill is still being strip-mined for ore; however, underneath still lies some 10,000 miles of mine workings from the historic heydays of the town--some of the most extensive mine workings in the world.
It's hard to grasp the full influence of Butte's mining activity on North American and world events, but I think it's fair to say this extraordinary town drove far-reaching effects. Locally, a vibrant mix of multicultural communities attracted from around the world arose quickly to serve the mining interests. Just as quickly, some of these communities were thoroughly erased by the same ever-expanding workings they served.
Today, much of the main mining site is an environmental nightmare. It's one of the original Superfund sites, with leachate and flooding posing multigenerational remediation challenges and risks to groundwater reserves for the region.
I was keen to spend some time exploring Butte, but since we'd arrived in the afternoon hungry and parched, our priorities were to eat and change our oil before motoring on south. Given the time of day and implied logistics, Jeff and Pete didn't seem particularly interested in sticking around and geeking out on the mining stuff. At that moment this struck me as a big disappointment, since Butte was one of the historical highlights I'd looked forward to on the trip. But for now we stuck with our tentative plan.
At Staacks Motorsports, a Yamaha and Suzuki dealer conveniently located near the historic downtown, we luckily were able to sweet-talk the service team into changing the oil in our three bikes while we waited. This was very nice of them considering we'd shown up without an appointment and there was about a two week waitlist for service.
Still, it was a little disconcerting for us to note how one of the service people had decorated her Harley. Later we learned that Butte is a hotspot of neo-Nazis. It's one thing to read about these things "far away"; it's another to see it first-hand.
Despite full stomachs and cold beer, our group energy was still sagging at this point, probably the cumulative effects of long riding days, endless dust, caked sweat and grime, and the increasing heat and dryness as we edged south. I decided to go along the others' preference to continue south the same day, rather than stay in Butte--even though we'd seen nothing of this historic place. Part of our decision was the challenge of knowing exactly how much distance we could cover in a day or week. With so far to go, we were worried about not reaching the high passes in Colorado, a key psychological goal of our adventure.
With fresh oil under us, we aimed south to a remote section of the GPSKevin route, stopping briefly to chat with a lone cyclist tackling the same route in reverse. These were long, lonely sections of rough road, and I truly admired the tenacity of this woman grinding it out in the dust and bugs.
As late afternoon approached, we found ourselves on the cresting of one of those hills we'd seen in the distance, having reached that point via gravel road that deteriorated into first a rutted dual-track and then, a grassy track that suspiciously lacked signs of regular travel. This in turn devolved into a rocky trail leading down a steep hill into a valley.
Our GPS route clearly showed that we needed to descend this hill, but all the other evidence suggested this wasn't right. We should have followed our hunches and looked for a way back and around, but a cursory search on the maps showed a major backtrack and detour of potentially hours, and we failed to recall an online forum alert about this very section. So, forward we went, with me in the lead as the more experienced dirt rider.
The track was covered in loose rock bordered by thick sagebrush. At first it didn't seem too bad. What I didn't anticipate was the track taking a straight line to the valley, with sharply increasing slope offering no opportunity to stop or even slow down to reconnoiter. Although I tried to ease down as slowly as control would allow, the increasing steepness combined with the loose rock and ruts would allow my bike to bounce, slide, and pick up momentum until it was uncontrollable. Because of my luggage, I couldn't get my weight right back and my rear wheel started bouncing higher and higher until I thought I was going to endo. With no more control possible and the slope reaching 30 degrees just ahead, my rear end swapped with the front and down I went.
The photo really doesn't do justice to how steep this section was. Pete and Jeff were waiting about 200 metres behind me, but also a good hundred or so feet in elevation above me--and we were at around 8,000'. Continuing downhill was no longer a safe option for any of us; somehow I had to get back to the other guys at the top. How to do this proved to be a real challenge for our sea-level lungs, because the elevation alone sucked a good 15% of our energy.
Thus began an agonizing struggle to get my bike and gear back up the hill. Even with everything unloaded and the three of us ferrying bags and riding gear, it took two hours to accomplish. Exhausted and shaking, there was no way I could manage to ride back up through the sage even cross-wise: the vegetation was too dense and caught the pegs, so I couldn't get situated on the bike to get traction and build up speed without stalling or looping out. In the end, we muscled the bike up together, working the clutch and throttle while hiking awkwardly beside and trying to keep the bike upright. It was grueling, exhausting work that just about broke the three of us as we tripped over sage, sweated profusely, and gasped for air.
Jeff had followed me partway down the trail, so next we had to move his DR650 back up, using the same switchback approach. Even though he was a good 100' higher in elevation than where I'd ended up, it still took the best part of an hour to jink our way through the sage, again walking with clutch and throttle. Then Pete's bike. Mercifully, he was high enough on the hill that we were able to stabilize him so he could ride the trail.
After three hours of this screwing around, we'd recovered everything to the top but were absolutely beat and soaked in sweat. Ominously, we seemed to have pushed Jeff's clutch too far, and it was slipping noticeably. Meanwhile, the sun was setting and in the dry mountain air the temperature plummeted rapidly. Having used up all our drinking water by now, we had to find somewhere with water to set up camp, and we had no idea if Jeff's clutch would recover from overheating.
The next hour was a frigid retreat back over the rutted dual track in the dust and darkness, shivering in our wet gear, trying to relocate in the dark a campsite we'd noticed earlier that day.
Turns out it was by a swamp, and clouds of mosquitoes attacked us as we set up in the dark. Eventually the air temperature dropped enough to calm the mosquitoes, but it also brought a heavy dew. As a consolation prize, the night sky was immaculately clear, dark, and full of stars. I tried some long exposure photography with no success.
However, it was now a Thursday, we were ordering too late to get the shipment to Butte by Friday, and Monday was a national holiday. Rather than waste several days waiting for delivery to Butte, we opted to ship the clutch parts ahead to Jackson Wyoming, on the theory that another oil change back in Butte may solve the clutch problems and allow us to carry on while bypassing the GPSKevin route over what we now called "Fuckery Hill". Worst case, we could replace the clutch on Tuesday in Jackson as we passed through.
So, back to Butte to change the oil.
Butte, Chapter 2
Jeff's clutch continued to deteriorate on the 50km of slab back to Staacks. The service folks didn't think the issue was the oil (changed only yesterday!), and we didn't think it could be the clutch given it hadn't slipped previously, and yesterday's abuse of the DR was far less than the abuse needed to get my WRR back up the hill--and I'd had no clutch issues. The only significant variable seemed to be the oil.
To be sure, we disassembled the clutch in the Staacks parking lot.
Sure enough, it was scorched. Those friction rings aren't supposed to be black. And some of them had flaked off: the oil was dark and we noticed chunks of pad around the clutch basket, and the aluminum first ring on the far left was completely bare (we didn't know then that it was supposed to have pads).
In desperation, we got some sandpaper and used laundry soap and water to clean the friction plates of scorched cork, hoping this would be enough restoration to allow us to limp to Jackson on the highway. It was now too late to redirect our clutch shipment to Butte.
After putting it all back together, an initial test ride showed real promise and our spirits lifted. But just to be sure though, after reloading our bike we immediately went to a Honda/KTM dealership nearby and decided to replace the 24-hour old gunky oil with something that we trusted. Draining the old oil revealed a consistency like water - we'd never seen anything like it. It had completely lost all viscosity.
After topping up with some fresh Motorex we aimed our way back out of town only to discover after a few minutes the slippage was now worse than before. The bike was unridable and Jeff had to pull over. Parked on the side of the road at abandoned parking lot, hot, dehydrated, and utterly dejected, we considered our options. Just then, two cyclists rode by, saw our plates, and yelled out "Hey! We love Canada! We love you guys!"
The best decision at that point was to find a hotel for a couple of days and explore Butte. The question was where: A major music festival was in town over the long weekend, and everything was booked up. Then, miraculously, the Hampton Inn on the edge of town told us about a late cancellation--the only room available. I raced ahead to book the room, and Pete limped along with Jeff in the slow lane to meet me there. Fresh cookies greeted us like manna from heaven.
We'd hoped to stay at the Hampton a couple of nights, but only one night was available until the following week. We ended up managing to secure the second last rental car available in Butte, sweet-talking Judy the hotel manager into letting us leave our bikes at the Hampton Inn for the weekend, and packing all our crap into the rental to go on a car camping trip down through Yellowstone to Jackson, to retrieve our parts the following Tuesday. This turned out to be a brilliant plan, although it would mean returning to Butte a third time to reclaim our bikes. We booked ahead at the Hampton Inn, and I have to say this hotel chain proved to be one of the best (and most affordable) options on the entire trip. Big thanks to Judy and her team in Butte for their hospitality and helping us out. Choose Hampton; you won't be disappointed.
As if all this excitement wasn't enough, that Friday night we tried changing Jeff's oil for a third time to no avail, after making frantic trips to WalMart and Autozone to get oil and somehow find a replacement O-ring that had become damaged on his oil filter cover. We'd tried everything, and just had to accept that he needed a new clutch.
Out of options, we enjoyed the simple pleasures of washing up, grabbing dinner and beer, and checking out the local scenery.
Part 5
No comments:
Post a Comment