Solo Winter Camping + Dirbiking in the Desert

So I'm heading out tonight to do a little camping. I've only got about a half an hour of daylight left tonight. I didn't get as early of a start as I was hoping to, but I'm going into the desert mountains here in southern Idaho where it does usually stay relatively dry in the winter, but this year it's just abnormally dry and warm. And so I figured I'd get out, make use of the weather, and try to log some miles. I was out here last weekend with some buddies, we did a 50k trail race run thing, and the whole time I was just thinking about riding this area. So I popped out the other day, got a few miles in, but now I want to camp tonight and then tomorrow I'm going to see if I can log 100 miles on my dirt bike, just to see what it feels like. I've raced dirt, or mountain bikes in the past, but never dirt bikes, and I'm considering doing it this year. I'm not sure exactly what lane I'm interested in, some sort of enduro style, I don't know, desert or mountain style, but yeah, I just wanted to get a long day in, and so I'm coming out here. This is a super, super pretty area. It's totally different than the Treed Mountain single track, it's a lot more rocky, desert style, but the few times I have ridden it, it's been so much fun, and I just want to do a bit more exploring. Alright, I found a campsite, look at this cool rock formation thing over here. It's so different than the alpine environment, but it is so cool in it's own way. It's just like, I don't know, it's just wild looking formations that make no sense as to how they're going. I mean, there's like a line going vertically straight up that rock, through all of them, there's a bunch like throughout these canyons going horizontally, all different forms. It's just really, really cool. And I am kind of in this, what is sort of a flood drainage basin, but there's others, and so it's unlikely to see any water even if there was a big storm, and there's no, no bad weather forecasted, so this is perfect, and I might try to pop up there in the morning if I'm feeling real spry to catch sunrise, because that is east-ish, and there's kind of an inversion today, it's a little cloudy, and so the sunset is not turning out to be all that colorful over there. That was kind of cool, I just popped up right here, and an owl flew out somewhere right down in there. I don't know what kind it was, it was medium-sized, I set it as a goal a couple years ago to learn as many birds as I could around here, and I utterly failed, I still know like three, so it was a cool one, I can assure you that, and I would give you colors, but I'm kind of colorblind, so that doesn't work, but yeah, really pretty night. Sunset's underwhelming, it's a little smoky from the inversion, but can you see that? The truck's right down there, we're going to pop up at the top here, see how far out I can see. Alright, I'm up at the top here, not a crazy view, this inversion's really pushing smoke and stuff down, but it's still pretty, and actually, you can kind of see this whole zone over here is where I think I'm going to ride tomorrow, I'm not totally sure, but that high point up over here was the high point on our 50k last weekend, and yeah, I've mountain biked out here quite a bit, and it actually took me a few years after moving here to realize that this was the area I had spent some time on a fire years prior, when I had worked out of Alaska, and we bounced down here for a bit, and yeah, I just didn't connect the dots because when I was here for the fire, I just kind of passed out in the backseat until we showed up, and went to work, so, yeah, a little more pleasant being in this area, under these conditions. Good morning, slept pretty good, my back hurt, but that's just because I'm getting old, and the sun is about to rise, look at that over there, so pretty, I heard some noises last night, bouncing around outside, I wasn't sure what it was, thought it might be wild horses because there are some out here on the range, but couldn't get a good look, so it'll remain a mystery, but overall, things are looking good, it's just below freezing, so not too bad, or certainly not bad for this time of year, but look at the light that's starting to show over here, it's so pretty, almost sunrise, the sky is looking pretty already, it's kind of crazy how cool it gets at night, heard during the day, the desert temperature swing, is the next level, it's actually not as hot as today, but it still looks like it'll be frosty, puffy weather in the morning, then cooking out by the afternoon, I'm starting to think, I realized I've seen some sheep out here, like bighorn sheep I think, in past mountain biking, so maybe they were playing around in the rocks, that's what was making the clunking noise last night, super curious, because I poked my head out a couple times, just couldn't see anything, so it's either, it's either sheep, or some massive squirrels, or wild horses, we'll never know, look at this thing, this is a brand new Jetwheel Minimo, just like the one I've got right there, that I've been using for years, and I'm going to give it away, so follow these instructions for your chance to win, oh baby, let's go, right to the top, last night camp, this is insane to be able to come up here at this time of year, it is so warm and dry compared to normal, normally it'd be super cold and icy, and if not icy, snowy, so crazy, but what a cool area, came all the way, around and up this canyon over here, you can kind of see a little two track down there, now I've only got about 20-30 minutes, I've got to try to get all the way back to the truck, and then I'm going to go meet my buddies, we're going to go ride somewhere a little south of here, all right, so I've got a cruise, I only got 19 miles in this morning, I plan to do a lot more than that, I think I enjoyed my coffee a little bit too much, but we'll see how far we go this afternoon, the goal of 100 might be a bit lofty, we'll see how ambitious, your brakes compressed, so what happened is I lowered the pegs, and then my pedals were all too high, okay, my rear brake was stuck down, and my wheel wouldn't turn, it was just stinking, we have to try these things out, I just got them, it's all gone, it's all, oh perfect, loud and clear, I feel like a kid again with walkie-talkies, oh Randy, I just ran over my brand new walkie-talkie, Randy, now he can't even hear me, this is starting out good, did you get your uh, yeah, I ran over my radio, and then I stopped, I'm sorry, no, you're good, that's all good, that's how we're gonna test it, Randy, Randy, this is Chase, yeah, I hear you, sweet, how you doing down there, just watching you guys putz around until we come up with a plan, okay, have you ridden this ridge just to our north here, probably, but I don't recall, yeah, it starts fine, idles fine, just won't go up, I'm happy with it, hit the dirt, still works, oh man, well, we got some great riding in, but my bike started having some issues, for some reason it wouldn't go above idle two different times, and so I'm wondering if something got gunked up in the carburetor and was limiting the fuel or something, I'm not a great mechanic or mechanic at all really, so fortunately I was able to get it running normal enough to get it back to the truck, but didn't inspire a ton of confidence, so logged about another 25 miles, which brings the total for the day only up to about 45, which is a lot less than 100, but that's okay, that's still probably the biggest day I've ever done on dirt bike, which is kind of crazy, and some of the train that we were riding in was pretty rough, I ended up dumping the bike quite a few times, it was all rocky, and yeah, it's a more technical train, so it wasn't just easy cruising, and yeah, feeling tired, but it was a lot of fun, so thanks for joining, catch you on the next one.