Riding Dangerous Mountain Passes On Motorcycles

Today I'm taking this Pan America over Engineer and Cinnamon Pass here in Colorado. These are two of the more difficult passes in the Rocky Mountain Range. We just rode in through Silverton, Colorado and we're going to be taking the Engineer Pass into Lake City. It should be about two, two and a half hours to get there and then about the same amount of time on Cinnamon Pass back over here to Silverton. I'm not sure of the ability of this motorcycle. I have not taken it off-road that much but if we're being honest I'm not sure of my ability either. So we're going to tackle this one together y'all. All right so this is where the trail gets serious I suppose because it says four-wheel drive, high clearance vehicles recommended, no passenger cars, no RVs, no campers, no semi-trucks. Uphill traffic has right-of-way on all roads and we're going up that mess. Holy moly. I don't know if I'm ready but we're going to send it anyhow. Let's go. It's a long ways down with absolutely no guardrail and we got a long ways to go up yet. Let's keep pushing. Look at the snow. This creek runs all the way down and way up there a big old waterfall breaking. You guys this road is gnarly. All right so we're at the crossroads. This is where either you come this way to Cinnamon Pass or that way to Engineer Pass. Now a guy just stopped me on the trail and told me that my bike was too big to be doing these and he's seen a lot of guys take bikes this size up here and roll them and get in big trouble. I'm just gonna ride it and see what I can do. I mean I don't know if I have to turn around I have to turn around but I don't know I'm feeling more confident every minute. We'll see what happens. There were some pretty big shelves there I had to go up but you know we'll do it. holy ---- what a run that is that is serious. We are almost to the summit. I have lost my mind up here. The bike's doing pretty good but it is a heavy bike for this type of terrain without a doubt. Anyhow let me throw the drone up and take a look at the view up here. All right we have made it to the summit Engineer Pass. Here we are. We have officially made it. The views are absolutely outstanding. Just outstanding. There's some history on it. They even stick American flag up at the top. Look at that. Beautiful. Do you hear that? Look how beautiful this river is just breaking along all these rocks. It just runs along the road the entire way. These are the type of things you're going to find in the valleys after you come out of those passes. It's just gorgeous. What an absolute amazing adventure. Look what we found here. An old abandoned dam. You can see the water running down that side and running down in there but look at the old dam. The water's just busted right straight through it and of course it's along an old mining town that was set up right here. These are the cool finds you find out here when you're running around. All right all right we got to stop and check it out. Right here right off the road we've got a little bitty kind of hangout here. Got a bench there with a couple miners and a couple local ladies and the hard track mine tourist museum. Looks like there's a mine right in here. We definitely have to at least go in and check it out. Look at this. Could you imagine working in this? I'll tell you it's nice and cool though. Museum of all the stuff. Okay and then they run tours when you actually go deeper it looks like This is Cinnamon Pass and look at that valley. That gorge coming up feeding all the way out of these mountains and we've been running. As soon as you come out of Lake City the road's pretty well maintained. You can keep a pretty good clip. 35 miles an hour or more. A nice maintained road. No issues at all and then soon as you start to head up into the pass you're hugging along these mountainsides with these cliff edges going straight down and the road's pretty rough. There's a lot of dips, a lot of rocks, a lot of terrain that could send you off over that edge in absolutely no time. But the views, the views are absolutely spectacular. Okay that is not an easy climb. The gravel gets really thick and it's pretty steep. You got to come up and around that. It's a pretty gnarly climb all together. I have ran into these guys. One of them's in a Tenere 7. It's a little bit of a heavier, heavier bike. Not as heavy as mine but still a fairly heavy bike. I love that bike and we got two guys down here that are still trying to decide. Well that's a tough corner down there. I didn't get a chance to show it to you because I was in panic mode but that's a pretty tough corner down there. It looks like they're struggling with it now. All right man, so we got a few bikes here riding the trail with us. We just caught up with your name from Green Bay, Wisconsin. My hometown man. And what is this? What are you riding on there? Scott. Scott what are you riding? XR650. XR650, nice bike. And then that's a Tenere 7 and then this is a Tenere 7 over here. But of course my friend Lori, she's on her four wheel. This is some of the stuff you're contending with. And we have made it. 12,640 feet. Cinnamon Pass. We have arrived. Pan America is doing pretty good. The views are absolutely outstanding in every single direction. We got the boys from Wisconsin in the house. Life is good y'all. What a run. Okay, absolute worst part about this motorcycle. If y'all see this, look at this. Look at these mirrors. What can you see out of that mirror? Absolute worst mirrors I've ever had on a motorcycle. They're constantly flipping. I thought the seat was the worst, but no. It's definitely the mirrors. And just like that we have made it back to Silverton. That is quite the run. We made it all the way there. Engineer Pass all the way to Lake City. Cinnamon Pass all the way back to in one day. On the Pan America. Fun bike. Really fun bike.