Abandoned Logging Roads in the Snow: A Dual Sport Adventure Ride on my Honda CRF250L

Looks like we're up in it already. Looks like an inch or two right here actually. More than I bargained for at this point. Oh it looks semi-cleared. Okay we're gonna go check it. This is a hunting camping spot. That or human sacrifice. Let's hope it's hunting. Feels like I'm on Endor right now. Interesting. Let's just see if we can even get down this road. I'm going woods and today we're gonna ride up do a little side road scouting and probably judging by the rain that's going on down here end up getting snowed on. At least that's what I hope happens. That's right everyone I am the Dork in the Road and I want to be your internet riding buddy. So please don't hesitate to subscribe and don't forget to turn on the notifications so you know when I post awesome new content just like this. So we're back here. We're near Trout Creek campground in the Willamette National Forest above Sweet Home Oregon about 20 miles from Sweet Home and it's it's cold and rainy right now. So according to my truck it's 39 degrees. This is cold rain that you can just kind of tell that a few hundred feet above us is snow. So I wanted to get out in the shitty weather today and see if we can get snowed on a little bit but also just do some this is going to be like a side road exploration maybe adventure. Really I don't have a super solid plan. Thank you for coming along. Hope you enjoy the adventure. It is getting very rainy so I'm going to put on my rain jacket while I unload and then put on my waterproof gear and get riding. higher than it was. I was up here two weeks ago with my dad and daughter. If you saw the three generation snow adventure that was the video. So I have a rough idea where the snow starts. I'm gonna be honest and this sounds crazy but one of my goals was to ride while it's snowing and I picked today because it's supposed to be rainy slash snowy up a few hundred more feet and it's not raining right now. So I may not get to to meet my goal today but we're gonna try. No real agenda. I know the snow level is pretty low so in terms of up and over and really exploring deep in the forest that's going to be kind of impossible just because when you hit the snow it's really slow going. So I'm going to try to stay either in just the a couple inches like before it gets crazy deep or honestly below it if we're going to do any side exploration. But the winter has officially come. We've had a couple big storms and there's a real big storm that's supposed to come. It's Saturday. It's supposed to hit like Tuesday and dump feet of snow up here even right here where I am. Supposed to hit super low. It may dump snow in the valley where I live which is not even barely above sea level. So I wanted to get up this weekend one to maybe catch just the beginning of that storm just to get a little snow but two because I don't know how deep I'm gonna be able to get into the forest after it. But my plan is to keep trying to ride in the winter. So yeah thanks for coming along. Hope you enjoy the adventure. Hope we get into some fun interesting shenanigans. One of the things I'm going to try to do is not have minutes of talking in every video at the beginning or whatever. So if these videos become a little bit shorter it's because I'm trying to in the editing process tighten them up a little bit. Keep it as interesting as possible the whole time. Not do too many long stretches of all talking and no riding. So let me know what you think of that. Let's head up and find the snow first. I didn't bring the drone today because it's supposed to rain and snow so you can't fly it in the rain and snow. So winter time's not a great time to buy a drone but we're gonna get it out a few times. There's a few drone videos that have come out or that are coming out as well so you can get a taste of all that. That's a fun little track. Huh there's that branch the low bridge branch. Might be too low now. I don't think I can get into that. It is cloudy and dark up here even though it's like 11 a.m. I think. I never reset the clock on this so I think it's 11 a.m. It's cold though. Getting colder I can feel it. Jesus this corner's tight. What's this one? That was definitely logs across up there. Problem with old abandoned roads is they're old, unabandoned, and when trees fall no one cleans them up. Uh-oh what's that white stuff? Looks like we're up in it already. Nice. Oh there's a tree in the road. This is fresh. A little dusting. It was snowing up here not that long ago. A little slushy. All right this is about the zone where we want to start looking for side roads to explore. There's a tree across the road. We uh I circumvented no what's the word I overcame the obstacle surmounted the obstacle that's it. Yeah so it has been snowing today but it stopped of course when I come up here to play in it. There's the way up to that little spot we saw last time where dad dropped his bike. So the snow is lower than it was last time I was up here. Here's some yeah this was not here before. And it's fresher. Yeah it's pretty though. Come around the corner and you can see where the tree cover isn't stopping the snow from hitting the floor. It's cool. Pretty cool. There's a decent looking side road with a gate. Yeah here's the trailhead. Whoa front brake is not a good idea you dumb ----. Let's go look at the trailhead. Yeah don't pull your front brake when you're on snow that was really stupid. Instinctual. Use your brain bud. Yeah I'm sliding some. Yeah look at me making fresh tracks. This is a trailhead. It's a hiking trail right here. Yeah so what's the snow look like? Looks like an inch or two right here actually more than I bargained for at this point. Is this I don't know if this is a road or this is the trail. There's a little camping spot right here. Pretty sure this is the trail. Yeah I should not go riding up that. Well we are here in the snow and it's thicker right here than I anticipated so I'm wondering if maybe we should go down just a little bit and start our side road exploration there. Oh I feel it snow though a little bit. Yeah it's coming down. Cool dude. The wet stuff's not as slippery. It's when it gets icy underneath that it's a real problem. I feel like it's gonna start snowing any minute. Let's hope so. Now I'm curious how far much farther up on the main road we can get before it gets shitty. So we should head up and just poke around just a little bit. And remember my snow riding experience is literally what you've seen in videos so I'm not very good at it. Not yet. So if I'm going slow and tentative that's because I'm, you know, this is new to me. Oh yeah some snow's coming down. Asking you shall receive. You see look how much lighter it is down here and where the trees are catching all of it. I realize that's not rocket science but just dramatic difference. A couple inches up there and just a smattering down here. All right let's go up just a little farther and see what we see. There's a tree mostly in the road. Isn't it beautiful up here? And if you can't get out into this kind of shenanigans because it's not near you or it's just not something you are able to do I'm so happy to bring you along so you can be my virtual riding buddy and live vicariously and get out and experience some of this beauty because it is really cool. So I'm so happy to be able to share it with you. Oh here's that camping spot. This road, this side, look at this there's like four inches right here. Three or four. This side road is the one where we've been down a few times and we get stopped by. There's a big tree across the road. Oh it looks semi-cleared. Okay we're gonna go check it. I've always wondered what's at the end of this. You want to see what's up here first? It's a cool campsite. You have to hike in but see if only these rocks were far enough apart that you could get a motorcycle through them this would be the perfect moto camping spot but they aren't so you'd have to park right here and walk. I don't see any other way around. Pretty cool though. I really wish there was some way to get back up in there. If I was Graham Jarvis I could just up over that rock but you know I'm not. I'm not Graham Jarvis. Let's check out this side road. See how snowy it is. The snow is wetter so I'm less worried about having zero traction than I was on the other side where everything was super icy underneath. It hasn't been as cold so it hasn't frozen underneath. Oh this has been way cleared. I'm optimistic we might get farther than we ever have on this road. So I am just taking it a little slower because one traction's not as good and two snow may cover up branches or potholes or stuff. I don't want to hit one in unexpectedly so we're just cruising today. Cruising down a snowy side road which is pretty awesome if you ask me. Like here's a big hole in the road. I wonder how deep that is. But there's no tracks here. No recent tracks. We'll see. This is fun. This is awesome. Well I see light precipitation but it looks like just a drizzle. Oh it's cleared. It's cleared. Sweet. Okay well this is where we always got stopped. Look at how there's no snow right here. It's because we're going back down. We just dropped a lot of elevation really quickly. Okay cool. So I've never been this far down this road before. I wonder if this loops back around to that other road that I was on a few months ago when I got stopped by a fallen tree coming the other way. They seem to head in the same direction. All right well look at this you guys. So the one other thing I want to find is a spot to test my survival gear. This, okay I don't see a lot of dead standing. It's been thinned out but that's a campsite you see. A hunting campsite I think. That's probably why it's cleared out. You see that stick across the tree up there? They hang a deer on to dress it. I'm gonna poke around just a little right here because what I'm looking for is a spot to set up a tarp shelter and make a fire and just practice with the gear that I have and see if it would actually help. Feels like I'm on Endor right now. This is super cool. That wouldn't support a deer but it's definitely been put there by a human. Oh it's broken. So it was here. See? Yeah paracord. So this is a hunting camping spot. That's my guess. That or human sacrifice. Let's hope it's hunting. I have to apologize for the breathing. There's heavy breathing. This microphone is literally two inches from my mouth and human beings need oxygen. So why are all these trees knocked down? Like are they logged? Looks like they're logged. So this was thinned. Mushroom. Giant mushroom. Doesn't this look like Endor? I'm gonna give you a panorama and play everyone's favorite music. All right I got a still picture for the thumbnail. Two things to be aware of with these pictures. Just throwing it out there. One, Instagram. Follow me if you haven't. A dork on the road. These get posted way before the video ever goes up. And two, I'll put up every single picture from this adventure on Patreon as soon as I get home. If that's something that interests you, seeing the pictures right when I get back from my adventure, Patreon's the way to go. No pressure but if that's something you wanted, a dollar a month gets you access to all that. And a shout out in the video. So let's see where this road goes. This is the ---- though. This side road exploration. This is why I got this bike. Look at this. We got some snow. This is picture territory. See any tracks? Looks like there may be a tree to circumvent right over there. It is snowing just a little. This is the end. Okay. This is your spot. It looks like there maybe used to be a road or something that continued here. No, maybe not. No, we're on the cliff side. Okay. This is the spot. This is the spot. Look at all this tree cover. This stuff is probably decent wood. This one's not, but there's a lot of good, there's firewood left over. Okay. This is good to remember. I would like to disperse camp here. It's beautiful. Look at this. Beautiful. It's a good spot to practice my dink around turns too. This bodes well for that other road I wanted to check out. This is like exactly the right amount of snow. Yeah, this is, this is the right amount of snow. So I know not super impressive, but I'm learning. I'm learning. Well, that was awesome. Fun. Awesome. Fun. There's more exploring to be done by snowy spot. So up and out of here, there's see, this is how close it is to that spot. Crazy, right? CRF's crushing it as always. Can't say enough about this bike and how versatile and capable it is. Does it all. Doesn't hesitate. Never hesitate. Now you can't see how steep this is, but it's a reasonably steep, steeper, probably three times as steep as it looks on the GoPro in general. Not crazy steep, but it's not flat. Like I'm sure it appears to you. How do you guys feel about this exploration stuff? Probably my favorite thing to do on a dual sport motorcycle is this type of exploring. Just getting out and seeing, going to places that you can't really get in any other vehicle. I mean, or other than walking. So you could drive a truck down here, but mine would not fit well. We've seen that in action before. So it's pretty neat to explore spots like this and find little hidden gems. I mean, often it's just going to be like a little landing camping spot like that, but sometimes you find a waterfall or a cool view point or something that people just don't see. They don't come up here and explore. So that's a good shot for you. Up and around the corner is another side road that I know of that then goes back down. So let's see if we can get to it. Weather-wise it's not that bad. I almost could have sent the drone up today. I'm still pretty, I'm going to baby it for a while. I'm not going to risk it even in anything mildly potentially disastrous. But eventually when I get used to it and feel like I trust it more, I might fly it up. I don't like flying it in and out of these trees and stuff. I like to be in an open area right now if possible. This is a good amount of snow to ride in. Like I said, wet, not icy. Also good. I don't know. What do you think? Comment below if you think I'm going to get any snow today. Predict the future. Don't skip ahead. Is this weather pattern going to continue? Sort of overcast but a light drizzle? Or is it going to turn on me in the next couple hours while I'm up here? Make your prediction now in the comments. Nobody ever does those when I say it, so now it's just kind of a silly fun game I play with myself. So there you go. Should be okay down in. Now my only other concern is it's, it's steep. So I don't, I want to be able to get out with a minimum of difficulty. Yeah, see it's pretty deep. You see this? I know the GoPro flattens it out, but it's about to there. About three inches or so. Men tend to overestimate inches, so I'm giving you the visual. Here's the thing I never do. I never stop and get decent video. Here's another panorama of this really cool spot. So quiet. Don't talk. This is the road I want to explore. How deep does the snow look? Just worry about coming back up if it's crazy steep and crazy deep. Deer tracks, I hope. Yeah, we should be okay. I think I can get back up this. Okay, do it for YouTube. So we're going to go down that trail a little bit. A little bit more side road exploring. There may be a good dispersed camping slash survival gear testing spot down here. All right, let's go down. My only worry is getting back up. Down is easy, so we're going to stay in the rut. I don't remember this one being super steep. Just kind of steep. This would be a super pedestrian, maybe not even video worthy, adventure if it wasn't for the snow. Yeah, okay, there's a reason to keep your visor down. I just got jabbed in the temple by a branch. That could have been my eyeball. But in the snow, man, ultimate epic mode activated. Yeah, it's just that top part that's super snowy. There's a lot of tree cover down here. So there was a tree right here that, if you'll remember, I silkied into oblivion. Actually, that's not true. I just cut a path underneath. Looks like it's all the way cleared. That's awesome. There's a gate right there. That is a good picture. I'm gonna go get it. Well, I want a picture of this gate. So that's funny, that tree right there. Oh, you can totally get around. Hmm, interesting. Into the lion right here. Wow, that is beautiful. You want to feel like well and truly alone in the woods in the winter. If it was snowing, it'd be even quieter. That's how you do it. It's the gift of dual sport. I'm gonna start the church of dual sport. I'm evangelizing right now. It's a big rock. Let's try that other side road a little bit. Really working on this. A quick turn, but I'm not good at it. I feel like the bike's too tall. So I only do a quarter at a time and then I chicken out every time. So I'm feeling I can get my leg down well. But I'm getting better. Couldn't do it at all a couple months ago. Now I'm gonna do a quarter turn on purpose. Look, we're getting a little snow. Very small. See, just a light snow. The wind's picking up. We'll go down this road just a little ways. See what it looks like. We'll evaluate what our future course of action is. I do want to ride in the snow, but I'd rather not have a big unknown climb ahead of me if it starts coming down. It's interesting. This is kind of a repeat of that rainy day dual sport ride video. That was a complete fail on multiple fronts because I had gloves that didn't work. Well, these Tourmaster Coldtex gloves are 10 times better. Lighter, more comfortable. I'm warmer. They're clearly waterproof. So that's a win. And then the silicone cover that Hippodrone's recommended for my GoPro rather than that dive case. No fogging. Seems to be reasonably protected from the elements. So it's a win. This is what happens when you re-evaluate. When you're reflective, you re-evaluate your gear, get new stuff, and then get back out and try again. Can you hear that tapping? I don't know if you can hear it. It freaked me out a minute ago. You probably can't on the mic. It's like this sort of not quite rhythmic tapping. It sounds like the world's slowest woodpecker. I'm pretty sure it's water dropping, dripping onto a piece of wood, but freaked me out for a second. Snow's not crazy, but there is some, so that's good. Let's just see if we can even get down this road. I may end up doing a tight turnaround in a shitty, snowy, overgrown area. Let's just see. Wrong brake, bud. This tree is trying to decapitate me. It's literally putting snow down my neck. That's fun. This is interesting. This may be dumb. It may be a fight to get out of here. Let's see what traction looks like. I think it's going to be okay. I've never been down this far. Okay, we're getting into a little bit more snow. Yep, just a landing, it looks like. Oh, a good one. This is another good spot. Damn, look at this though. Of course, this snow was just a little bit thicker. This is beautiful. This is another landing, another potential camping spot. Another dead end, really. This looks like it's really boggy. There's a pallet right there. Nice. This snow is probably three or four inches deep. This is cool. Look, it's coming down. It's happening. Okay, well, we had optional goals for today. One was get into the snow. Mission accomplished. The other was get snowed on. That's happening, just not to the degree that I had hoped, but it is happening. So to quote my friend, The Incredible Hulk, I consider this an absolute win. So I just wanted to give you a non-helmet cam look at the surroundings. I mean, this spot is pretty pedestrian. Nine months of the year, it's just a landing at the end of a short logging road, but god, right now it is beautiful, pristine, feels isolated. You hear the wind in the trees and that's it. It's amazing. So let me get you a look because I didn't come all the way up here to not have a good video of it to share with you guys. That's why we're here. We're doing this together. Thanks for being my riding buddies. All right, take a look. So that's the road I came in. Try not to give you vertigo moving this around. There is the CRF250L. I'm going to move over to the center a little bit. The amazing beast. Sorry if the video is dark. This GoPro Hero White doesn't have ISO settings, and so it gets the snow and everything else looks like it's nighttime. So this would be another good spot to practice, to bring the survival gear. Easy to rig a tarp up right there even. Oh yeah, look at this. If you look up into the woods, I don't think we're going to get big snow today, and that's too bad. Looks like it's determined to just do this drizzle overcast thing, but that's okay because it's actually a lot safer. If it started to come down big snow, I'd immediately have to head back just to make sure the road wasn't going to be crazy, but I'm just going to enjoy this for a few minutes and then head back up this road. I don't know. We may head back down. We'll see where we end up. Let's see what the weather does. Thanks for coming, guys. This is awesome. So we're going to head back up to the main road, I think, because really there's no other way to go. So let's see what the climbing in the snow is like. Should be interesting. Coming down is no problem. Of course, gravity is very helpful, and I'm feeling it won't be on the way back up unless you know something about gravity that I don't. All right, friends. What's the technique? I'm going to guess higher revs, more clutch, not constantly lugging it to keep the tire moving. Is that it? Let's try it. Thank God for the peak on this helmet. You can use it to deflect branches. Yeah, that seems to be better. More revs, more clutch. Yeah, okay. And you can stop and spin if you get one, but you don't lose power necessarily. I'm just reluctant to ride the clutch, as you know, after I destroyed this one, but sometimes I believe it's necessary. I'm going sideways right now. All right, we're almost back to the top. Okay, I had a really good run there where I wasn't putting my feet down, but it's happening again. Trying to keep the ass in from sliding out. Thank you, peak. This is the top of the big uphill, and there's only one more on the way out. So that's fun. Sun's coming down a little, but we're probably headed back to the truck, especially if the snow is going to pick up a little. I'd like to ride in it on the way down, but I wouldn't like to be up here in it necessarily. God, this is beautiful too. Get a picture or two. This ought to be a good one. So my goal for this winter is at least once to ride in nasty, huge big flakes. I would love that. But this is snow, so it will count as completing a goal today. Let's see if we can climb out of here before it gets too slippery. Not very much snow on this road. This is pretty steep, so I worry about traction. I know, you can't tell. You're just going to have to trust me. I mean, not 45 degrees, but 30, 35. I don't have a protractor. Just know it looks flat to you, but it is not steep enough to worry about traction. But we're doing okay. That's why I'm stabbing myself in the leg with all these damn branches. I can see the top. Just going to keep it moving. Yeah, here's where it gets a little tricky. Not good traction here. Feet down and spinning. Using the clutch is helping a ton. Thanks to everyone who typed that in the comments before I thought of it. It's that traction control. You got to use your clutch as traction control. Okay, good. Sorry if I'm puffing. A little bit of effort there, but not too bad. Okay. This has been a super fun adventure. Found two really good spots to come up and practice. Two good summer camping spots and winter hang out chill, maybe make a fire later spots. Got to do some snow exploring. Finally got snowed on, which is awesome. So if you enjoyed this video, please consider just hitting that like button. It's not hard. It won't hurt you. Really helps the video if you do that. If you haven't subscribed, please consider it and think about maybe even if you're crazy, supporting me on Patreon, check out some of my other dual sport adventures and subscribe if you haven't, because this is my first winter where I've, where I have told myself I'm going to ride all the way through no matter what the weather looks like. So there'll be a lot of these little adventures. So that's a really long commercial, but I just want to say in essence, thank you all very much for watching. I super appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed it. And as always, please do not forget to be excellent to each other. Thank you. Excellent.