I bought my 2006 DR650 with 1,100 miles on it on July 22nd and hauled it on vacation with me up to Montana on July 25th. I've ridden street bikes for over 20 years and ridden ATV's for a couple years but the DR650 is my first off road bike.
I ran several easier gravel roads during the week and on Friday decided to try to take the bike up Arrastra Creek. I had gone up the trail about 2 miles earlier in the week but it was getting late and decided it was too challenging for me. After thinking about it a few days I decided I would give it another try.
The trail is closed to full size vehicles but open to both motorcycles and ATVs. I also brought one of my ATVs with me so I had a friend come along on the ATV and he is the one that took most of the pictures.
The trail starts out pretty easy but gets rocky less than a 1/4 mile in.
I was a little leary of the rocks, most were loose and some were pretty large. It got worse as we got farther along.
The switchbacks were endless. This was a decent representative of most of them. They got steeper and tighter to the point that my friend riding the ATV couldn't stop and take pictures anymore or he couldn't get going again so I don't have any pictures of the worst ones.
Keep in mind that the 2 tracks you see are about 2' apart, this is an ATV trail, those aren't vehicle tracks.
This is where I turned around the first day. I don't think I'm a very good dirt bike rider yet, but I'm stubborn so after a short pit stop we decided to push on.
Looking back on the trail from the pit stop.
After a week of ownership I think I made the right choice between the KLR650 and the DR650. I am tall (6'2") but only have a 32" inseam so I can flat foot the DR pretty easily on flat ground, but on a trail it is a different story. Being a novice off road rider, I think the KLR being taller and heavier would have had it ending up on the ground a few times, the DR came close to being on the ground a few times, but because it was lower and lighter I was able to keep it from falling over.
Here's a picture of me crossing a little stream on the bike.
More pictures of the trail. These rocks were very challenging to me going up and even more so going down.
This was the first destination. A small lake at just over 9,200 feet elevation. Where were were staying about 10 miles down the road was at 5,600 feet.
I think this is my favorite picture of the ride.
And a closeup with my ugly mug in it.
We were making good time and my confidence was building so we decided to make a run to the top. There were some no tresspassing signs that I hadn't remembered from the past, but they were off the trail and I decided that meant we could stay on the trail but just not to leave it.
The trail to the top is much steeper and rockier than the ride to the small lake. We didn't get any pictures on that part of the ride. At several points I was spinning the rear tire (I still have the stock trail wings on there for now) with both feet down on the ground helping to push the bike up the hill. Coming back down was even more difficult, the large rocks didn't help much while you are creeping down to a steep tight and loose switchback under heavy braking. They would just stop the front wheel in it's tracks and then I would have to catch the bike and get it over the rock and on down the trail. I talked to a couple experienced riders who have been to the top and they both said it was a very difficult trail for them as well. The margin of error if you got out of control going down is very slim.
Here's a picture from the top looking back on the switchbacks that we came up. At the very top left of the picture you can see the trail that I took a picture of looking back from where we stopped for our pit stop coming up.
Here's one with the bike in the picture. Yes that is snow and yes it was August 1st when we were there.
A couple more pictures to end on from the top. My GPS read 9,993 ft where I had the bike parked. Not that high compared to some spots in Colorado, but since we started at 5,600 feet less than 10 miles away we did some serious climbing to get there.
I was happy to get the bike up and back down without dropping it. Probably not the wisest choice of trails for only having owned the bike for just over a week at the time but it worked out. It was much more difficult than I thought it would be compared to having ridden the same trail on an ATV in the past. Not sure if I will get better and this will change or if it will always be more challenging on the bike than on an ATV. It will probably be a while before I get to ride a trail anywhere close to as challenging as this one was (most likely until next year when I go back to Montana).
I did ride the DR on pavement for the first time and it rode pretty well I thought. I do think I am going to buy a full face street helmet to wear on longer rides where I won't be doing any serious off road action though, the off road helmet was really noisy and that little visor thing can sure catch some wind at 90.
Well that's the end of my first report. I had a great time and thought I would share my first real ride.
Nathan
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