Birch Creek Ranch – Jordan Craters recon Sunday 3/8/08

I wanted to ride into the Birch Creek Ranch as a recon trip for a spring break destination with the camper & trailer.

Byron was to meet me at my house at 8AM , but he showed up at 7AM. After a cup of coffee he told me it was daylight savings time now.

As we headed out I noticed my front brake wasn’t what it should be, the front end wasn’t diving much less no stopping power.

Turned around and went back to the house. I cleaned the front disk with some solvent, which seemed to fix the issue.

	Riders- Byron Defenbach KLR 650 John Aiton KTM 640 Loop -240-250 miles mostly pavement.

 

 

 

NEWS FLASH- IT’S STILL WINTER IN JORDAN VALLEY! We topped the tanks off in JV. The gal at the Chevron told us it took a couple of days to get the road plowed back to the ranches from a storm earlier this week. She didn’t know is the road was plowed or open all the way to the Craters. The road is gravel & had been plowed by a cat, so the bed was firm. Not sure what the air temp was other than cold. The boys didn’t like you standing up. As we got closer to the crater there was more creeks & water holes. This one was a couple of feet deep and a skim of ice when I rode thru. We decided the next big one we would turn around. We got to within ~ 5miles of crater and decided not to push our luck. It was too cold to be paddling thru the muck & we didn’t know what type of drainage was ahead. Byron liked to hit the water in 3rd. I think he was trying to roost me even though I was in front.

The Succor Creek road was dry. This might be a better spring break choice. A couple on an ATV said there are lots of two tracks to ride, including a loop that takes you to the top & bottom of Jump Creek Falls.

There is a big sign at the park of everything you can’t do in Oregon, including operating a metal detector w/o a permit