Great Western Trail Tracks Wanted bits and pieces OK!!!!

Gee, that makes sense. Dang! ...I'll get better with more practice.

I have posted Active Log tracks for Smokey Mtn road on both dualsportmaps and GPSXchange. The tracks are under 4 Corners Loop from about a year ago. I also posted them for our Desert Loop Death Valley ride from about 2.5 years ago in both places.

They have the Smokey Hollow option. I am sure dualsportmaps also has tracks for the non-Hollow option in the south. I think BigDog's GWT tracks have this section.

You can't beleve how much I know (read that as do you have any idea how many mistakes I have made?).

I will look for Smokey tracks.

I found lots of options from a friend who just rode all of it.

What is recomended for GWT? one way or options

We did the section from the junction of 160 and 89 west of Tuba City up to Kanab last week. We chose to do the version west of 89 along the rim of the Grand Canyon. The AZ Benchmark map show this as being part of the Great Western Trail

I think we were following Crawdaddy's tracks in that area. We only went to one overlook. We had a little problem with the tracks about 17 miles north of 89. The track took us into the yard of a ranch house and then down a steep rocky hill. Then there was no road where the tracks said there was. The originators may have ridden in a sand wash.

Anyway we found an easier way around this. But after we got back I heard from the group doing the AZBDR that they rode this section the next day and got stopped by the Navajo Police looking for some motorcyclists who had caused some trouble the day before.

That group had gotten permits to ride on Navajo dirt roads. I knew about the permits but blew it off.

This was a great ride with spectacular scenery and some nice challenging roads getting up to Jacob Lake.

I had intended to explore the area north of 89 in the Seaman canyon area, but it was late and we skipped it. I wanted to see if a group could get thru where Jerry had to turn around.

After Kanab we went down to Toroweap and then into Mesquite by the pretty challenging southern route. We found some great riding in the Alamo NV area. We then crossed Utah and southwestern CO and then back home to NM.

I have posted our tracks on GPSXchange and will put them on DualSPortMaps.com soon.

Yes the trail down to ranch was documented and as "don't try". My tracks in this area are all proofed by me last year. I still want to try to follow the GWT signs east form Jacob Lake.

I am in flagstaff working on option to bypass Williams, go past Falgstaff to Wupatki. Did 137 miles today with about 5 miles of gas left when I got back to Flagstaff.

Sounds like fun.

Our original plan was to come into Jacob Lake like you described, but your tracks down by the rand Canyon looked like more fun, so I switched the plan.

I guess one could still go down to the Grand Canyon and then turn north on Buffalo Ranch rd and still miss a lot of 89A

It looks like you used my tracks into Jacob Lake from south & north rim and out north except I avoided a little Hwy.

What GPS are you using and how do you have record tracks set? I use "Auto" and "Most Often". Your tracks are very bad. Overlay yours on mine and you see big difference.

I also now have more dirt (less hwy) west of Tuba City.

Over S/E of Durango you were on My version of Old Spanish Trail for a while. Check it out on GPSX and give me any advice.

I have a Montana. On long DS rides I set it for .2 mile per point. I guess this is a holdover from my 60CS days when I wanted to capture the whole trip in memory.

I guess I will have to do some research on Auto and Most Often. Never heard of them.

I assume I can get your Old Spanish Trail tracks from GPSXchange. I will look for them. We were just riding oil field and forest roads from maps and previous trips.

Do you get Navajo permits when riding dirt roads there?

But I guess Tuba City is actually on Hopi Land. Don't know what their permit policy is.

In Tuba City, North of the highway is Navajo, South is a small Hopi area.

Carliss S. at the Hopi Cultural Center near Second Mesa said he's not aware of any type of permit for what we do. I suggested they create something so we could dual sport in that region, and they could collect a few bucks. He seemed more interested when I suggested I wanted to bring a big group of paying customers on a "back country ride". He's interested in anything that will bring more people through, who have money to spend. Contact him here, and tell him that small group of bikers from April sent you:
concierge (at) hopiculturalcenter.com

On our April trip there, on a back road, we came up on an SUV with several BIG guys in it. They stopped us and started grilling us about why we were there and what were we doing. They had a serious bad attitude (amplified by their obvious earlier drinking), and told us to get the hell out because it was their land and we were not welcome. All previous encounters with locals was the exact opposite. Carliss from the Hopi Center told us he thought knew the guys, and knew they were trouble makers. Apparently outsiders steal artifacts from the back country, and it has become a very sensitive issue. Anyway, I just thought it would have helped us if we had an official Hopi "passing through" permit. The Navajo permit doesn't seem to cover "passing through on the back roads", only camping, hiking, fishing, and hunting, which we are not doing.

Yes please do. Neither mileage or time work well, use Auto on 60/76/62/78, don't know Montana. It is smart enought to record lots of points during turns and few points on straights.

Yes GPSX, and yes lots of oil (or gas) field roads. I was running out of gas, found a pop bottle was going to flag down truck with quad. Came upon pump station, went in, told guy my sob story, he was biker showed me photo of big group ride he just did and filled my tank from their pump.

Yes Crawdaddy got one but I never bothered and never got caught by police. Did get stopped by rancher north of Camron. Told him just sight seeing, no guns, and just riding thru. He was nice and said OK.

Rode three days in AZ last week. Recorded signed GWT west of Jerome but rocks were impossible had to bull dog twice, I don't think it would be possible going up.

Also recorded an option missing Williams and going to Flagstaff and then to Wuptaki. Very cool ruins.

Posted on GPSXchange.com .gdb is only way, .gpx is over a meg

I took a look at your OST track. We were well west of you on this trip.

I have done a lot of the ride you showed. There is a slight problem in that much of it is on Jicarilla Reservation land. They usually have signs saying do not enter, but they have never bothered me.

It was really interesting to see that the road at the north end of your track went thru into Colorado. I always thought with the intersection of two Indian reservations, National Forest, and a state boundary that it would be closed.

I find it much less stressful to stay on BLM and Forest land.

We tried your Track 6 south of 84 leading to Abiquiu resevoir many years ago. It ran into a vertical wall at a mesa. We had noted there was a road on top and only a half mile gap or so between them.

I guess I have seen the Auto track logging function and was reluctant to try it because I have had so many problems with the GPS unit making any decisions.

But I will try it next time I am out.

Actually I have found .2 mile per point works well for navigation 99.9% of the time. But with the 60 I didn't have much choice. There have been maybe a couple of instances where a turn was a little hard to find.

But I admit it isn't as pretty on the map.

I suspect that if the AZBDR goes thru the area near the Grand Canyon west of Tuba City that there will be a lot more guys riding there, and the Navajos will start enforcing the permit rule more.

1) I was just talking about Durango area. See attached file. Thanks for riding some options I did not catch. In all my tracks open then and if there is time tag it is has been riden by me or someone on the net. If no time tag it is just a plan.

2) The signs kind of imply roads are open but don't get off them. I passed a few vehicles and just waved.

3) Re Track 6, did that highway section in motorhome. Thanks, I will delete Track 6 from next scouting trip. What about Tracks 2 & 7?

4) Know what you mean but old units to two "Auto" things very good. First as I said "Auto" on active log points is very smart algorithum, maximum accuracy with minimum of no information points. Your 0.2 is a big waste on straight and very poor on sharp turns. See attached file at Jacob Lake. Other is "Save" in GPS vs "Filter to 500" in Mapsource. GPS always gives you 500 points, MS cn give you as few as 300, Algorithum is veryi different. I use 500 point tracks from Gas to Gas for all my Dual Sport rides and I really like to get the full 500.

Jerry, per your advice I have started using Auto track point creation on my Montana and I generally like the way it works.

The setting "more frequent" produces more points than necessary for DS rides, but it is great for single track where there are places with no visible track on the ground like in overgrown meadows.

My only complaint is that it produces lots of annoying points when you are stopped for any length of time. It doesn't hurt anything but whenever I see such a cluster, I wonder what the hell happened here.

Guess I will get used to it.

I never noticed this with "Auto" and "Most Often" on 76. How long stopped? I usually turn tracks off on 76 when stopped, then again I don't stop much.

Yes on some rides, I split a 100 mile track and give active log section in center where you can't see where single track is.

I am leaving for Prescott Saturday for party on Sunday. Will then head up the GWT. Checking one section by Jacob Lake then heading up north of Hwy 70, will try to get to Evenston WY.

I noticed the point cluster issue when stopped for 10-15 minutes. But in the "most often" mode the unit is probably going to create a new point whenever there is more than a few feet difference between the last point and the new one.

Apparently the uncertainty in computing a new point is on the order of 10 to 20 ft. So I'm pretty sure this is what is causing the issue.

Have some great rides.

Scott & Crawford,

I finally found the marked trail east of Jacob Lake. It is steep and very rocky. I did it twice, my first and last time.

Russell and I rode up that last year. We enjoyed suffering through the challenge, so it's now part of my route. I agree, many would not like it. The highway going up the hill is pretty fun too!

Thanks for posting the track and the ride review.

We were originally planning to do that on our May trip this year.

Instead we switched to your and Crawdaddy's tracks along the rim of the canyon. So we climbed the hill much further south. It was still a bit of a challenge for the bigger bikes.