August 8, 2004
Colorado Springs to Mount Princeton and St. Elmo
A week-long dual-sport motorcycle adventure begins at 8,000 feet. I ride with Sam Correro, Mississippi-based creator of the TransAmerica Trail map and rollchart system, along with Chris and Spice from Georgia, to 12,000 feet and sweeping views of the famously scenic Chaffee County area of Colorado.

Two hours from Colorado Springs Sam pointed the truck away from the Arkansas River and toward the mountain we'd be climbing that afternoon on the dual-sport bikes he'd trailered from Mississippi. "There it is," he drawled. "Now we'll see if you can ride."

Gulp. Mount Princeton is 12,000 feet high. We'd begin at 8,000 feet from the Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort, and take a jeep road to the top. "There'll be some rocks, but it's wide enough for a truck, so I consider it an easy ride " Sam added, after laughing at my expression. He knew I hadn't ridden dual-sport since I was a pre-teenager in rural North Carolina. Since my family's move to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1974, I've been strictly an on-road kinda gal, unless you count some sidecar adventures on China's backroads in the north-east of the country, where highways turned into riverbeds for miles at a time.

"This area is one of my favorites on the entire trail," he added, and that's saying something, because Sam Correro has been exploring dual-sport trails in the United States for over three decades, and is considered the expert in cross-country off-road riding.

A Mississippi pharmacist, Sam's longtime passion for dual-sport motorcycle riding led him from creating dual-sport tracks here and there in the American South, to creating a trail across the entire country, incorporating a series of jeep and single-track trail maps that will soon lead riders from coast to coast without sullying their knobby tires with paved roads.

"It wasn't until about 1988 that I really got the idea that I wanted to map a trail all the way to the Pacific Ocean," he told me. The truck bumped over a deep pothole, and Sam glanced in the rear-view mirror to check that the two motorcycles were still holding tight. He'd arrived at my motel in Colorado Springs that morning in his longbed truck, towing a red and purple trimmed Honda 600R and the bright green Kawasaki 400 KLX I'd be riding.

"I started the trail from my home in Mississippi. First I bought a map to see if I could get to the Arkansas state line without any problems, and then that was good, and so I bought another map to see if I could get to the Oklahoma state line without any problems, and then the first thing you know there was the Pacific Ocean."

Of course it really wasn't as simple as that. Sam, a pharmacist, spends evenings poring over obscure state and county maps to pick his way across the country off road to the areas he wants to explore further, like Chaffee County here in Colorado, whose extensive trail system is located in arguably one of the most beautiful areas of the country. This place is a mecca for dual-sport riders, all-terrain vehicle (ATV) riders, mountain bikers, hikers, four-wheel drive truckers, fishers, hunters, herbologists, geologists, and other varieties of nature lovers.

"We'll head up Mount Princeton for a few hours before it gets dark, then see what kind of time we have left," said Sam, interrupting my incessant questions about the trail. Mount Princeton is one of the Collegiate Peaks of the Sawatch Range in the San Isabel National Forest, each topping out at over 14,000 feet. From north to south they lie in a line from Mount Harvard, Mount Yale, Mount Columbia, to Mount Princeton; Harvard and Oxford lie elsewhere in the state. Nearby are two other peaks, Mount Antero (famous among gem collectors) and Mount Shavano, which are both named for the Ute Native American chiefs whose tribes were displaced ("given" plots of land elsewhere) in the 1800's during the great mining frenzy. One of our excursions this week would be to an area between Mount Princeton and Mount Antero into St. Elmo and up the Tin Cup Pass trail , names that meant nothing to me now, but soon would spell disaster.

When we reached the Mount Princeton Hot Springs Resort, I was thinking that we might have time to hang around to soak in the pools, spoiling ourselves a bit before bouncing up the trail. But it didn't look as if soaking in hot springs was Sam's first priority.

"If Chris and Spice are here we can go right up the mountain after lunch," he said. Chris and Spice are a Georgia couple who started their round-the-world motorcycle journey a few years ago by riding the entire length of the TransAmerica trail. When they asked if they could join us on this trip -- this area had been one of their favorite portions of the system -- I'd enthusiastically agreed. I'd been following their online adventures for years, and was anxious to meet them to hear firsthand about their experiences on the trail and around the world.

We turned into the motel parking lot and immediately spotted Chris and Spice walking across the grass. Chris had been all set for his around-the-world journey when he met Spice. He figured he could either stick around and delay the trip, or she could come with him, riding on the back, or she could learn how to ride herself and they could both do it. She was game, and took motorcycling classes while he set up a second Kawasaki Dual Star for round-the-world touring -- lowering it a few inches to better fit her 5"4' frame and making the same modifications he'd done to his -- mostly stabilizing and protective measures. Then they took off.

Spice told me that at the beginning of their journey Chris said, "Okay, let's go," and she said, "Wait...Can we start in a parking lot? I've only ever ridden in a parking lot." Nope. She had a literal "crash" course in riding on the TransAmerica Trail, good practice for riding in places like Peru and Argentina. (Next up for them is Africa.)

We geared up, and in no time the four of us were across the street and up the mountain. The KLR 400 turned out to be a little tall, even for my 5"8' height. I could put my toes down pretty solidly but couldn't sit flat-footed, which would have been ideal. "Well, just go and you won't need to put your feet down," laughed Sam, and he was right.

The dirt road to the Mount Princeton trail was flat and smooth but soon turned into a rutted, rocky path up the mountain. I followed Sam, and Chris and Spice followed far enough behind not to be eating our dust. Sam picked his way through the rocks and gullies, and I tried to pick the same path, but soon gave up and chose my own trajectory.

It was nerve-wracking at first, getting used to a bike that was light and skittered around on the rocks and dirt. I found that -- unlike my road bikes -- I could manhandle it around and so was inappropriately trying to make corrections by jerking the handlebars around. I've ridden fairly heavy road bikes for a couple of decades now, and just wasn't used to what seemed at first like instability, but was actually a nimbleness that is advantageous in an off-road situation. It feels squirrely when the back tire hit a rock because the back end slides out, which is natural and desirable, but not a feeling I was used to.

Sam zigzagged up and up along switchbacks and through gullies and over branches and fairly large rocks and if he was visible I watched him to see how to handle an obstacle (watch those big rocks!); banking about six inches from a cliff edge to run up a switchback (don't look down!), and dodging a piece of driftwood root sticking out of the dirt on the cliffside (keep an eye on the side of the trail!). I couldn't believe it when we met an SUV coming down -- it never occurred to me that someone would want to take such a thing up this kind of road, but I guess that's what those TV ads are all about. I was exhausted, and grateful to stop though, and we stopped a couple more times for more four-wheel drive vehicles that lumbered by, and to take photos, drink water, and once to admire an impressive rock fall, the one that you can see scarring the mountain all the way from the highway. I was astounded that I'd actually made it up that high.

Everyone had prepared for the cold temperatures of high altitude but it was unseasonably warm and at every stop we shed clothing. The hikers we passed wiped sweat off their faces, gasping in the thin air. You get dehydrated much more easily up here than at sea level. Thank goodness speed wasn't our goal. When we finally reached the top of the trail, Chris' GPS showed we'd made about 12,000 feet. We parked the bikes and walked up the last stretch of hill only to find an SUV parked there. The owner, a muscled, wiry hiker in his late 60's was dumping water on his head and toweling off, having just finished a hike around the mountain. When he left, Chris ran to get his bike, and played around in the dirt precariously close to the edges.

I thought I'd be more nervous going down than coming up. Throttle, back and front braking techniques are tricky and essential to staying upright, and after some advice -- "only use your front brakes," said Chris; "only use your back brakes," said Sam; "don't listen to either of them," said Spice -- and a few scary slides, my my hell-bent teenage instincts returned and I didn't even have to think about it any more. I relaxed, glancing down at the scenery, over at the blue sky and white clouds, at the neighboring mountain, the wildflowers, and almost forgot that I was riding along a cliffside road from which I could easily tumble several thousand feet...until I came up too fast on a rocky switchback.

Chris and John, both hot-dog dual-sport riders, impressed us with their speed and finesse, but Sam kept me going slow and steady, practicing for the more difficult days ahead.

We were down the mountain in no time and it turned out that John Clements was waiting for us at the lodge. John is a longtime biker, a Silicon Valley software transplant to Austin, Texas, and he'd been on this ride before, and documented it as part of a ride report on Sam's site. We had plenty of light left, so after he unloaded his bike and suited up, we headed to St. Elmo and up Tin Cup Pass to scout for the next night's campsite.

Ten miles later of smooth packed dirt we were there, in a revived ghost town with a few gift shops, restaurants, a bed and breakfast, and ATV riders passing through like wild west cowboys.

On our scouting jaunt up Tin Cup pass I had my first spill, simply from going too slowly. I gently fell over as I tried to make my way up the first part of the trail, a slippery rocky slope, and lost momentum. There was no harm done to me or the bike, but on the way down about a half-hour later, and on the same slippery, rocky slope, and only fifty feet from being in the clear, I just plain got nervous, locked up the front brakes and fell again. The engine landed on my right foot and squeezed it sideways against a big rock. I felt a tingling that hinted that I should take a look and sure enough, my second toe was bent up at an odd angle at the third joint and the skin underneath was ripped and bleeding. I don't know how, because I was wearing stiff motorcycle boots, which I put back on for the ride back. Even the podiatrist on call at the Salida emergency room couldn't explain it, though he was able to very smartly jerk the last joint of my toe back into place and put three stitches in my toe rip.

While I was there, I took the opportunity to poll people in the emergency room about responsible land use. The nurse was a hiker and a dual-sport rider, the general doctor was a dual-sport rider, the X-ray technician had a four-wheel drive truck, and the podiatrist called in to deal with my toe was a mountain biker. "It's a controversy," they all said, without further comment, except that the podiatrist volunteered, "Chaffee County is 88 percent government owned, so they makes the rules."

It also created some more time for Sam to give me the rest of the story of the TransAmerica Trail. He bought his first dual-sport bike in 1971, after selling his Norton B11 Commando, which was his very first motorcycle. Honda CB 350, then in 1980 a Honda XR 500. He rode the Tennessee River Valley, a recreational site set up by the TVA for motorcycles, with friends. In the late 70's, in Mississippi, the Army Corps of Engineers built a recreational dam and set aside a portion of land for motorcycles, if Mississippi locals would actually volunteer to make the trails. Sam and some friends just started building single-track motorcycle trails, which attracted people from miles around. He started riding from Mississippi to his mobile home in the National Forest at the base of Mount Cheaha, the tallest point in Alabama. They also gave dual-sporters a plot of land and so he and some of the same guys started building trails there through to the mid-80's. That's when he really got started doing the trail.

Sam pored over maps, finding routes that would bypass all the big towns, and minimize river and Interstate highway crossings. He spends weekends and a week of his vacation each year to ride these routes, carefully marking turns and GPS coordinates on an east-to-west trajectory."It's taken about ten years," he told me. "Not that it was tedious, but I could only work weekends, and I couldn't do it during the winter."

Sam makes these expeditions alone except for when his son Phillip can come along -- who is now 19 and also wild about dual-sport riding. "I concentrate better by myself and anyway I do crazy things like get up at 4:30 in the morning to be at the trailhead by sunrise. A lot of times I leave work on a Friday at 5pm and literally drive all night to get to where I stopped the last time, then ride directly to the trailhead, get a couple hours of sleep, work for a few hours on the directions, then drive back home and while it's still fresh in my memory, put it into my computer."

Flat sheets come out of the printer in three columns to be cut up and taped together to be made into "roll charts" that riders set in roll chart holders they mount to a handlebar. Most of these riders also have trip meters and GPS units as well.

Anke Irmscher of New York City commented in her ride report, "I had been a little worried that keeping on top of the roll charts would required all my attention, leaving little time to enjoy the ride. But the roll charts are really easy to read, and I quickly relaxed. I realized that my odometer was a little slower than Sam's, so whenever I got to the mileage stated on the roll chart and had not made my turn yet, I knew I had just missed it. In some sections, the roll charts also have GPS coordinates, which is an additional benefit. For riding the Trail you don't need a GPS, but it gave me a feeling of additional security, and you always know where you are and where you came from. These little gadgets are great! For long distance off-road rides I would recommend mounting a GPS to the handlebars of your bike and connecting it to an external power source through a cigarette lighter. The vibration is just too great for battery use, and you are constantly running out of power. I used a GPS (Magellan Meridian Platinum) for the first time on this trip, and aside from the Trail, it enabled me to go on small roads and dirt trails that are not on most maps. However, Sam's Trail maps are very good and detailed. I consulted the map every 10 to 20 miles just to make sure I was where I was supposed to be."

So far, Sam has fully documented a 5000 mile stretch from Sparta, Tennessee to Port Orford, Oregon. "This fall and winter I'll try to complete the South Carolina to the Tennessee portion and then it'll be finished," he says. From Tennessee the trail runs through Mississippi, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, through the extreme NE of California, to Oregon.

Except it's never finished. For example, if a bridge is condemned and the state (or federal government) has no intention to rebuild it, he has to find a way around. But when a portion of the trail gets paved over, he just leaves it. "It's just too complicated to find another way around," he admits. We came across a couple of these roads during the trip, but they were pleasant byways, and the fact they were paved didn't take away any of the charm for me.

As the trail becomes more and more popular, Sam hears reports from riders who give him new information about bridges or difficulties in following directions, landmarks that change, or other confusions. "If two people miss the same turn," he says, "then I have to find out what's going on. But if one person out of ten misses it, there's nothing wrong with it. So far the road chart as it exists is pretty good. There are places that can use a little improvement, which I do little by little."

Sam expects to complete the TransAmerica Trail in 2005, and retire from pharmacology sometime in the next couple of years. But he's not ready to retire from his role as explorer of of-road trails through America. In fact, he says he's already started a South-North trail, which he's officially named the "Shadow of the Rockies Trail." Starting in El Paso, Texas, it will run along the Rockies to an as-yet unidentified border in Canada. He's got the first 240 miles done and is selling maps for it now.