Trip Report -- Baja 1000, Pit 14, Rancho Nuevo York

After a few weeks of scouting and researching our pit location, HelloMrSoul and I headed south, Wednesday morning in the pre-sunrise darkness.

Ok, a few weeks "scouting and researching" our pit? Yes.

We requested the most remote pit possible, and that's what Bob gave us. I consulted with Nomads TW and David K, as to the road conditions in the area. We were to head about 50 miles northwest of Guayaquil, in an area listed as "Rancho Nuevo York", a desolate ranching area west of San Quintin, and gas the THR Kawasaki 4X bike.

After talking to TW I felt confident the best way in was from Hwy. 1, coming in from the south. It looked like about a 2.5 hour drive up a graded road. In reality, it took us close to 4 hours to get to RM605. Once there, we realized there was no safe location to pit, and we weren't join to sleep/camp 3 feet from the race course in an arroyo. By then the sun had set and we are in total darkness, still not sure if we we're in the correct location. There were no landmarks and the Baja Almanac was worthless. I sent a Spot GPS message to my wife saying, "We're OK and having fun", when in reality we were wondering if the Kawasaki rider would even find us the following morning.

Quick note: RM605, as well as other markers, were improperly labeled. During pre-running, our rider told us 605 was actually labeled 615. We found the marker, like I said, after 4 hours of mind numbing, shock killing, tire popping, large ROCKS. We were driving on the course, and it had been beaten to frigging hell the last couple of weeks. There were moments where I didn't think we could go further. So, when we made it to the marker and found nothing suitable for a pit, we were rocketed into "oh crap" mode. We drove another 20 miles in search of a good spot. We drove those 20 miles back again to 605. We had now been on this dirt road for 7 hours and it was getting late. There were miles and miles of heavy chaparral/cactus that prohibited anyone from even pulling to the side of the road. I feel sorry for the slow vehicles that had to go thru there race day. They probably got pushed into oblivion by fast moving vehicles.

We decided on a small meadow, the only opening on the road where you could pull off and pit. The road to San Quintin just happened to intersect with this location, so we'd be able to do our pit and get out before the Trophy Trucks came thru.

Anyways, enough of the BS....here's some photos:

The drive out to the course:















Oh crap, we left too late!!!! Time to drive in the dark:


















Race day sunrise:

















Did I mention it was FREEZING out there?





























We radioed the Weatherman to let THR know we moved the pit 5 miles up the course. Here's HelloMrSoul on top of the hill looking for a signal.


















The night before after setting up camp, we heard a truck and trailer coming in the road from San Q. It was the owner of the ranch. He told us about how he killed a mountain lion recently with a large stick and the assistance of his dog. His dog did the barking while he fought for his life with a stick. He has been there for 40 years and built many of the roads in the area.



Here he is race day:










We waited for the bikes to start coming thru and they did, later than expected. KTM and Honda came thru first, within seconds of each other. I missed getting any photos, as I was holding the THR sign in case it was our rider coming thru. Later we learned Robby had crashed, injuring his arms and hands and damaging the bike. Hengeveld had to be dropped in by the chopper to take over. We were getting reports from Weatherman that they were in the 7 sisters and 40 miles behind.

We waited patiently. We then saw dust in a far off valley, but no chopper. We were expecting the THR chopper to be chasing our rider. This had to be someone else, possibly from another class.

That dust that was miles off in the distance, was on us in less than a few seconds. The rider came screaming by (349X??). My mood dropped as we were gonna be further back than I had hoped.

The large dust cloud that the rider churned up enveloped us. Just before I put the sign down and retreated back across the course, 3 seconds behind and flat out, emerged Taylor Robert -- our rider. In less than a second, as soon as visibility partially cleared, he saw our sign and hit the breaks, sliding perfectly into the pit.

We dropped the gas in the bike, and Taylor was off in a few seconds. I like to think he overtook that rider shortly thereafter, as I could here his engine cursing and screaming, echoing off the walls of the valley.

That was it for us. We packed up and headed out.















The road out was good, for a while. I'm tired of typing so all I will say is there was a 1000 foot incline we had to traverse out of an arroyo on a surface that was all rock. No traction. No room for error. We got stuck. We could go no further. My tires spun and spun and I drifted towards that 1000 foot drop off. With nowhere else to go and backing back down the mountain in reverse not an option, we kept trying, eventually making it. TW, I need to talk to you about this section. Maybe I took a wrong turn? =)

My partner later told me he had an escape plan, if the truck started slipping towards the cliff edge.

I was tired of these dirt roads. All I will say it was the most desolate Baja driving I have done and the roads were the worst I have ever seen. My truck took a beating.

















It took longer to get out to San Quintin than I had estimated. We were in the dark again and it started to sprinkle.












It was about that time that we heard on the radio that Caselli was missing and/or his GPS tracker had stopped working. We listened to the Weatherman calling a code red and something just didn't seem right. We thought maybe he had broke down. The radio cut in and out. We headed to Los Jardines for dinner, where we monitored the radio. Medics being sent to the scene? This didn't sound good.

We got back in the truck and headed towards home. We speculated. Seems there's never any good intel race day via the radio or anything, especially in Mexico. We bypassed Ensenada. Got on the toll road. Drove right up to the border gate. 2 car wait.

I opened my phone to Facebook and saw "RIP Kurt Caselli, 1983-2013".


Something horrible can happen so fast.



Then we got sent to secondary where we sat for an hour. Never a fun wait.


We were eventually released and got on our way back to North County.

All in all, a great Baja weekend. Always fun to explore new areas.





Thanks for having me along HelloMrSoul. Always an adventure.

Good job THR/Precision Concepts/Kawasaki for sticking with it, fighting on, and never giving up.












[Edited on 11-17-2013 by Ateo]

SPOT

Wow! Thank you for report

Thanks for the ride report....and the Cowboy Story: ..."killed that lion with a stick....."

As for this area....the roads just scream out...."Come ride me....."

The road past El Cipres was really tough back in 2005... if that's how you popped out of the hills towards San Quintin? The 'Petroglyph Park' site (Mile 37.0 on map, #13 on satellite image) is great along the way, but coming in from El Arenoso/ Los Martires east of El Rosario is easier and well used by the Rancho Nuevo and Rancho Rosarito area people.





Rough Country! Better have a Toyota!

You would have loved seeing Hook drive his camper up La Vibora!





[Edited on 11-19-2013 by David K]

For Mexitron, Motoged, TW, and David K............here's the route I took out. Where it says wrong turn, I took a right instead of a left.