Mountain Update

It's just 24 hours before the team begins departing for Santiago de Chile and the reports from people on the ground at Ojos del Salado confirm significant snow on the ground.  North Americans Don Bowie and Michael Kantor are already on the mountain, preparing for their own world record ... the largest 24 hour descent by mountain bike.  They are planning to ride down from the Summit of Ojos del Salado (6,893 m - 22,615 ft) to sea level in a day.  Currently they are acclimatising on the mountain at 5,200 metres, and reporting a lot of snow.  We are hoping to catch up with these guys in a weeks time, when we should be arriving at the mountain.  They are expecting to still be there when we arrive due to the acclimatisation schedule.

The Weather

Weather is not something we pretend to be able to forecast.  Yet a study and understanding of the local weather is obviously something we need to have undertaken for an attempt of this nature.

Most attempts on Ojos del Salado, whether by foot or vehicle are undertaken in March or April.  It's the end of the southern hemisphere summer, and local unusual weather phenomena tend to be less active at that time.  Being the end of summer there is typically minimal snow coverage on the ground at that time.  Being on the edge of the Atacama Desert, it is not a region that typically experiences significant precipitation.  The Atacama desert itself is the driest place on earth.

Yet this year is different.  A regional weather phenomenon called the Bolivian Winter or Altiplano Winter has left an unusually high amount of precipitation in the Andes region.  Tourists have been stranded at Machu Pichu due to floods and mudslides.  Chilean Atacama desert towns, like Antofagasta and Calama, normally some of the driest on earth, have seen significant flooding.  San Pedro de Atacama has had to cancel its annual festival, and most areas above 3,000 metres are covered in snow ... in the middle of summer.  The Dakar race had to cancel stage 6, the stage crossing the Andes, and the stage that goes past our 4,500m base camp, due to significant snowfall.  Locals are telling us it is the worst Altiplano Winter in 15 years.

For us, it's far from ideal.  A typical Chilean summer would have been preferable, but we have a summer that has been impacted heavily by this years exceptional Altiplano Winter.  It means we need to adjust our plans.  It means we need to take mountaineering gear.  It means we are going to need studded tyres.

If all goes well, March will see the end of the Altiplano Winter and the remaining heat of summer will return to the Andes, burning away some or indeed much of the mountain snow.  But in the meantime, we have to plan for the worst.  One thing is for sure, this year's unusual weather will only make our task considerably harder.

Fortunately, we have Barton "Mountain Man" Churchill on the team, our very own in-house hard core mountaineer.  Expect to see us develop and employ some innovative tactics that merge motorcycling and mountaineering!

Where Will We Do the Ride?

The Location - Ojos del Salado

Where is the ideal place to try and break an altitude record for motorcycles?  A read through our articles on the history of people riding high has shown that historically most high rides have been in the Himalaya.  Over the past 5-6 years, however, there has been an equally strong drive to look to South America and the Andes.  We agree with the South American logic and intend to head there for our attempt, and one mountain in particular, Ojos del Salado.

The idea of riding high has been in my head for several years.  Initially I was interested in the Indian Himalaya.  There are loads of regular roads and passes up above 5,000 metres high.  Those passes are obviously a base to attempt to ride higher, if the ground surrounding the pass is rideable.  The idea was developed further in the Pamir in 2009, when I rode a pass at 4,665 metres, but noticed much of the surrounding terrain was not particularly steep and was in fact quite gentle and rounded.

I spoke at length with Indian biker and fantastic moto photographer Mani Babbar, who had himself ridden to Marsimik La, and looking at his pics, the possibilities were clearly there to ride higher, provided the bikes had more power than they typical Indian 15 hp, 150cc carb’d bikes that rode up there.   This theory was conclusively proved by the current world record, which was a bunch of Indian guys who rode up to Marsimik La and then made their way up the hillsides another 600 metres of vertical.

But the more we looked into it and discussed it, the more the Andes made sense.  While the Andes are not as high as the Himalaya, that additional height is pretty much a moot point, since no-one is riding high enough to challenge the summits of the Andes, let alone the Himalaya.  And the Andes have one huge advantage … the slopes of the mountains are often less steep. 

The clincher for us, around June last year, was studying the assorted videos and stories of the last two world records for cars.  Both drives were in 2007, both were over 400 metres higher than any bike has ever gone, and one of the drives was in a near stock Jeep Wrangler.  Importantly, both drives were on one particular mountain … Ojos del Salado … Eyes of Salt.

Ojos del Salado is the second highest mountain in the Andes, and indeed in all of South America.  Perhaps most importantly, it is the world’s highest volcano.  Volcanoes tend not to be extremely steep, and their slopes tend to be very even, compared with regular mountains.  This is because volcanoes are formed by ash and molten lava flowing down from the top, rather than the earth violently heaving upwards, as is the case with regular mountains. Ojos del Salado will, however, not be a cakewalk.  Being a volcano, the slopes feature significant amounts of sand like ash.   There are glaciers to cross on our route; and fields of ice javelins called penitentes.  The area is remote.  The nearest town, including fuel and water, is 300 km (190 miles) away.  It’s one of the windiest areas on the planet, and even in summer temperatures can drop to -25C.  The remoteness means we must be 100% self contained, and very careful.  Injury either from accident or from altitude will spell the end of the project for at least one of us.

Despite the remoteness, it will be to Ojos del Salado that we head in less than 4 weeks time, to begin the process of acclimatisation and ultimately, to take on the world’s highest volcano itself. 

Husaberg Adventure Team is featured on the front page of Adventure Bike Rider's website!

www.adventurebikerider.com

The Altitude Review - Part 3

In this third and final part of this series, we take a look at the most recent high rides, and of course the highest rides of all.  While a few of these rides have taken place in the usual suspect range, the Himalaya, you will note quite a bit of recent attention moving towards the Andes mountains in South America.  We see the logic of this, which is why we too will be heading to the Andes mountains in South America for our little altitude ride.  And on that note, let’s start off in the Andes:

Miles McEwing, a Canadian race car driver and his wife Tracey took on a different speed when they headed to South America with a 2WD Ural sidecar rig in 2011.  Always up for a challenge, the mercurial McEwing took his Ural sidecar rig up to an impressive 5,300 metres (17,388 ft) in Peru / Chile.  We reckon that’s possibly a sidecar altitude record ... unless someone has gone over Khardung La in a sidecar.

Joe Pichler:  KTM’s legendary “Ambassador of Adventure” rode a regular garden variety, touring equipped, hard metal boxed 990 Adventure up to 5,796 metres (19,016 feet) in 2007 on the sides of a volcano in the Bolivian Andes, while on a 2-up tour of the continent with his wife Renate.   Renate only jumped off at 5,600 m, which in itself has to be a record for 2-up riding at altitude.  Overall we reckon Joe's 990 is the biggest bike to ever make it up to the rarefied air of 19,000 feet. (http://josef-pichler.at/)

Globebusters:  The BMW affiliated UK based motorcycle tour company regularly guides its clients through Tibet on a route that takes the clients, including their female Expediton Guide Tiffany Coates, as well as several female clients, up to a pass along normal roads at 5,386 metres (17,670 feet).  We reckon this is quite possibly a women’s motorcycle altitude record.

Craig Bounds / Tamsin Jones:  British Dakar rider Craig Bounds and his Dakar riding girlfriend Tamsin Jones set out in November 2011 to attack the world altitude record for bikes.  They target was Everest, and like Kazama’s record ride (6,005m), tried the Northern side.  They made it about 150 metres above Everest Base Camp, to 5,359 metres (17,581 feet) and Tamsin claimed a women’s “Everest record”.  Which I guess means the highest a woman has been on a bike specifically on the slopes of Mt Everest.  It’s actually exactly the same height as the number of women who have ridden bikes to Khardung La, and 27 metres lower than the Tiff Coates and the other women riding in Tibet with Globebusters.   

There is an incredible story out there about some Catalan riders who flew to South America in 1977 to try to ride their Bultaco bikes up Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America, and indeed the highest mountain outside of Asia.  Their story is a great read but it is peppered with factual inconsistencies and inaccuracies that ultimately make their claim to have reached somewhere around 6,820 metres (22,375 ft) very difficult to believe.  The jist of their story is that they got to the Berlin Refugio which they claimed to be at 6,800 metres. then scrambled another 20 metres or so higher before weather beat them back.  The biggest problem with the story is that the Berlin Refugio is at 5,850 m (19,194 ft), approximately 1,000 metres (over 3,000 ft) lower than their claim.  We reckon they made it to somewhere about 5,875m (19,275 ft) which would still have been a record ride for that time, if they had got some even vaguely accurate altitude measurements.  Stories like this do justify Guinness having quite strict verification standards.

Chilean / Swiss / Austrian Motorecord project: In early 2008, a well organised multinational team took trials bikes with sand tyres to Ojos del Salado in Chile, managed to get up to 6,220 metres, (20,406 feet) and in doing so scored a new Guinness World Record and overtook the unofficial record of Juhasz (by about 40 metres) which had stood for over a decade.  The fuelling was an issue on the trials bikes, and there was talk the project would one day return to Ojos del Salado for a second project, this time with fuel injection.   We have a few reservations about using unregistered bikes for a project like this.  Every other ride we have detailed in this series, including the world record Indian ride below, has used registered, number plated, regular street legal motorcycles.  We feel the spirit of adventure motorcycling implies that the bikes should be registered and plated, even if it isn't a requirement of the Guinness verification process.

North Kolkata Disha:  A motorcycle club from Calcutta, India; we take our hats off to these guys.  Six guys set off from steamy Calcutta in late 2008 to take the Guinness World altitude Record for bikes away from the Motorecord project and bring it back to the Indian Himalaya: and indeed they did it, topping them by just 25 metres, and it is the record that stands to this day.  These guys got to 20,488 feet (6,245 metres) on 29^th August 2008, by first heading to Marsimik La and then making their own trail over 600 metres higher, above the pass.  Sadly I am unaware of any write up of this ride, nor of any photos.

Nationalism: It's worth mentioning how much nationalism is involved in some of the rides.  In earlier reports we mentioned how altitudes on signs have been inflated so that India can claim (incorrectly) the highest this and the highest that. And some of the nationalism visible in some of the rides is quite overtly apparent (see pic below - with a sign inflated by a ridiculous 1300 feet!).  The Chinese Guinness World Record was similarly obviously a nationalistic project - an attempt to somehow illustrate the superiority of the Chinese  over all others.  We are very pleased to say that as a multinational team, we are clearly NOT involved in a futile attempt to prove the superiority of one group of people over others based on the type of passport we happen to hold.  We are just a group of friends who just want to have fun and try to ride higher than anyone else has before.

And that basically takes us to where we are today ... with a multinational trio from the US, Austria and the UK, about to ship 3 Husaberg motorcycles to South America ... to take on this mountain ... and the existing motorcycle record of 6,245 metres (20,488 ft).

A final note ... by way of comparison, the car record is a lot higher than the motorcycle record (by about 450m / 1500 feet).  That record is 6,688 metres (21,942 ft) set on the slopes of Ojos del Salado, in Chile