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