KTMphil
Senior member
Dirt Trails in rainy season to Chiang Dao with Johny
What were we thinking?
There's a reason they call it rainy season & that should be a good enough reason to stay away from technical trail riding in those months of the year, some like to learn the hard way.
Jonny was on his perfect Yamaha WR450, which has a clarke aftermarket larger fuel tank with 220km range, I was on a Suzuki DRZ 400.
We left Chiang Mai 0900am and headed north on R 107 , to R 1096 (road to Samoeng), to get onto some decent trails so that we could head north to Chiang Dao on dirt trails. I'd mapped out some trails on the gps and showed them to Justin, who called me and said "you know the first set of trails you've mapped are single track don't you"?
So the first dirt trails we penetrated were down R 1096 (the road west to Samoeng)
Maps copyright Auke Koopmans
Looked nice, then went single track (as Justin has warned), about 1/2km down the trail a tree completely blocked the path.
Not a good start and it stayed single track after that too.
1KM further east we gave the trails north another shot, this one was even worse.
I gave it 2 tries, but the wet clay was too steep, both times i got up 1/2 way and slid back down, the rut walls being so high meant you did fall off sliding back down.
Things not going well, we decided to get up to the Mok Fa waterfall area as quick as possible as we knew there were some good trails north in that area. So a quick jaunt on R107 and a left onto R 1095 (road to Pai and Mae Hong Son) and we were in business.
What were we thinking?
There's a reason they call it rainy season & that should be a good enough reason to stay away from technical trail riding in those months of the year, some like to learn the hard way.
Jonny was on his perfect Yamaha WR450, which has a clarke aftermarket larger fuel tank with 220km range, I was on a Suzuki DRZ 400.
We left Chiang Mai 0900am and headed north on R 107 , to R 1096 (road to Samoeng), to get onto some decent trails so that we could head north to Chiang Dao on dirt trails. I'd mapped out some trails on the gps and showed them to Justin, who called me and said "you know the first set of trails you've mapped are single track don't you"?
So the first dirt trails we penetrated were down R 1096 (the road west to Samoeng)
Maps copyright Auke Koopmans
Looked nice, then went single track (as Justin has warned), about 1/2km down the trail a tree completely blocked the path.
Not a good start and it stayed single track after that too.
1KM further east we gave the trails north another shot, this one was even worse.
I gave it 2 tries, but the wet clay was too steep, both times i got up 1/2 way and slid back down, the rut walls being so high meant you did fall off sliding back down.
Things not going well, we decided to get up to the Mok Fa waterfall area as quick as possible as we knew there were some good trails north in that area. So a quick jaunt on R107 and a left onto R 1095 (road to Pai and Mae Hong Son) and we were in business.