Dual Sport Off-Pavement Challenges

Last Update: 2/18/8

This is a list of challenges we may encounter in the wilds, and some general comments about how to handle them. Details re the skills needed to handle these Challenges are to be found in the more technical Skills posts.

Keep these two things in mind, reading this section:

1. A lot of this may sound way out of your league right now, especially if you are the novice dualsport rider this ride series was initially conceived for. In that case, ignore the Challenges, focus on the Skills, and trust that the Series is arranged so that we encounter new challenges gradually, allowing us all time to begin developing the appropriate skills beforehand.
2. However definitive the text may come across, this is just some website and I am just some guy. Neither of us knows all there is to know about riding motorcycles, and some or all of what we think we know may be dangerously wrong.

Having said all that...

— Sand —

One way to tackle sand is to stay seated, ride very slow, and even stop or dog paddle when necessary. It works, but can become tedious. It also requires you to come nearly to a stop at each sandy section. What I usually do for short sandy sections on dirt roads is slow down a little before I hit the sand, then maintain / increase speed through the sand, either sitting or standing with my weight shifted back. Keep a loose grip on the bars – you want to allow them to make small deflections, but not large ones. Steer more by leaning the bike than turning the bars. You can often throttle yourself straight if you start to wander a little, but if you start to seriously lose control, I recommend slamming on the back brake to come to an immediate stop. Then start again.

Steering with power and pegs is most effective if you are willing to commit to it: Stand up and grip the bike with your knees. Shift your weight back a bit (off the front tire). Counter-steer the bike: It feels a bit like skiing; knees together, body toward the fall line, legs and bike do the turning. But you actually initiate the turn not by turning, but by leaning the bike in the direction you want to turn, and whacking the throttle. You will usually get less of a reaction to that from the bike than you might expect, because the rear tire will waste a lot of energy spinning in sand. But – it will also slide to the side away from the turn (which is why you are counter-steering – so the bike slides under you instead of out from under you), which will aim the bike in the direction you want to turn. Straighten up and carry on.

How to Prepare —
At first, you will no doubt ride reactively, just trying to maintain a more or less straight line, and reacting to deflections of the bike with attempts to correct your line of travel, or just to stay up. Try to start causing deflections of your own as soon as possible. Once you get a few moments of relative control, try counter-steering back and forth across short flat sections of shallow sand while holding steady throttle first. Then, start hitting the gas a bit as you lean, in order to simulate the attempt of a sudden course correction. Use short bursts of throttle to do this. Lean, whack it, straighten up. Lean, whack it, straighten up. You should find your direction of travel changes significantly each time you do this.

You can see that familiarity with two of the skills mentioned above – steering with the rear tire and counter-steering – will help a lot with meeting the Sand challenge… It won’t hurt to practice those skills on easier terrain first.

— Snow —

A thin layer of snow can be extremely slippery. There isn't much to do, but try to arrange not to need to steer much in the snowiest sections, and be prepared for the rear end to move around a lot. Stand up, weight forward, and go slow. Stay in the lowest ruts of the trail -- or you will just slide down into them, perhaps falling over in the process. If the trail slopes right or left a little, it is likely best to stay on the low side, rather than end up sliding down there.

How to Prepare —
Experience steering with the rear tire will help, as will general comfort with partial traction, which only comes with practice.

— Ice —

You are doomed. Walk home, and retrieve your bike after the thaw. [I am not waving, I'm falling over. It took five minutes just to get the bike off the ground.]

— River Crossings —

Most crossings are pretty straight-forward. It is a good idea to stop before the crossing and examine it: Is it covered in ice (go home)? Are there big rocks hidden in it? How deep is it? Is the bottom slimy slippery concrete or bedrock?

Generally, a good practice is to slow during the approach, pick a line you like, stand up, weight the bike fairly evenly, and accelerate slowly through the crossing. Be ready to shift weight / adjust power if mud bogs you down, you hit an unseen obstacle, etc. Try to run straight through, especially on bedrock or a concrete crossing; alge can make shallow hard-bottomed crossings incredibly slippery.

How to Prepare —
Watch other people do it! Other than that, try to start off with small, easy crossings...

— Steep unstoppable* climbs —

The main challenge here is mental; you know that if you stop you are probably hosed. Meantime, the actual upward movement is fairly simple. Just don’t stop. Sitting works fine if the climb is not technical. You generally don’t need a lot of speed (momentum), to maintain upward travel, but if you come to a stop, the front brake will not hold you in place, and using the back brake means you must have your right foot off the ground. It may be quite difficult to resume forward travel once stopped in this position. The best way to stop on an “unstoppable” climb is to quickly turn perpendicular to the climb before you stop, and lean uphill (toward the outside of the turn). You will almost certainly have to descend after this maneouver, however.

A key rule for both climbs and descents is, if you fall over, fall over with the tires downhill!

How to Prepare —
The preparation for the type of climbs I am talking about here is primarily mental; get used to the idea that there will be times when you simply must continue riding. Commit!

Practicing k-turns and turning sideways on hills, just in case, is a good idea. Practice these on easy hills, before you need them on challenging hills.

* See footnote to "Master Plan" post, if this word is meaningless to you.

— Steep but stoppable descents —

By stoppable, I mean that if you start from a dead stop at the top of the descent and are very careful the whole way down, you should be able to stop any time. The steepest of these descents are unstoppable if you start descending at even 2 or 3 miles an hour, and then decide you want to stop!

Sometimes, the descent is smooth, and the road straight and level beyond. Just let the bike run! Often, however, the descent has turns or obstacles, or you can’t see where it leads, or it is just freakin’ scary. To prepare for these, check out the link I sent earlier to the article about the Jimmy Lewis class. It discusses how to creep down incredibly steep descents by alternating front brake and dead engine resistance. NOTE: I have tried this on the f650 and my conclusion is it must work better on shaft drive bikes. I have better luck on my thumper using the front and back brakes.

The Lewis technique will fail you if the steep terrain you are descending is also so loose that a stationary, locked rear wheel will simply start to slide downhill. In this situation, or (in my experience) on the F, you must rely heavily on the front brake.

As luck would have it, steep descents put the ground in much closer proximity to your feet. Faced with a steep descent that I am too chicken to coast down, I will come to a complete stop while it is still easy to do so. Often I will kill the engine (leaving the key on). I hold full front brake and little or no back brake. Then I gently, oh so gently, ease off the front brake until the bike starts moving extremely slowly downhill. I walk the bike as I go, at least one foot on the ground. I stop often, and never allow the bike to build momentum until I am ready to ride the rest of the descent.

If the front tire breaks loose while you are descending like this on a really steep hill, you will likely be unable to stop again until the grade decreases. Here are some options:1) Stand up, let out the clutch in first, and hope you make it.2) Add rear brake, release and reapply the front, increasing pressure slowly, and hoping it catches.3) Get into a rut:
Often, steep descents have ruts running down them. The road may slope at an angle down into the rut. You may be able to lock the rear wheel and slide into the rut. If it is not too deep or two narrow, this could be a good thing: The ground will be closer to your feet, there will be sides which you can turn into to help stop or slow your descent, and there may be the odd root or rock providing a wheel chock to stop up against. In fact, when faced with a steep descent where the road also slants to one side or has ruts, I will often start descending in the rut / lowest part of the road; trying to descend a slanted road using a lot of brake risks sliding the bike sideways into the rut at an inopportune moment.

How to Prepare —
Practice the Lewis technique – regardless of what model bike you ride. Learn its uses and limitations.

Look for short steep sections where you can try the front brake technique, and simply coast down if you mess up (We did this at the 3-way intersection on the ridge on DS Ride 02). Use this sort of area to develop your feel for modulating the front brake.

Lock up the rear brake and slide down a few slopes, to get a feel for what the bike will do on sloping / slanted terrain.

— Single-track —

Single-track riding is a lot of fun (empirical fact). It generally requires simultaneous use of more technical handling skills than riding on a wide road does. Turns are often sudden and sharp, and often banked as well. Every challenge seems to appear more suddenly on single-tracks. Often, single-tracks require careful slow-speed modulation for extended periods, while making continual steering maneouvers. At its most challenging, go / no-go decisions must be made immediately and often, and acted on without hesitation.

How to Prepare —
The main things here are standing counter-steering, and continual slow-speed modulation with clutch, brake, and throttle. Practice steering while standing, at slow speeds. Remember the DMV motorcycle test? Great practice. Only instead of a circle, you need a partially banked figure 8, on rock-strewn dirt, with several feet of elevation change. But the circle at the DMV parking lot will help. Try keeping your front tire in the circle for several loops in either direction, slower, and slower. Control speed with simultaneous use of clutch, brake, and throttle. Slip the clutch. Drag the brake. Gas it while doing either or both. Do it standing up, and / or counter-steering.

Look for short single-track sections during our rides. Look for banked sections of roads and trails, too; riding on a berm can be disorienting at first, since the ground is so tilted. Try it.

— Extremely steep climbs / descents —

I have yet to find a descent I couldn’t stop on, and I am not looking for one for us to ride… Yet.

Some climbs, however, are not only too steep to safely stop on, but also highly technical. For these, the best attack is to have an attack attitude. Pick your line, as far as you can see, before you start up. Stand up. You will be counter-steering while standing on the pegs, leaning forward. Be prepared for the bike to jump around underneath you. Remember to use your knees to help control the bike. Maintain plenty of momentum. Avoid target fixation on obstacles by consciously focusing either on the line you want to take around an obstacle, or on something beyond any obstacle that grabs your attention – even if this means riding directly over the obstacle. Often, this is the best option anyway. You will be amazed at what obstacles these bikes will overcome when their riders ignore the obstacles.

Before you start up the hill, try this exercise: Plan your line, then note the two most challenging sections. Imagine what might happen if those sections don’t go as planned, and make contingency plans, for example:

1. If I slide into that rut, I’m going to turn hard right and lay the bike down seat-uphill.
2. If I slide into that rut, I’m going to whack the throttle and get out of it on the other side before the rock right above it.
3. If I loose traction in that sandy section, I’ll turn sideways and stop, then slide the front tire down until I can ride back down.

Remember, a key rule for both climbs and descents is, if you must fall over, fall over with the tires downhill!

How to Prepare —
Stand up on easier hills to develop a feel for how the bike will move. Try gradually harder climbs, or, if unavailable, pick a more challenging line on an easy climb. Practice standing counter-steering, especially on rough ground. Practice k-turns.

— Steep unstoppable climbing / descending turns —

Really the only new thing to watch out for here is the added turn. These require commitment, but no skills other than what is discussed above. Steep turns are often banked. The steepness of the bank itself may require a certain minimum speed, in order to avoid sliding down to the inside of the turn. The way it gets weird is this; imagine a banked turn on a steep hill, such that part of the bank is almost vertical: You know that your tires get the most traction when the bike is perpendicular to the riding surface. That means that in that section of the turn, you will be riding such that you and your bike are almost horizontal, relative to gravity. Not a good time to stop, of course.

How to Prepare —
Aside from the skills listed above, a certain level of mental readiness is called for. The plan, of course, is that you won’t meet this sort of situation in the Series until you are mentally ready to do so (if it ever comes up at all).

— Large obstacles (taller or deeper than a curb) —

Imagine coming around a corner on a narrow trail to find a tree root holding a foot tall vertical wall of dirt at the base of about 10 feet of bedrock that looks more like a dry waterfall than a trail. This is an extreme example of what I am talking about here.

I advise not worrying about this until far into the Series. By then, taking it on will seem much more sane than it does now. Get back to me…

Now imagine riding up a wide flat riverbed, and just as you hit another sandy patch, you see it is divided by a 16-inch deep, 2-foot wide gully crossing your line diagonally. Not a lot of time to plan…

In general, big obstacles require quick decision, and commitment. The actual skills required (for the sort of big obstacles we are likely to see) are no more than those listed above. In the first situation, it is really as if the rider is suddenly faced with a steep (though short) technical climb, with the added mini wall at the bottom. This is one of many spots where wheelie skills pay off. Learning how to wheelie is not just fun, but incredibly valuable. It can also save you in the second situation, where wheelieing over the gully while the rear tire drops in and out is probably the least painful option.

How to Prepare —
Aside from the skills listed above, and a large helping of intestinal fortitude, learn to wheelie (See the Skills document)…

— 7) in or right next to possibly 1)y 6)s, on 4)s. No lie —

That’s large obstacles in or right next to possibly sandy steep unstoppable climbing / descending turns on switchbacks. I’ve only found us a few of these…

Sounds horrible, but its really just a matter of putting together a suite of skills that by the time you need them, you will have. Don’t worry; it’ll be fun!

— Heavily armed guerillas speaking in a foreign language —

You might read Glen Hegstaad’s book, the groaningly named “Two Wheels Through Terror”, for ideas on how to handle this bit. If you can get past the title page, you’ll be glad you read the rest. Glen is an engaging writer with a unique story to tell.




Assuming this series of rides eventually leads us out of the country, I doubt it will lead us into this sort of trouble unless we want to go there. At this point, I think the most challenging aspect of multi-country riding, when the time comes, will be the paperwork. At least we know it won’t be the terrain!


Good riding.

Add your knowledge to this article using the comment link at bottom. Want to share a descriptive picture of the terrain / techniquesunder discussion? Just email it to me!