Horizons Unlimited - The HUBB - BAM and ROB roads 2016?

Hi there, I completed the old summer road one week ago with 3 other riders.

you can find my report with pictures here:

https://www.facebook.com/zimiontheloose

And there is another group of riders, "the BAM riders" who just completed it yesterday.

27-29th august 2016: The Old Summer Road

It was already 5pm when we left the ghost town of Kadykchan. The turnover to the mighty Old Summer Road is just a track without any sign or indication.
A mixed feeling of excitement and fear caught me. Finally, I was on the Old Summer Road, after all this time reading other’s reports and dreaming about riding it myself. I was lucky to have met these crazy guys ready to give a try against all advises we got from locals because I would never have done it alone.

When we reached the Arkagala river, water was shallow, the crossing was no problem at all, almost to easy to be true…
Well yes indeed, the real deal was awaiting us 50 meters further. The current was strong and after Dima volunteered to cross it by foot, we saw that the level was almost up to his waste. It was technically impossible with our bikes because the air intake would be under water. It took us a while to find the ideal place to cross the river. Misha found that the stream was much wider on the left side of the broken bridge. Water was not higher than knee level.

We went on until the second river which was small and where the concrete bridge was even still passable. I would have continued until the hunter’s camp, but the guys wanted to camp here, because there would be less mosquitos and access to drinking water, which was a smart decision. We set our tents on the bridge and after the soon to be become traditional dinner made from tin boxes of meat and instant noodle we had Samagon!
When I thought that they ran out of Samagon, there was always another bottle hiding somewhere. Dima from Belarus had another 1.5l PET bottle that he distilled himself at home. His Samagon was made from honey and berries and contained only around 42% alcohol so I was able to keep up with the shots.

Then, they all went in the river to have a shower. Good idea I thought, and I was about to do the same until I put my feet in the water. What the ****!!! The water was so cold that my heart almost stopped beating. How on earth could they bath in this river? At this exact moment, I understood why the Russian won the Second World War and why I live in a neutral country… Well, my shower will wait for another day or two I guess…

The next morning, we woke up around 6:30 am. I know now that the guys need time in the morning, for coffee, Samagon, hot food, smoking and packing. All the process takes around 2 hours. We shared the extra 25 liter Misha and Dima were carrying between all 4 bikes. With all tanks full, we should have enough to go back in case we have to.

Misha’s battery was flat again and he made a hole in is boot by trying to kick-start his Suzuki. We managed to push-start his bike and by 9am we were finally ready to rock.

I was leading the group and everything was going well until I tried to cross a river like a fool, without first checking the depth and even worst, going in the middle… Too much self-confidence is dangerous…

When my engine stopped and I felt my balls getting wet I knew that I really ****ed up. There was one very deep path and I went straight in it…
Misha sacrificed his dry clothes to help me pushing the bike out of the river.

I had to get the water out of the engine and exhaust, change the air filter, oil and both oil filters… The whole process took almost 2 hours.
I felt really stupid for making us lose time for such a mistake but the guys didn’t mention it.

The further we went, the worse the road became. So far, all the river crossings were easier than the first one. Although Dima felt a few times, because his KTM is too tall and way to heavily loaded for him, he never had water in the engine.

What caused us the most problems were the bogs and the swamps. In some section, there was just one bog after another, and we probably did all the possible mistakes, like going around and getting stuck in the mud, each one of us several times, or driving in the bog without first walking through. Mainly we were trying to ride around them, as far as possible from the water to have a firmer ground, but it didn’t always work well.

It was hard work pulling the bikes out of the mud. At some point, Misha was stuck and I was trying to push him out. He was revving his engine very high and eventually burnt his clutch!

We got the bike out, but there was no way he could continue driving so we attached his bike with a rope to Dima’s XR650 and pulled him for 5 km until the next river. That was a hard job and it took us again a lot of time and efforts, because there were several other huge bogs on the way.
It was around 7 pm when we reached the river and we decided to set our camp here for today and somehow try to fix the bike.

At that point we were still 160km away from Tomtor and we had no idea what was awaiting further. I was pretty worried, thinking that it may good be over for our trip or at least Misha’s bike. Either we will have to leave his bike here or go back pulling him, but none of the options would be easy.

As Misha was about to open the side cover of the engine to have a look at the clutch, I realised that the lever had no play at all. I completely loosen the tensioner and it still didn’t have play but the clutch action seems to work. We adjusted the clutch lever on the engine, until we had some play on the lever.
The battery was dead again, and we had to take the bike of the other side of the river to push start it but… the clutch was working! That was an unbelievable moment! At that exact moment, not much in the world could have made us happier. We will be able to continue tomorrow.

Of course, this good news didn’t go without shots of Samagon and various toasts. In general, the Russian Dima was the guys making the toasts. In Russia, before drinking a shot, someone always makes a toast. The first time, it’s usually “for the meeting”, and then you can have a thousand different excuses to make toast. I am already pretty used to the toasts in Russia, but today I learned that when you make a toast for people that died on the road, you don’t shake glasses.

The guys decided to nickname our team, the “invalid team” because we ****ed up so much until now. The Russian Dima had a different way to speak that most Russians I met until now and I had sometimes problems to understand him. What I understood is that every second word in his sentences was a combination of the either the word “dick” or “pussy” or similar Russian bad words. The Russian language has way more bad words than we have in French, German or English and they have endless combination of them.
Although he was the guy I understood the less, he knew a little bit of English and sometimes he tried explaining me things when I didn’t understand it in Russian. In general, the communication was not a problem between them and me, they would always try to explain things the way that I can understand them.

We collected a lot of wood along the river to make a huge fire to keep bears away from our camp. Today we saw on several occasion bear footsteps and poo on the road. Dima and Misha had flares and some distress signal guns, and they even gave me one of each.

The next morning we were ready to leave around 10 am. Less than 500m after starting, we already had to walk through the first bog. And it went on and on. Then, some 30 meters of the road was missing and we had to ride back, find a way down to the river and cross the river twice to get out from the other side. It took us a good hour and we were not 5km further.
The road seemed to get worse as we were progressing. Again, a whole section was missing and we had to put all our manpower together to get each bike after another back on the track.

So far, we had a fantastic weather, war and sunny, and most of the track was dry. I can’t even imagine how much more difficult it would have been if raining.

Around noon, we ran into the most improbable thing you would ever imagine on the Old Summer Road. In the middle of a bog stood a Kawasaki GPZ, a street bike with street tires. Helmet, bags, motorcycle boots and clothes were lying around.

Dima, on his way to Magadan met this guy, Sasha, from Lithuania, about 2 weeks ago. They even exchanged their phone numbers. Of course, that wasn’t very useful at the moment because since we left Susuman, we didn’t have phone coverage anymore.
There were no traces of him, and looking at his stuff, we assumed that he went back by foot. We took the bike out of the bog and tried to start it without success.
Although we were pretty worried about what might have happed to him, finding his bike here was very good news for us. If the guy, no matter how good he was made it from Tomtor to here (150km) on this bike, it meant that all the rivers were crossable.

Around 2pm we reached the monument indication that we were entering the Oymyakon district. There were a few stickers from all expeditions that passed here through the years and we put ours as well. When I thought that we finally ran out of Samagon, Dima just pulled another liter from his luggage…

The guys decided to have lunch here, and as I usually do when we have some time, I jumped on the opportunity to take some pictures with my drone.

Some 100km from Tomtor came another tricky water crossing. Dima slipped and felt in the river. His Honda had water in the engine so we had to go through the whole process like on my bike the day before.

70km from Tomtor we found an abandoned settlement and judging by the amount of electronic equipment lying around, it was probably this radio station that Nikolai from Susuman told us about. There were huge fuel tanks and 3 big diesel engines, probably to produce electricity. Most of the buildings were half destroyed but there was still a wooden baniya (sauna) in pretty good shape.

Except a few tricky passages, there were no major difficulties anymore and the 2 major rivers still had bridges. I am quiet impressed that the guy with the Kawasaki made it so far. He had several river crossing and some funky passages, especially with a road bike. Can’t understand how he went on instead of turning back once he saw how bad was the road.

The Indigirka, some 20km before Tomtor is a huge river that would never be crossable without the bridge. The sun was slowly going down and the place just looked incredibly beautiful.

Around 9:30pm we were in Tomtor. That’s it! We mad it! We are the fist bikers to complete the Old Summer Road this year!

I just realised a few minutes later that I have lost my waist belt containing all my documents (passport, bike document, custom papers, money, credit card)…

please check my Facebook page for pictures.