Useful bike info?
 

It may or may not be of use to you, but when pondering the kind of bike to take into Extreme Siberia, it may be useful to see what others have used, for better or for worse. I have been collecting stats on bike journeys up there (away from the Trans Siberian ... stuff like the Road of Bones or BAM Road journeys) and have the following info from 55 bike journeys over the past 3 years:

40% BMW
25% KTM
15% Yamaha
15% Honda
5% The Rest (2 Suzuki, 1 Harley)

60% fuel injected, 40% carburettored

5% are two cylinder bikes above 1000cc
24% are two cylinder bikes between 750 - 1000cc
60% are single cylinder bikes between 600 and 660 cc
11% are single cylinder bikes below 600 cc (250, 400cc)

Average engine size: 690cc

If you had an interest in doing the Old Summer Road: of the bikes that did the OSR or BAM or similar challenging, remote, unmaintained style roads in Siberia, the percentage of single cylinder bikes used rises from 71% to 90%. 36 of 40 were single cylinder bikes.

Walter, thanks for the interesting data. At least if you stick to the new road, though, I think that a R1200GS would be no problem on the RoB (but probably not on the BAM or and definitely not on the OSR), although I guess it could be a pain if it had been raining alot and was muddy.

Also, people might be interested to know that at least along the new road, this past summer I think there was only one or maybe two unbridged water crossings more than a few inches deep along the whole RoB (and this I think after a fair bit of rain). This seems to change every year, however, as I think that bridges are washed away (and replaced) on a pretty regular basis. In several places, we had to cross temporary (new) or condemned (old) bridges where the "real" bridge was gone or was under construction, but this was easy on a bike. Anybody else's experience different?

AdvRider post to look at.
 

Don't know if you use advrider.com (they are another motorcycle adventure touring website). A friend of mine Doug (rtwdoug) just finished a trip to Magadan. Look for the thread "Can a Harley make it to Magadan?" Lot's of good information there...

We did have it listed in post #5 bier

cheers

Great info gents. Thank you.

I may be reaching one of my dreams in being able to ride the Road of Bones in 2013 2 up. Just seriously starting to make in roads (pardon the pun :cool4:) to see if we can realistically do it.

Road of Bones - Tink Trassa
 

In 2009 it was all good graded dirt. I don't recall any poor bridges - certainly none that needed a moments thought.
So if one has collapsed it would have been a result of gross misuse.

My flat tyres were another thing though.

You could ask Ilya at askmagadan.com

Colebatch told me that the bridge was out in 2011, so we avoided that route, although I would expect that it would have been rebuilt by now. I would certainly recommend taking that route if possible because that stretch of the main road is really unpleasant because of the truck traffic and resulting dust.

I am very interested by this topic as I plan to do this route in 2013, thanks for all this information, will keep an eye on it.

Can anyone tell me if there's any decent maps of the area? If so where can I buy them? Also can anyone inform me of shipping costs from the UK?

Cheers

DG

Hi,

motoreiter, do you know exactly which is the bridge? I'm trying to get more info on this matter.
Thanks, Tony, I wrote an email to askmagadan, waiting for an answer.

Safe ride,
Adrian

I didn't ask Colebatch about which bridge--it didn't matter to me which bridge was out, because its absence made the route impassable.

Hi,

I receive an answer from Ilya Kovyakin.

He said that the damaged bridge is on the river Kulu, near the village of Kulu.
According to google maps is here: 61.885284,147.432404
Seam to be closer to Kadykchan.
If somebody find some news, please post.

Thanks and safe rides,
Adrian

Hi Zimi when are you planning on leaving next year? I'm also planning to go this way next year, perhaps we could share information :thumbup1:

Hi Peak,

I am planning to go in july or august. I want to be there when the rivers are at their lowest. I think I will take 4 weeks holidays, so I definitively need to ship the bike by plane. Still don't know if it's possible to send it directly to Magadan, or if I have to send it to Ulanbataar or Vladivostok.

And yes, would be great to share infos