Purple Pancakes Fly at Midnight

I took my dad to Jarbidge this past weekend. Him on his side-by-side and me on my old DR650.

My dad used to ride with me on an old Honda XR650L. Later as he got older, he sold it and adopted the mantra, “With age comes a cage.” I’m glad he is still able to join me now and again out on the trail.

Neither of us have been to Jarbidge before, so we decided to make it an overnight trip, camping at Lower Bluster campground along the Jarbidge River a few miles south of town. We staged near the hwy at Wild Horse Reservoir, and headed north on Gold Creek Rd/NF-037. Once we got to the Bruneau River, we headed east on NF-067 for the last 20ish miles into Jarbidge which is title “Purple Pancakes Fly at Midnight” on the OnX Offroad app. This is rated a 4/10 on OnX. I’d say this is true for about all but the last ¾ to 1 mile on the Jarbidge side. The trail got crazy steep, full of medium sized, loose, jagged rocks. It was too steep and loose to go fast, and too scary to go anything but slow. I wanted to dog paddle down, but I could only use my left leg because the front brake wasn’t enough to keep me from going too fast. I’m glad we were going down and not up. I drop the bike twice. I was ready for a chair and a beer. Dad on the other hand, had no issue with all his fancy suspension, sitting comfortably in his side-by-side… glad he didn’t roll over me on the way down, lol.

Once into Jarbidge, I snapped a picture for the challenge and we headed south, exploring the various camping spots. We settled on Lower Bluster for the privacy, shade, nearby vault toilet, but mostly the Jarbidge river. The rest of the afternoon and evening consisted of setting up camp, telling stories, and smoking pipe tobacco around the campfire. It was a good day.

The next day was early and cold. Downed some coffee, packed camp and headed back to the truck by going north from Jarbidge along the river on Clover Creek Rd. It was a beautiful canyon full of interesting rock formations. It reminded me of parts of Utah in a way. After the canyon we headed west on Buck Cr, back up over the mountains to the staging area.

At the truck we loaded Dad’s side-by-side, and headed North to check out the F4 Phantom crash site. I rode the DR. This was a quick in and out challenge site, mostly two track and one inclined section of loose rocks. We stomped around for a bit checking out the plane remnants before heading back to the truck and then home.