Truckee’s 06 Fire Road
Taking the road less traveled gives you a deeper connection to a place. On a trip to Truckee in early June, I couldn’t wait to park my road bike and go for a ride in search of dirt. I ended up renting a Giant Revolt from Dirt Gypsy Adventures, the guys from the shop where awesome and helped me get setup and out the door quickly. Starting my ride at Sawtooth recreational trailhead, I was stoked on a gravel grinder I had researched the night before on Truckee’s 06 Fire Road, gradually climbing 1,800+ vertical feet to Watson Lake, occasionally flirting with grades maxing out at 17%. Confronted by the warm, dry, pine scented forest, eerily reminiscent of a tinder box. I passed numerous service crews clearing debris from the forest floor. What started as a simple ride through beautiful mountain wilderness, became a lesson in how Californians were taking care of their wild spaces.
Experiencing increasingly intense forest fires year-after-year, we have been forced to adapt quickly to our rapidly changing environment. Learning lessons from each life taken, community lost, and acres burned. We are fighting back with preventative measures, (making defensible fire safe zones, pruning limbs and debris away from evergreens that burn quickly during dry summer months, using fire safe materials, and following state and local burn laws). Every June, the cool crisp spring turns dry and hot, an immediate reminder from mother nature to stock-up with N95 masks, air purifiers, and pack our emergency bags in case of evacuations. Seeing these men and women working in the forest while I rode my bike, reminded me of how lucky I was to be here at this moment. In a race against climate change, these precious landscapes if not managed correctly will be lost. When you make your next great escape into the wild, please thank these hard-working people for the work they do preserving our lands, and hopefully serve as a reminder to be more thoughtful to our environment, preserving it for years to come.
How has climate change affected you and the places you ride? Are there specific ways you’re trying to protect the environment? We would love to hear your stories. Leave your comments below.
