Harvesting Gold - Great Basin's Edge Bikepacking Route

 

 

 Things you can say on a bike ride and in a Zoom meeting: Alright, everyone. Let's shift gears.

 

October 2025

It wasn't the plan. The plan was to ride 700 miles door to door from my house.

By day 2 I was already bored. Same same same. To be fair there was some unridden terrain ahead but getting to it would involve...same, same same. And so it came to be that a notion formed in my noggin early on day 3. Yes it would drastically shorten the route, yes I would miss some areas that I'd not yet ridden, yes I would feel bad for my partner about aborting those sections. Kurstin is fully capable of proceeding without me if he so chooses I rationalized. Rationalization. Meh... just shifting gears 😆. Meanwhile, I cooked the notion in my head for another few hours which included some time sewing up a gash in my nearly new tire. Upon reaching Fletcher I broke the news. "Hey Kurstin, well I have some bad news. I'm going to split off here and head over to Bridgeport and pickup the route and finish from there."

Day 1. Kurstin showed up at my house right on time. While he packed his bike, I said my goodby's to my wife and dog. The latter of whom just hates being left behind. In half a mile we were off the pavement and into the Pinenut Range riding my primary route which would take us over the range and into Smith Valley. The first 12 miles are part of my usual day rides with Wyatt, the afore mentioned dog. The terrain is pretty typical Pinyon - Juniper forest but still interesting, more so the first few dozen times I'd ridden it, and yet I still enjoyed it. Beyond that was still very familiar as I've ridden over the range more than a handful of times. I think Kurstin has ridden it a number of times as well. Our camp was well vetted as I camp there every time. It has water, nice views and good camping.

 

Day 2. Buckboard Store has new owners. Again. So all that pressure I felt to get there before they ran out of breakfast burritos was completely unnecessary. They make them to order now, how nice! Walker Canyon had road work happening so it was a traffic escort to get through. I stopped to use the bathroom at the rest area so Kurstin was at least an escort ahead of me through the canyon. I found him lounging by the turnoff to go out state route 208 leading to our route up Pine Grove Rd. The next camp was again a camp I use every time passing this way. It's precisely at an unlikely and well hidden spring that is utterly reliable. Arriving rather early we spent an hour or 2 hiding from the sun. 

 

Day 3. The morning started off with a gentle downhill on the well maintained road. Suddenly my front end felt wonky and I looked down to see tire sealant splashed on my tires sidewall. I yelled FLAT! to Kurstin and braked to a stop. It was immediately apparent I had cut the sidewall. I pulled out my repair kit. I had used plugs before but kept a plug kit easily reachable and not in the full kit. This would require...more. I had practiced stitching up a tire a couple of times over the years but never had to do a field repair nor tried to stitch it while on the rim. Doing the stitching on the rim using dental floss proved to be a bit challenging but eventually I found that by getting just a bit of fold in the tire the needle wouldn't skate off inside the tire and would penetrate back through to the outside. (Using a curved needle) After tying off the stitching I applied some "shoe goo" over the outside of the stitches. I let that set bit and then just started pumping the tire back up. I knew from my practice rounds that the stitching blew at something just over 20 psi so I didn't want to get too close to that. My home brew sealant inside the tire would bubble out then seal at intervals but would always soon seal the stitch holes and whatever was left of the cut. The tire eventually pumped up to my riding pressure of about 12 psi in this plus sized tire and we were off after about an hour delay. It wasn't pretty but it was pretty good. 

P.C. Kurstin

P.C. Kurstin

P.C. Kurstin

 

The rest of the days riding was uneventful and I spent a lot time inside my increasingly thinning dome poking around into my motivation and lack thereof for completing the route as planned. Maybe I'm getting too old. I finally landed on the premise that I do these things for fun and adventure. I'm a firm believer that it doesn't always have to be fun to be fun (type 2 fun) but if you're venturing into type 3 territory it's just not fun. So I made the decision to carve off a bunch of route in favor of something new. To his credit Kurstin took the news well and immediately agreed to join me in the new plan. So instead of turning left at Fletcher we turned right. We spent the night just above the turn going up to Masonic mining camp in the Bodie Hills which we planned to climb up through the following day. 

 

Day 4. Bright and early we began the long 8 mile climb up to Masonic. But honestly we begin every day bright and early. Or in my case at least early. I had been here before but it was new to Kurstin. Arriving at the lower town site he did a bit of exploring around the area and noticed the remains of the overhead tramway. But the climbing wasn't over. We intersected our original route and continued up and over a gap next to New York Hill. We had been seeing signs of gold ourselves. But not the mineral, the tree variety as the aspens were all turning for fall. 

Down we went with a few hilly interruptions past the remains of the Chemung Mine, a popular destination for overlanders. Down, down, down to highway 182 and on into Bridgeport making a stop at 'The Barn' for another burrito meal. 

P.C. Kurstin

Then onto hwy 395 for about 5 miles before turning off up Yaney Canyon. The new 'fun' was about to begin. We rode a little and pushed a lot for the remainder of our day until finally at a semi-level bench Kurstin paused to wait for me. "Do you want to camp?" I managed to croke out a weak "yes!" We had only gone about 27 miles but climbed over 4500 ft with some tough pushing near the end. 

P.C. Kurstin

Day 5. This section of route follows the Caldera 500  route, backwards. Singletrack much to steep to ride was the start to the day. Really steep difficult pushing. But after about a mile it became rideable. Beautiful Sierra gold was our companion to keep our spirits up. The trail was difficult to follow and we lost it several times. But using GPS we were never very far off and found it again quickly. At one point going down Huntoon Creek I was looking for a place to dismount to walk a short section of collapsed trail but instead over balanced to the downhill side and launched into the creek. I stuck the landing. A perfect 10. I was undamaged, the bike was undamaged, but my GPS mount had broken. I tether my unit in addition to the mount for just such instances so although I couldn't remount the device for the remainder of the trip at least I didn't lose it. NOTE to self for future - carry at least 1 spare Garmin type mount insert. We rode through Long Valley making our way over to Molybdenite Creek when the trail took a turn for the worse. Blow down, invisible trail, mucky stream crossings. At one point I declared "I'm f***ing lost, knowing it wasn't really true. I just couldn't find the trail and it was immediately after a very mucky swamp crossing. I think I looked a little sheepish when I glanced over and saw Kurstin sitting there staring at me. "Well don't mind me, I cuss at myself all the time." I felt sorta like I needed to recite the penguin joke. Finally just pushing through the bushes in the direction the GPS said to go I found the trail again and eventually after crossing the creek, the good trail on the west side of the creek. It was super fun riding down on better trail even though a couple really stout waterfall sections made us dismount. 

P.C. Kurstin

Soon we landed at the trailhead and were back on a good dirt road. Fast downhill took us back out to 395. Another short highway section and we branched off on Burcham Flat rd which we followed all the way into Walker and a nice albeit somewhat pricey motel room each. Walker Burger was another delight to end the tough day.

P.C. Kurstin

Day 6. Lot's of pavement today. We left Walker on East Side road, cut across to 395 at Topaz Lane and rode 395 to 89 and up over Monitor Pass. It's a long climb up Monitor but I felt pretty good even though Kurstin was, as usual, far ahead of me. I just settled into a pace I could maintain and kept chugging up the pass. We turned off on Leviathan Mine Road and climbed some more. We finally started down only to climb again up and around the Leviathan Mine superfund site. Don't drink the water or you may grow some extra appendages. Seriously, don't drink anything from any tributaries downstream from the mine or from the Carson River below where Bryant creek dumps in. Near the bottom I had marked out a vague 4x4 track leading down the rest of the way to Bryant Creek. From there down almost to the Carson River was extremely chundery. I mean for real. Large, loose and abundant are appropriate adjectives for the amount of rock. I was expecting my stitch job to blow at any moment, but it held. Down at the Carson River was a better track which we followed for another mile or so to a lovely camp by the river. 

Day 7. The end. Short day but punctuated with a stout climb out of the river canyon. From there a chundery, but not nearly so bad as the day before, roll out to the old dam and a hop out to hwy 395. We crossed the hwy and glided through local neighborhoods until Kurstin said "I recognize where we are." A mile later we rolled up my driveway and were greeted by Wyatt. 

This turned out to be a great route and I really enjoyed the singletrack despite the pushing. We called it Great Basin's Edge (again a name coined by Kurstin) for the fact that it really does skirt the edge of the Great Basin. As always, Kurstin was a great partner to have along for the ride. You should check out his blog site.

Stats according to my Coros Dura

243.27 miles

23,125' elevation gain

 

Route file: Great Basin's Edge 

 

Bike setups: 

Doug - Binary Bicycles Kinetik hardtail. 130mm suspension fork, 29x2.8 tires, Bikepacking bags + custom rear rack - no panniers. 

Kurstin - Falconer custom fully rigid. 27.5x3.0 tires, full bikepacking bags.