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[trikester]

Later this month I'll be spending a week at a lodge in the Klamath National Forest with my 2012 DS ZF6. Each day I will ride from the lodge at 1200 feet elevation up dirt fire roads to elevations of 7,000 to 8,000 feet and then back down to the lodge. It will be interesting to see how low I can go on my battery going up, counting on not using much going back down. I'll start in the beginning of the week being pretty conservative and then getting bolder as I gain knowledge from the previous rides. I'll be doing a different road each day and enjoying the fantastic views from the tops of the ridges.

The key to my truck will be at the lodge and I will be carrying one of their sat phones. They have agreed to a rescue if needed   

Another interesting aspect of this week is that the lodge is completely off the grid. He gets a small amount of power from a spring fed hydro system stored in 24v batteries and using a 4300 watt inverter. Then he supplements his power during the evening high usage period from a Diesel generator. He has given me the green light for recharging my bike after each day's ride but I will also have my 1600 W inverter type gas generator with me as a backup, in case his diesel doesn't run long enough some evenings. 

I'll add my experiences with the rides to this post when I get back.

Trikester

[BSDThw]

Hi trikester,

it sounds you will have a lot of fun and I hope only good experience.

The recharging will by a bit of thrilling, but I can't wait to your report about your trip.

Have fun

[trikester]

Yes fun! That's what it's all about. 

One thing I forgot to mention is that each time I recharge I will be using my "Kill-A-Watt" meter so I can keep a record of how many kwh were required to recharge after each ride. I'll also have my GPS on board (I made a mount on the "tank" of the bike) so I can have accurate mileage and altitude gain/loss information. 

[Marshm]

Are you going to track your speed?  Any chance you can find some singe track trails to put 20 miles or so?  Really very little information out there on dirt riding of electric's.  Your dirt road experiment will be interesting. 

[trikester]

The only single tracks in that area are closed to motor vehicles so it will be all fire roads. Some years ago I rode all of these including the single tracks on mountain bikes. However, on many of the road climbs I was "spotted" by a vehicle part way up. Pretty brutal to pedal all the way from the bottom, but I saw others do it. 

My GPS will give me the moving average for my speed so I can record those figures also. Thanks for reminding me, I might not have thought to do that. These rides will also include short pavement rides to get to the trail heads. Since the pavement will be very narrow and twisty my speed will not be high.

One thing I discovered on my 2010 DS was that my dirt riding range was longer than my pavement range (counter-intuitive). I attribute most of that to the slower speeds on dirt. I haven't done long sustained climbs on dirt yet so this time may be different due to copper heating driving up losses. I will be holding my speed down. For one thing I don't want to run up on a surprised bear with my quiet bike. That was always a concern when I was mountain biking in this area. Never happened  I'm glad ZERO put loud horns on these bikes 

Trikester