Having on the ‘806 Route’

The scene was not unfamiliar. Three riders transferring throughout the Texas plains with a dust plume advancing toward them.

In a long time long gone by that could have intended a valuable read of bison or an impending struggle with a band of Comanche. In this instance, however, the three riders were being on bicycles and the dust plume was a convoy of automobiles comprehensive of college students from Texas Tech’s Adventure Media course.

The 3 riders ended up Jerod Foster, a professor at Texas Tech who qualified prospects the Experience Media class and is also a freelance photographer Brandon Weaver, freelance adventure author and longtime cyclist and Justin Rex, a freelance photographer, Tech teacher and your author. They had been tasked with using a route Foster is acquiring and phone calls the 806 Route.

The 806 Route is a bicycle touring route that usually takes a rider through some of the much more scenic and historic parts of the Southern Significant Plains.

“It is the excellent for people today who want to include all of it or a section of it as a tour of Route 66, or a tour of legendary Texas” said Foster.

The route starts in Lubbock, goes up to Floydada via Blanco Canyon then proceeds up by Caprock Canyons Point out Park and outside of via ranch region in close proximity to the mouth of Palo Duro Canyon. The riders hit their northern most position staying in Tanglewood, in which they turned back again south to Lake Mackenzie before making the final press home to Lubbock.

In all, the trio rode 378 miles mostly on dirt roads with 30 hrs put in in the saddle and 5,500 feet of elevation attain more than 5 times.

“It’s not the least complicated point for people to do” said Foster. “It’s not a route for novices for the reason that the distances place to issue are also lengthy and the weather conditions conditions can be harsh.”

Between Foster’s explanations for producing the route: “It’s exactly where we reside.”

The Wonderful Plains area of the region has performed host to a escalating quantity of gravel biking gatherings and races with two of the key activities going on in Kansas and Oklahoma. Locations with wide networks of community dirt roads. By that metric, the Texas Panhandle would be a sensible place to establish the subsequent major route and it is a put that hasn’t gotten a great deal of interest.

“I preferred to attract some notice to the Texas Panhandle with this route, generate a thing I would want to do but also push more focus to a location that is sort of forgotten,” Foster mentioned. “The Fantastic Plains is the middle of the country. It’s flyover region, but it really is also 1 of the most crucial regions for the state and genuinely for the earth due to the fact of how considerably agricultural output there is and how substantially cultural richness there is and has been right here previously.”

Working day a few stood out to every of the riders.

A 107 mile trip through the ranch state of the japanese Panhandle took the riders by way of the heart of the JA Ranch. The JA, originally fashioned in 1876 as a result of a partnership concerning Charles Goodnight and John Adair, is continue to operate by Adair’s decedents and is the oldest privately owned ranch in the condition, in accordance to their web-site. The ranch also donated its bison read to Texas Parks and Wildlife, and they now reside in Caprock Canyons State Park, according to TPWD. The park, a element of the unique JA land invest in, is also an right away stop on the 806 Route.

“What we did was possibly the cliff notes edition of an arduous journey somebody would take in the 1800s” claimed Weaver. “We obtained a taste of it, but we didn’t get to be immersed in it… I assume working day 3, we had been pretty well immersed in it because of our lack of h2o.”

Weaver, at first from Snyder, was fascinated in seeing this component of Texas from the viewpoint of his bicycle.

“I appeared at this as a two-working day experience to the trailhead, to the meat of the sandwich and to the canyon lands I wanted to examine,” he mentioned.

Weaver’s other motive for seeking to be alongside for the trip was inspiration.

What stood out, he said, have been the mixture of the exotic lands all around Caprock Canyons and getting to spend time with friends and students.

“(It was) the resourceful unknowns that were being heading to be a fountain of youth for me at my age of 49,” he claimed. “I’ll acquire that inspiration even if it comes with a large dose of struggling.”

The course that followed the riders was Foster’s Journey Media course.

By design, the course takes college students out of the class room and “teaches them how to perform professionally” and introduce them to the realities of working in outdoor media, claimed Foster.

For Madi Walker and Dylan Davidson, graduate learners who returned soon after getting the course as undergrads, the get the job done expertise and the experience of executing one thing challenging is invaluable.

At first, Davidson took the course to see if he desired to shell out his job behind a camera.

“After last yr I understood I want to work a lot more in a video production function, and what much better course to throw you a ton of practical experience in a small total of time,” he mentioned.

For Walker, it changed her standpoint on her profession all jointly.

“I acquired I was able of a great deal extra than what I set myself up for in lifetime,” she mentioned.

Pressured to modify for the reason that of the COVID-19 pandemic, the course pivoted absent from its common format of sending pupils into the backcountry for various times to build function. This time, being nearer to household and in their personalized automobiles, allow them generate tales all-around the a few riders and their journey relatively than their own experiences. Foster’s new 806 Route was a timely expedient. For him, it was an quick decision to have the course make the major media for the release of the route to inform the story of a group of riders riding the route for the initially time.

When it’s not the epic landscapes of the mountain west, the route has generated attention. Foster says, “I’ve been bombarded with concerns from persons definitely from all about North The us intrigued in observing the route and that is heading to change into curiosity in using the route.”

Foster and Weaver strategy to release the route as a result of Bikepacking.com this summer season.