24 Hour Motorcycle Ride on Starvation Ridge

"We're gonna need a firearm. Anyone have a pistol we can use to get this thing going?" A short man, round in the middle, wearing all the tones of Mother Nature—brown, green, blue, and some type of taupe—passed his eyes around the waning audience. The pre-race briefing had ended and the 100-plus racers were wandering back to their respective pits. In a few minutes, a Le Mans-style start would kick off a 24-hour off-road endurance race on an 800-acre piece of property sandwiched between Oregon and Washington.

I raised my hand: “I’ve got a 9mm in my van.” The squat man landed his eyes on me and asked, “Mind if we fire off a round to start the race?” I walked back to the van, cleared the chamber, locked the slide, and brought my Glock to the big fella waiting next to the timing-and-scoring shack.

A loud crack, clearly the sound of an exceptionally well-built Austrian pistol, wafted across the sheep shit-covered field. The first wave of racers, lined up shoulder to shoulder at one end of the field, came running toward us. What lay ahead of them was a mix of baby-head stones and razor-sharp rocks, just waiting for someone to trip and end their race early. Their motorcycles were strewn across the ground next to an oversize water hole. The racers kicked feverishly to get them going and then tore off around the lake and into a horizon layered with golden grass and burgundy barns. This was Starvation Ridge, and the race, a 24-hour test of idiocy, er, endurance was underway.

The event organizer, land owner, and race promoter is a tall man with three fingers on one hand and four on the other. He looks like he’s made from some combination of old leather, Carhartt, and Crown Royal—bruised and battered by years spent tending to his property. Shortly before the start he threw those three fingers into the air while addressing a crowd of eager participants. He laid down the rules: 24 hours of non-stop racing, each lap taking roughly 40 minutes for the fast guys, and more than an hour for everyone else. Teams consisted of one to eight members.

The course looks like a medieval hedge maze carved into the land, took competitors through abandoned barns, along narrow ridgelines, past fields of freshly planted who-knows-what, and then down Nissan Hill, an immensely steep slab of dirt that more than one rider opted out of. As an entry-level masochist myself, the course looked enticing. But when I made my way back to the pits, aboard a course worker’s side-by-side, and saw the faces of participants who had endured a lap (or two), I was glad I had a van to climb inside of and not a motorcycle I had to mount.

Unlike a lot of off-road races I’ve attended, either as a participant or picture taker, the 24 Hours of Starvation Ridge is not accustomed to compliments. They’ve never really had a “write up,” and the availability of information on the internet is slim. So when I announced my intentions to cover the race, the organizers were confused. Very few people go out there other than to race this insane event or work the pits. But this event is the kind of thing more people need to know about. An event that promotes proper racing etiquette, team-building techniques, and self-reliance. It’s difficult, no doubt, but what’s fun about easy?

When the checkered flag waved the next morning, less than half the teams were standing—the rest bowed out because of weather, fatigue, or mechanical failure. A mixed bag of disaster and disappointment. Most will be back again next year.