Donald's step-son, Justin, and I were searching together these past two day and have become great friends. I am so honored to have met such a wonderful person along with Donald's son, Noah.
We'd been searching some very back road areas due to some information we'd gotten on Saturday and when we finished that we went up to Darby with plans to run down 93 at the same time of day to see if we noticed anything due to the time of day. Since we'd come across 43 to get to Darby, we'd decided we'd try the 93 route to Salmon.
Coming into Darby was the first time all day that we'd had cell service and we checked in, around 5pm, to let Larry know what we were doing. That's when we got the news that Donald's crash had been found on Hwy 93, north of Salmon.
It was an extremely tough decision between heading straight back to Dillon or going down to mm322.1. We went down 93 and it was the right thing to do. The road down across the border is absolutely gorgeous with some tricky corners but they're well marked with warning signage and guard rails.
Just above North Fork, the road straightens out a bit and the corners switch from technical twisties to nice sweepers which continue coming out of North Fork. About four miles south of North Fork, there's a nice straight away coming into a left hand turn. It doesn't look too bad on satellite view but it's actually a deceptively tricky, decreasing radius, double apex turn that's much too easy to take much too much speed into (even at the speed limit) because it looks like an easy sweeper on the approach. About 2/3rd's the way through there's about 3 feet where it opens up and then shuts down so there's not much reaction time to adjust either one's line or speed mid-corner. It's no wonder he missed it. Anyone could have and, I've no doubt, many have in the past.
It's also no wonder that searchers missed seeing anything as they searched the road because there's a well-used gravel pull-out with lots of tire tracks and a double embankment - an immediate ditch and then a rise with tons of over-growth and reeds hiding a second ditch with another rise with tons of over-growth and reeds before the river. Even knowing where to look, the vegetation looked undisturbed.
While I am very dis-heartened that this story has ended in this way, I can report that it is a truly beautiful place on a truly beautiful road and I know that Donald will ride with all of the folks on all of the forums that have been involved in this amazing effort.
It is very peaceful there.....
