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Chris Elizaga
Washington Marketing Manager
Do you like racing dirt bikes through tough terrain, mud, rain, and cold? How about doing it for 24 hours straight? If that sounds like your kind of fun, look no further than the Starvation Ridge 24 Hour, an event that has drawn racers, motorcycle die-hards, and the mildly unhinged to the hills outside Centerville, WA, for nearly a quarter of a century. The “Over the Bars Gang” puts on this legendary suffer-fest every year.
I last raced the event in 2023. Starvation Ridge offers several race classes: team categories with four to six riders, and for those who truly embrace misery, an Iron Man class where you tackle the entire thing alone. In the team classes, riders take turns running laps like a relay. That year I joined a six-person team, and it was cold, punishing, and unforgettable. Temperatures barely broke the mid-30s and dipped into the 20s at night. The ground froze so hard that sections turned black from tire rubber, and icy water crossings added to the “fun.” There’s also an abandoned house and barn you ride through, which might be the best part of the whole course. I left 2023 promising myself I would never do this race again.
Naturally, I lied.
I’ve realized lately that I tell myself all sorts of nonessential lies, so I broke that promise and signed up again for the 2025 race.
This year, we fielded a team of four. I arrived the afternoon before the start feeling cautiously optimistic (read: foolish). It was in the mid-40s, unseasonably warm, and the dirt was perfectly tacky under an overcast sky as I set up camp. But if you know anything about that part of Washington, you know the wind is an unrelenting tyrant across the treeless plains. Sure enough, it picked up fast. We scrambled to tie everything down before it blew to Idaho, then hunkered in the wall tent to make dinner and plan our attack.
As we cooked, the sky opened up. The clay soil pooled water instantly and within minutes a steady stream flowed through the center of our tent. That pretty much set the tone for the weekend: 45 mph gusts and enough rain to drown a camel.
Race morning brought only a light drizzle, but the night’s storm had turned the course into deep, slick, heavy mud. When our starting rider crawled in after his first lap absolutely caked in it, we realized conditions were only going to get worse, and that was the only prediction we got right. The 24-mile loop became a battlefield of slippery rocks, bottomless mud, and endless ruts. Between laps, we desperately tried (and failed) to dry our gear and scrape 50 pounds of sludge off our bikes. Mostly, we just tried to stay warm.
By afternoon the wind returned, and by 7 p.m. it had ripped the walls off our tent. As we scrambled to shove gear into the bike trailer, the remaining tents collapsed and shredded. We were left soaked, muddy, freezing, and exposed to squalls of rain and bitter wind. Eventually we rearranged the trailer just enough to cower inside among the wreckage of what used to be our camp. It was a long night.
There were small bright spots though, morale boosters, if you will. One teammate introduced us to a “John’s Island Hotdog”: a hotdog dressed not with mustard or relish, but with peanut butter and mayonnaise. I was horrified, then pleasantly surprised. Maybe it was delicious. Maybe we were delirious. Hard to say.
Morning brought a beautiful sunrise and a pit area that looked like a war zone; tents shredded, debris everywhere, even toilet paper fluttering across the field. The riders milling around all had the same haunted expression: a mixture of exhaustion, madness, and the shell-shocked look of someone who has stared down Mother Nature and lived to tell the story.
When the race finally ended, we packed up and got out of there without sticking around for awards. A long line of RVs and trucks had sunk in the mud waiting for tractor rescue, and I was thrilled not to be one of them. I drove away certain I’d never return.
…until maybe next year.
