On Friday, April 24 and Saturday the 25 Rally For Rangers will be hosting a motorcycle ride from San Francisco to the entrance of Yosemite National Park. Enjoy Yosemite Bug Rustic Mountain Resort hospitality, and contribute to the purchase of motorcycles for Ulaan Taiga National Park Rangers of Mongolia.

All profits from this event will help fund the effort to preserve this natural wonder. Accommodations are available from Yosemite Bug Rustic Mountain Resort and must be reserved in advance.  Accomodations must be booked for 2 nights.

The resort has a variety of accommodations from single beds, tent cabins, private rooms and private group cabins. Camp sites also available. Food, drinks and live music will be provided by the Gravel Spreaders. $25 registration fee required.

About Rally For Rangers:

In 2012, former U.S. National Park Superintendent, Bob McIntosh, was at Lake Hovsgol National Park in Mongolia working with the Mongol Ecology Center to help protect this World Heritage Site and surrounding parks.

Lake Hovsgol is the 14th largest lake in the world and supplies seventy percent of the Mongolia’s fresh water. The park is three times larger than Yosemite, yet it only has fifteen park rangers to patrol it. These rangers use horses and decades-old Russian motorcycles to deal with poaching, illegal mining, illegal development, and ever increasing visitation.

During his visit, the chief ranger was called away to apprehend a poacher. But mounting his motorcycle to pursue, as is often the case, it wouldn’t start. Deeply moved and frustrated, Bob decided he was going to personally buy the chief ranger a new motorcycle. He told a few friends about the idea and they also climbed aboard.

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By summer, 2014, fifteen volunteers had raised $150,000 for fifteen new Yamaha motorcycles, and rode them 1,200 miles on an epic twelve day rally across the Mongolian countryside. In remote northern Mongolia, just a few kilometers from the Russian border, a moving ceremony took place transferring the bikes to the smiling Mongol park rangers. They had never been given such thoughtful and quality equipment to perform their jobs.

Following the ceremony there was time for some riding lessons on the new higher performance machines as well as training on the care and feeding of the bikes by technicians from Yamaha who supported the effort.

The rally was an incredible success but just the first of five planned rallies to bring a total of forty-seven motorcycles to parks throughout Mongolia. Plans for the 2015 Rally for the Ranger are underway, rider recruiting is complete, and fundraising efforts fully under way. BlueWavesMongolia.org