2018 Husqvarna 701 Enduro First Ride: Or 701 Reasons to Ride Moab

By Paul Fenn

Contributing Editor

When life gives you a mint 2018 Husqvarna 701 Enduro, you haul it off to Utah.

The early-April Toronto-to-Moab road trip was long in the planning. I’d bring my KTM 950 Super Enduro. Co-driving would be frequent co-conspirator Amir, prince of offroad fear and loathing. I knew he’d be gunning to ride Moab’s cruelest trails on the Husaberg FE 570 he spent hundreds of this past winter’s hours wrenching to perfection. Our third participant, Paul T, would bring two KTMs: a 520 EXC and his 950 SE, for backup.

All was sorted by February, when into the breach stepped Husqvarna Canada, offering me a new 701 Enduro. Informed of my destination, they kitted it out with handguards, crash bars and skidplate, in preparation for Moab’s petrified sand dunes, rock staircases, fesh-fesh and boulder-strewn jeep trails.

The drive down was 36 hours, with stops only for biology and gas. We were assaulted by blizzards, sideways rain, soil-scraping winds and the finale, a massive, can’t-see-a-damn-thing deluge that delivered us unto Moab – the only precipitation during our week-long stay there.

Up early after the sleep of the dead and some breakky, Paul T selected his 520 as the day’s weapon of choice and off we roared to fuel up and attack Chicken Corners, an easy but absurdly scenic trail. A couple of gear-shifts out of the gas station, the 520 stopped and would not restart. Roadside wrenching to no avail, we towed him back to the Apache Motel. He switched to the 950 V-twin. It happily ran… on one cylinder. More furious guesswork under a fiery sun, until Paul T finally told us to go. He’d tear-down both, try to get something running and join us later or tomorrow.

Amir and I are finally riding

We take an easy trail because it being April, we’re rusty, and it being Moab, there’s no point in destroying our bikes in the first half-hour when we have all week. Besides, it gives Amir, the suspension doctor, time to set up my 701. Rear takes all of 10 minutes. Front we leave on factory settings. It’s plush, but takes the jumps and abuse, bottoming out on only the most malicious terrain.

Moab is biblical

If you’re new to the swirl of Moab, know that it is elemental. Dinosaur country, land of Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, an enormously complex geological masterpiece carved out by zillions of years of wind, rain and the Colorado River. Explaining how it came to be so different from everything around it requires volumes. It’s erosion on a Martian scale. Earth’s viscera revealed.

On any Moab road or trail, things aren’t similar for long, and boring doesn’t enter into it. You’re constantly torn between the urge to stop, sit and take it all in – the 20-mile views, ancient trees and weatherworn timbers, how the red, black and green rockfaces shine like enormous blocks of sponge toffee and fudge hacked up by deities wielding thousand-foot machetes – and the desire to push on along trails that range from non-stop smile-inducing fun to pants-shittingly terrifying.

The call of Slick Rock

Chicken Corners conquered, Amir and I make for one of the most famous and surreal of Moab’s trails. “Slick Rock” is a misnomer – unless you’re on a horse. It’s pretty much all traction all the time on a trail that winds 10.5 miles / 16.9km through petrified sand dunes. White paint strips keep you on track, for to wander off is to flirt with an unceremonious plunge off a cliff, disappearance into a sinkhole or farewell down a hidden canyon. Mistakes here can be costly and irreversible. We wonder at the lone policemen driving pickup trucks carrying mashed-up dirtbikes but no passengers.

The Slick Rock trail amounts to a psychological endurance test with a series of skill-testing questions. We see few motorcyclists. The mountain bikers we do see are often bleeding and exhausted.

Half-an hour in, just as we decide we’re badasses, along comes a slab of steep that asks us, “Is that so?” It’s angled at forty-five degrees and at least eight storeys high. I’m idling behind Amir, shitting bricks as I wait for him to show me how this can be done. He powers up, but gets a short run at it and doesn’t have the momentum. Where he should have been steady-as-she-goes on throttle and steering, he fiddles and stalls. The ‘Berg nearly tips. He quickly hops off, assumes an awkward crouch, barely holding bike and himself upright. I must intervene.

I kill the 701’s engine, drop the side-stand and rush up on foot to help – not forgetting to record video.

He who hesitates

Historically, Amir’s been the better rider, especially in technical passages. Can’t say I’ve ever seen him fail or back off. As I breathlessly trudge up to him, he’s yelling, “I hesitated! I hesitated!” I’m wondering if I am right in the head to be trying this hill on day-one, on a $14,000 bike with a few hundred km on the clock. If I drop it, it will likely tumble down the solid rock face, flinging parts into the ether until coming to rest, almost certainly not ridable. Could it even be towed out in that state?

I reach Amir and stabilize the bike while he finds a better position. There’s no question of riding up. With him pushing on the bars, I try the trusty old method of rolling the front wheel uphill hand-over-hand, which has seldom failed me. It fails me. The hill is so steep that there’s too little weight on the front knobby and it just skids. We opt to start the bike, him beside it working throttle and clutch, while I try to rotate the front as before. It takes some doing, but we roll the bike over the brow to flatter lands. Both of us are sweating and hyperventilating. Moab is 5,000ft above sea level.

My turn. Gulp

Walking back down, it’s so steep I have to turn sideways to avoid slipping in my clunky motocross boots. I look back up. Amir seems hundreds of feet away. A speck at the top. Can I make this? Maybe – if I adhere to my old rule for conquering intimidating steeps: Stand up, arms and knees bent, resist temptation to over-grip, absorb everything through legs and arms, acknowledge but look 40-50 feet past obstacles that are trying to kill you to the place you want to be, hold a steady but not too stupid amount of throttle, body weight a bit forward, but not so much that the rear tire spins. And don’t forget to breathe.

I pause to get my breath back – that takes a while – then bite my lip and gun it. One other useful strategy for making frightening climbs is to block out the consequences of failure. Easier said than done here. And when do you decide enough’s enough? My answer has always been to be selfless, and let Amir go first. If he makes it, I can likely make it. Except, he hasn’t made it.

Bugger it. Husqvarna has insurance, and so do I

The first thirty feet are the steepest and scariest. I can feel the 701’s light front end wanting to wheelie, engine bogging, threatening to stall. I glance below and note that I am wheelie-ing over each little bump. I lean further forward. The front behaves, the rear holds. I leave the clutch out, give it a touch more juice, because if it stalls I’m not sure I can equal Amir’s balancing performance.

I make the top, unmolested. Easier than expected. Much easier. Okay then. This bike is made for Moab. It’s up to me to keep remembering that.

We finish Slick Rock, then ride a bumpy, chewed-up jeep track back into town. Paul is still wrenching. Amir joins him. Turns out both bikes were drenched from all the rain on the way down, so not a lot of spark going on.

The next four days are pure fairy tale

We ride hard, falling sore and exhausted into bed nightly, bellies full of food and booze. Nobody crashes hard or gets too banged up. We do all the trails we planned to, except the White Rim. It is long and requires an early rise, and we’re not adept at those. Next time.

701’s strengths and weaknesses revealed

I have very few beefs with this machine. But I must ask why Husky nixed the map switch a coupla years back? A low-end torque map setting is crucial in Moab-like terrain. Due to a tendency to bog gutlessly or stall at lowest RPMs in technical sections, I must keep revs serviceably high while slipping the clutch constantly.

The 701 engine’s not quick to spool up or down. I work around these handicaps, but they add layers of uncertainty that aren’t needed. I stay in first most of the time on slower, technical trails like Metal Masher, Poison Spider and Slick Rock. But this makes for snatchy, jerky, noisy riding.

Mid-week, we run into an Albertan father and son, fixing a flat trailside. The dad is on a heavily modded 701E, complete with rally tower kit and long-range tanks. Says he races it in Baja. I ask him how he’s addressed the above issues. He barks back, “Rottweiler intake kit, dude! Tons of low-end torque.” He’s also had some suspension work done.

Yup, all of that would pretty much perfect this bike.

Minor quibbles aside

The 701 is a deeply, impressively competent thumper. Its claimed 74 hp / 55 kW @ 8,000 rpm, and torque of 71 Nm @ 6,750 rpm on a dry weight of 145kg / 319lb give it a downright wicked power-to-weight ratio. The wheelie-hungry beast is flickable as hell, lightweight, easy to handle in the rough, ready to hop over the flotsam, with the rear plush enough to let a rider sit down through boulder fields without herniating many discs.

In all, the 701 delivers me a week of hardcore bliss. On the few bits of highway, gravel and fast trail we do ride, the mid-to-top-end power is nuts and there is some wobble; needs a steering damper for peace of mind at speed.

So is the 701 a true adventure-touring-racing-offroading bike?

Yes. But as with any stock machine, mods will be needed. Beyond the engine map rethink… the stock seat’s not ideal for long sits. Wider pegs, if you wear knee-braces. Much stronger front crash bars (in a slo-mo tip-over, I bent the thin stock bars enough that they were almost touching the exhaust header). A serious rad guard. A rally tower or windscreen, if you don’t like the naked ride. Its ultra-long side-stand sits the 701 nearly vertical. A puff of wind can knock it over. That’s a mandatory fix.

In summary, a couple grand worth of mods and you’ve got yourself a fantastically tourable dirtbike with more competence than most riders, myself included. It’s one brilliant platform to build from.

I give the 2018 Husqvarna 701 Enduro a strong BUY recommendation.

Get the 701's full specs here.

Many thanks to Husqvarna Canada for loaning the bike.

Readers: Come back to this page soon to catch the trip video. Much was recorded of this outing and the author plans to put something presentable together before long.

Get more of this guy's bike, gear and event reviews here.