Offroad: Mormon Mesa Point

In order to explore the Mormon Mesa a little more, Gordon, Hugh and I took to the offroad once again and headed south. OK… Gordon had convinced Hugh to go find two mines which were on his mine database, but which no one in recent history had seen. Then somehow we ended up on the trail without the coordinates to the spots so went sight-seeing instead. And I'm glad we did.

The view from the top gives the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon a run for their money; but, I digress. Hugh calls any trailhead in the area, except the water tower, "riding from the girls trailhead." So, once again, we staged at the water tower parking area on Ben Franklin to begin the days ride.

Up and over the Flat Top Mesa is a beautiful ride, in and of itself; but, for me at least, I've already "got the tee-shirt" on that ride so it can be a bit of an impediment to getting to the "real" destination on the other side. Recent weathering and wear has made opening and closing the gates at the top on the steep grade quite an adventure; so, if you're smart you'll make a side-by-side carrying two people go first. The "spare" can climb over to the gate and open it to let everyone through then close it after.

Press to Read The Rest ...

NEW: Bryce Canyon Trail System

You know, with age, I find it increasingly difficult to do two things at once. I learned a term in my youth, back when things called computers were invented – it's called "time sharing." Afterwards, the womens movement claimed the prior discovery rights to the activity; they said it had been inherent in the gender to "multi-task" since the time of Eve.

I used to be able to do it like a whiz, you know: drive and read a map, listen on the phone and continue reading mail, dictate a letter and drive to work, walk and chew gum… I used to be able to juggle navigating an ATV over a single-track, watching a GPS trac, scanning for photo ops, listening to a CD and pointing out items of interest to companions all at one time. Well, I still can do the "gum" thing but it's difficult to both work on building trail maps and write blogs at the same time.

However, have I got a deal for you today! A rider from southern California named Randy began communicating with me several months ago about some rides he had taken up in Utah, around the Bryce Canyon area. Over the last three or four months, we've been communicating about the area and he has been able to send in three great GPS tracks for those of you who want to ride the area with your offroad machines.

Press to Read The Rest ...

The Wilderness of Gold Butte

For some time now I have had the BLMs map of their proposal for turning Gold Butte (and Bunkerville Flats) into a WILDERNESS AREA, glaring at me from the middle of my desk top, not knowing what else to do with it except look at it and shake my head in disgust.

Frankly, as a useable map for making an assessment leading to meaningful comment, it is completely worthless; there, I said it. It is nothing more than an enhanced clone of the map the Las Vegas BLM field office foisted on us when they went through and systematically closed close to fifty or so trail segments a couple of years ago. That map was completely worthless to the public, and so is this.

Absolutely NO geo-location marks! Absolutely no latitude or longitude markings! No road names. For the most part NO readable, meaningful labels! All this leaving even the most basic understanding of where things are, woefully complex and time consuming; beyond what most reasonable people are either able or willing to undertake. Then there's obsessive-compulsive me.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Google Earth: Present and Future Tense

All indications are that Google Earth is about due for another Richter 7.0 shake-up – at least if you can believe the scuttlebutt at "Where 2.0" last week. I wasn't there myself, but lurkers in the "blogosphere" sure are all a-buzz about it.

"Where" is the massive conference started by Google last year to showcase their product and draw "groupies" from all around the globe who want to learn about and show off and network their projects that they are developing – notably those that use Google Earth and Google Maps. Using their familiar nomenclature, this, the second "version," is 2.0.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Offroading Home: on Google Earth

Some years ago now Google gobbled up a small upstart company whith a good idea: Panoramio. It was a company which developed software that would allow people with pictures to share – professional and wannabe alike – to geocode their shots with latitude and longitude then upload them to their servers for others to see. Their idea? To cover the earth with photos of actual places to go beyond what you could get with a flat map.

Once the company had succeeded enough to make it obvious that this was a good idea, Google made a couple of developers very rich… and happy! They bought Panoramio and added it to the growing cadre of "add-ons" to their second "cash cow" product – Google Earth.

Offroading Home has been using the service for years – it's a good place to "hang" your trip photos for others to see and the background is the actual earth instead of a wall.

Press to Read The Rest ...

New Google Earth: Version 6.0

Google has released another update to Google Earth - now version 6.0!   [I actually had this post prepared last year for the update to version 5.2, and was nearly ready to release it on you, when my testing showed that a couple of very substantial bugs had been introduced into previously working code!]

So, even though there were a couple of interesting new features, my testing showed that the so-called "update" had broken part of the code which allowed you to save your trails correctly for others to see. I decided that was too much of a damage to the program for me to want to endorse; so, instead of telling you about it, I told Google – or at least tried to. Have YOU ever tried getting through to a REAL person at Google?

My bug discovery was published in the Google Earth forum and did receive comments from other users; but, not even a shred of acknowledgement from any Google official person. So, the only thing we could do was to wait to see when/if they improved it in later versions.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Gold Mines of Gold Butte

I have a friend who loves historic Gold Mines… well, all mines actually!   He's never heard about a mine that he didn't want to go visit. To look at them, to walk around them, to explore them and photograph them. He loves to drive his side-by-side up any old mine road to as close as he can get… even if it's straight up.   He's been to so many mines, and has so many mine photographs, we kid him that he must be writing a coffee-table book about them.

And he has chosen a pretty good place to snowbird because hundreds of the things are within a day-trip of his winter-time home. There are more than 40 claims on Gold Butte alone which have historically taken gold in some amount. None, unfortunately, are still in operation; and, as we have previously shown, the BLM is taking great pains to eradicate them from the face of the earth.

Today's map is a neat "network link" that I found at a website (MineCache.com) which will display all the mining claims in a Google Earth viewport which have been known to contain at least some gold.   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Gold Mines of Gold Butte.]

Press to Read The Rest ...

Ultimate Offroad: Santa

If either you or your children occasionally watch the NASA channel (and who doesn't) you undoutedly have seen the giant electronic map, taking up one whole wall in the Mission Control room, which displays the earth, the Space Shuttle orbits and the current position of the Space Shuttle and Space Station at any given time. In short… a huge "Google Earth" trail map!

And you probably know that on Christmas and Thanksgiving the little symbol's representing the Space Shuttle and Station are substituted for icons of Santa's sleigh and a Turkey respectively. Radar and Satellite tracking data are fed into NASA computers and the exact positions of any satellite can be displayed to the second! Better than most of our GPS units we take along to track our rides.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to actually follow along the Shuttle's path over the earth? Or better yet – even be able to track and plot the track the "Old Guy" takes Christmas Eve? Is anyone tracking him? Does he show up on radar… or whatever? Do we still have any records of his flights?

Well, yes, Virginia… the answer is YES to all of those questions. [In fact, this is a post where I'd appreciate it if you would make an effort to forward this link to families you know who could use the information. Copy and paste this link into an email   --> http://OffroadingHome.com <--   the post will be left here through christmas so you can link to it.]

Press to Read The Rest ...

Mo-vember

This year at the rodeo we heard all about the "tough enough to wear pink" campaign which supported women's breast cancer awareness month in October. It's only now that I've learned about MOvember – too late to participate in the growing, but not to to late to publish about.

The term "Mo" is the slang word around the english speaking world, especially Australia (and perhaps elsewhere as well), for moustache; and November is, well, November.   Put the two together and you've got: MO-vember, the month where there is a growing world-wide initiative to generate similar awareness for a plight of men: Prostate Cancer.   A manly approach to publicizing a manly problem using a "stache" instead of a froofy ribbon.

Press to Read The Rest ...

NEW: Silver State Trails

The Silver State Trails in Nevada was posted about over on the Offroading Home Forum a few days ago. I'd never heard of them before, so did a bit of research and found that the trails were just a bit north of our old stopping grounds in Mesquite, up by Pioche and Pananca.

The person who posted about them left some links to pages that he had found, so I followed them.   As usual, there were no REAL, usable maps or files available; so, no-one could actually download anything but PR hype.

I found the BLM web site for the area, and one additional site which had the area split up into five of those proprietary, and nearly unusable, Adobe PDF maps.   As you know some BLM field offices are still using this "protectionist" type of format – probably thinking that what they are doing is somehow useful to people.

Press to Read The Rest ...

USGS Map Waypoints: Colorado

Well, what was started over 5 months ago is finally done: the Colorado USGS Features file.   I had a request from a reader to do the same thing for Colorado that I did for Utah, Nevada, Montana and elsewhere and did start it but just too many things got in the way.   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Colorado USGS Features (2.6 mb)]

All that's over now and it's finally completed… all 64 counties of 'em! It does go a bit faster now that I'm used to the grind; but, it's still a fair amount of tedium which is why it probably gets relegated to the back burner so easily.

It has turned out that these USGS Features files are quite a bit more useful than I had anticipated which is why I've had so many requests for them. You may have noticed that Google Earth has changed perceptibly over the past couple of so-called "updates."

Press to Read The Rest ...

The Great Basin

The Great Basin is an endorheic watershed, if you know what that means… for that matter, its still one even if you don't know what it means.

In fact, it's the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds in all of of North America! And, is particularly notable for both its arid conditions and its widely varied Basin and Range topography.

The North American low-point, at Badwater Basin, is less than 100 miles away from the contiguous United States' highpoint, at Mount Whitney summit.

Endorheic Basin

"Endorheic" is one of those high-falutin' Greek based words (meaning "within" and "to flow"); which, to us normo-falutin' people, translates into: "a closed drainage basin which retains water and allows no outflow to other bodies of water such as rivers or oceans." It may also be called an "internal drainage system."

Normally, water that finds itself in a drainage basin eventually flows out through rivers or streams or permeable rock – ultimately winding up in an ocean.

An endorheic basin… not so much. In such a basin, the center is lower than any possible route to the ocean, and to top it off the rock isn't all that permeable. So any water that gets in pretty much has only two options: evaporation and seepage.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Havasu Trail Closures

After several "back-and-forths" with the IT department of the Lake Havasu Field Office of the BLM about the maps available for the Travel Management Plan (TMP) - we have now received the map coordinates for all the connecting trails and have finished updating the master map.

Press to Read The Rest ...

NEW: McCullough-Telephone-Rhyolite

Three submitted trails have been added to the Southern Nevada area (folder) of the "Nevada Trails" Master Map: McCullough Pass, Telephone Canyon and Rhyolite Back Door.   [Obtain a free Google Earth file of this route at: http://offroadinghome.djmed.net/nevada/nevada.htm]

They were anonymously submitted trips which DO check out on the satellite image, DO look like they visit or pass significant features verified in the USGS Features file BUT WEREN'T submitted with specific directions or ratings SO NEED the verification of other riders.

I think that I've mentioned it before, but we always try and verify all the trails which are submitted for inclusion in our master maps. You just need to actually look at one of our maps to see that they are NOT like those computer generated, forum posted, difficult to follow "Every Trail" on other sites. Most of our submitters welcome the help with making their listing look polished and be helpful for others who come behind them.

Once in awhile, for whatever reason, a track comes through without the ability to get back to the submitter, which puts me at a disadvantage. If the trail looks like it could be in a popular area, does actually follow visible markings on the satellite image or is in an area where there are few other submissions then I may decide to try and include it – hoping for further verification and descriptions.

Such is the case with these three trails. They are all in most interesting areas which should be able to be verified easily.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Trail Difficulty Scales - Off Road ATV SUV

Nearly every offroading book I pick up has some kind of scale they use to rate how difficult a listed trail is to ride. The problem is that there is NO one standard rating system so every one is different and unless I want to make my brain explode by trying to "interpolate" between them I'm stuck using all of them in the master maps.

Some of the books simply use a 1 through "n" value and leave it up to the reader to visualize whatever they want (where "n" is anything between 3 and 10.) Or, use "ski-run" type descriptions for trails – you know "green circle," "blue square" and "black diamond" (which may or may not relate to: "Beginner," "Intermediate" and "Advanced".

The big difference between them is that they all attempt to rate different aspects of the experience (and there are many) depending upon the mind-set, compulsiveness and preference of the writer. One rates the trail, another rates the riders skill level and still another rates the vehicle. Some describe it in great detail, others show pictures and still others just leave everything up to the imagination.

Press to Read The Rest ...

NEW: Havasu BLM Trail Closures

We interrupt our normally scheduled posts for a BLM "Travel Management Plan (TMP)" alert for the Havasu riding area in Arizona.

Offroaders will recognize this term as used by the BLM for the periodic review of all trails in an area to see how many we can "get off the books," so-to-speak – i.e. "close them off for everything except hikers." Which pretty much means: "Close them off to seniors!"

Offroaders who have at all been paying attention also recognize that this process spans several months fraught with hair-tearing frustration over trying to obtain usable information and straight answers from the BLM in order to make your "comments," all the while fending off mis-information and attacks from various "save the dirt" groups.

What makes this TMP a bit unique is that for the first time, in my knowledge, the BLM has…

Press to Read The Rest ...

Utah Trails Master Map - Complete Re-Do

The Utah Trails ATV-SUV master map has undergone almost a complete revision and update.

The graphic interface for the whole file was enhanced, the entire Central Region was re-done almost from scratch and several new trails have been added which complete loops and from submitted trails.

A frequent trail submitter Michael Davidson added four trails near Beaver in Central Utah following a recent trip to the state: Forest Service roads 129, 137 and 147. They all go through beautiful country and to inspiring views. [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Utah ATV-SUV Trails]

Press to Read The Rest ...

GPS Maps 106: Reading A Topo Map

[This post is part six in a multi-part series about understanding the GPS system and its coordinate grid.

The last (hopefully) in the series of posts about maps: how they're made and how to use them, I wanted to do something quite difficult (on this end) and that I hadn't tried before. Well… you saw what happened on the last post.

As it turned out, the "dummy down" policy of Google Earth [which supports their "paid version"] prevented anyone who didn't have a fairly new graphics card from viewing the presentation.

Therefore, lets attempt to do in writing that which I thought would be much easier in demostration; so, break out that copy of an actual topo map that you have in the glove box and follow along.

Press to Read The Rest ...

GPS Maps 106: How To Read A Topo Map

[This post is part six in a multi-part series about understanding the GPS system and its coordinate grid.

Being (hopefully) pretty much the last post in this series about reading topo maps, what we are going to discuss today is really "rubber on the road" stuff and, in large part builds upon what we've already discussed as well as using a slightly different technique than we've ever used in the past.

This is where we actually hold that piece of crumpled, soiled, many-times-folded paper in our hands and try to find "where the blazes are we?" … No kidding — go get your topo map. It's better if you actually have something to look at. I'll wait.

Press to Read The Rest ...

Map Update: Great Basin ATV-SUV Trails, South

I'm basking in the light of some help with trail verification here on the Offroading Home blog.

Michael Davidson, who usually rides in southern Nevada near Las Vegas has been following several of the Great Basin ATV-SUV trails and sending in his GPS tracks to verify the trails that I had to hand-draw from the Mitchell book.   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Great Basin ATV-SUV Trails, Southern]

The tracks are almost spot-on, with the exception of a couple of areas where he took an alternate route around a rock or some such.

Press to Read The Rest ...