Offroad: 21 Goats Petroglyphs

What do you do when you've been to a place many times, wish you could be there even more and someone tells you that now the only way you can be where you've always been is to be one of the "pretty people" in their private click?

That's the dilemma that we have right here on Gold Butte and if we think what the government did to native people has ended we're mistaken. The government, in the form of the BLM, still shows their avarice; but, now it's for whoever has the money – I'm looking at you Sierra Club and Harry Reid.

If you're one of the "pretty people" who still has stamina and good joints – You're the ones the BLM-Sierra has decided are deserving to be able to see the glyphs.

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Offroad: Davidson's-Toquop Wash

I feel a bit bad that it's taken me this long to post one of the nicest rides we took during last years riding season: The Davidson Graves-Toquop Gap Loop.

It was one of the few rides that dad felt he could go on, not too long, not too far away, of historical interest and not too bumpy.

We trailered to one of the common trailheads around Mesquite – the East Mesa Interchange Trailhead (commonly called "the truck stop" by locals). That's the easiest and most convenient access point to the Mormon Mountains from Mesquite. There are several graded dirt roads, which that year had been maintained for the use of the power line they were putting in.

It only has one problem, which will become evident as the tale unfolds, and that is: there isn't but one or two east-west trails crossing the whole mesa and if you miss one of them it's a long way to the other.

To begin, it's almost a straight shot north to the East Mormon Mountains. The gap the trail runs through is formed under Davidson Peak which is named after the ill fated family whose graves solemnly attest to the struggles of the early settlers of this land and where we will make a stop.

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Falling Man Update

In a bit of unusual happenstance, Gordon and I were taking one of our last rides together on the butte this season (and still commiserating about the complete incompetence of the BLM over the "first rock" fecal "grafitti" that they have been completely ignoring for the past two years on some of the most old and rare petroglyphs in the whole area) when we saw something completely unexpected that I'll tell you about.

But first, as you may know, there are petroglyphs of several different ages at this particular site and it's some of the oldest that are being destroyed by the fecal matter being flung at them. We've posted about this before in this blog and reported it to the ranger as well as other BLM officials more than once. My guess is that either they are so misguided that they think large birds can't fly to another rock to nest; OR they are too lazy to do the minimal work necessary to "rearrange" the birds descretionary choices.

PEOPLE, birds can move (even poor little eagles) but petroglyphs can't! And, once they're gone, they're gone… FOREVER!

However, I digress. You must forgive me, for this kind of "official" incompetance stirs my soul. Back to the story.

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Offroad: Gold Butte - Middle Area for Seniors

Absolutely anyone who has been on Gold Butte more than once in the past three years will immediately recognize the devastating effect the "Great BLM Barricade Project of 2009" has had on Seniors ability to visit sites they have been to for years and years.

Add that to the "landscaping" and "corrals" the fiends of Gold Butte have inflicted on the area and people who have lived here for years can't even recognize the place even if they could get to it.

Even though the Great BLM Trail Closure decimated accessibility to seniors, this post describes a full day ride through the Middle Gold Butte riding area, full of great color and things to see (if you can hike)… and to remember (if you can't).   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Middle Gold Butte For Seniors.]

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Offroad: Gold Butte - Backcountry Byway

For the several hundred new retiree's who are moving into their Dell Webb homes near Mesquite bringing with them their offroad vehicles – where do you begin? And for someone just up for the weekend in an SUV suitable to go offroad – is there a sort of "sampler" which one can do in a day?

The answer to both questions is: yes. The Gold Butte Backcountry Byway. And the map for the ride described here was taken as an "introductory" ride for new members this year by the Kokopelli ATV club based in Mesquite.   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Offroading: Gold Butte Backcountry Byway.]

This route winds through typical Mojave Desert sand, to Aztec Formation red sandstone; from volcanic intrusions to metamorphosed monzogranite; from desert floor and washes to the Pinon-Juniper biome; and back again.

There are three aspects of this full day adventure we should talk about which will help you understand the area well enough to tailor the experience to your own capabilities and needs: The Byway itself, The area's hiking trailheads and The Mine Area Side-trip.

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Trail 1: Gold Butte Backcountry Byway and Mine

Despite a couple of rain and show storms, the 2010-11 Winter riding season is underway around Mesquite Nevada. Offroading Home accompanied the Kokopelli ATV club on its second ride this season (didn't want to brave their first ride in the snow).

There were several 'new' members along to make taking one of the "old standard rides" – the Gold Butte Backcountry Byway – very interesting and enjoyable, even when a sticky automatic-choke valve requred towing and cut the ride a tiny bit short.   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Trail 1: Byway/Treasure Hawk.]

Whitney Junction

Even though we had eight or nine trailers, we were able to swing around the newly environmentalist-inflicted, railroad-tie fenced, control-those-nasty-offroaders parking lot they've landscaped the desert with now at Whitney Junction and still all fit in. That was most assuredly because we all arrived fairly close together and had the same goal as we swung around and parked properly. Surprised that the environmentalist scheme to landscape didn't fit in with what the area is actually used for? I'm not. Who's gonna break it to the campers that their spot is actually supposed to be a parking lot?

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NEW: Black Joe Mine-Horse Thief Canyon-Keyhole Canyon Trails

In his nearly tireless efforts to GPS track every offroad trail in southern Nevada before he turns 30, Mike took his jeep across "the dam" (or possibly we should call it "THE Dam") the other day with his son and captured two more trails: Black Joe Mine and Horse Thief Canyon.   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: OffroadingHome.com/nevada/nevada.htm and is called the "Great Basin SUV Trails: Southern Nevada" map.]

He says his son loves to hike, which is a good thing because both of these trails end in a short hike to mines or the mountains, although at least one requires climbing gear.

As you can see from opening the map in Google Earth, both trail-heads are just a hop-skip-and-a-jump east of Boulder Dam on the Arizona side. ATVs or high-clearance 4WDs are a must on these trails due to rugged terrain and pinch points, and both have primitive camping opportunities.

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NEW MAP: Great Basin SUV Trails - Southwest Nevada

Thank the maker this file is finally done!

Some months ago I put out an appeal for the donation of a couple of extra map books and I was able to obtain the "Great Basin SUV Trails: Vol II, Southwestern Nevada by Roger Mitchell" just as I had requested (bless you people).   [For a free Google Earth map of these offroad trails, it is available for download on the page: OffroadingHome.com/nevada under the name - Great Basin SUV Trails: Southwest Nevada]

This is the author, as I have said on a couple of previous occasions, who prolifically generates some of the most historically colorful and geologically interesting books of any that I have ever seen.

At the same time, however, his publicly professed aversion to that thar new fangled technology makes his books some of the worst for accuracy and actual field usability of any on the market – except, as I've said, to use for historical and geological background 'color.'

Which is why working on one of his books is a bit like cutting a tooth – It's painful to do, but for some unexplained reason biting down on your gum to 'pop it through' feels good.

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Dry Fork Canyon Petroglyphs

If you ever find yourself in Vernal Utah, either as a passage home or going to see the dinosaurs, you've got more to see than fossils. And, no, I don't mean the city wide floral arrangement that is their main street.

There be PETROGLYPHS!

And they're not all that hidden or hard to find and they don't need ATVs or SUVs to get to them. Just about every motel will have a brochure rack of pamphlets and they all have many about different "day-trips" you can take while staying in Vernal – a great idea!

The one about the petroglyphs in Dry Fork Canyon, Utah, USA [N 40.545761, W 109.637028] immediately caught my eye, as it where, and I coerced my party to stop and see them the next morning on our way home.

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On The Butte With 'Desert Walker': A Gold Butte Summer

One of the advantages of posting a blog such as Offroading Home is the opportunity to meet some interesting 'characters.' I was at Kurt's Grotto just after the "fiends of Gold Butte" and BLM idiocy which closed it off, and struck up a conversation with two riders who looked like they knew what they were doing.

When I started to tell them about the maps available on the blog, they already knew all about it and showed me that they had been using them a lot. Since then the two, who use the moniker of 'Desert Walker,' have assisted in verifying tracks and waypoints and every so often send a photo of something they've seen.

When I began receiving photos of the Gold Butte rides they were taking in the middle of the summer, and heard about the 'unique' modifications they've made to their rigs, I then knew that they were indeed characters so decided to 'interview' them via Email, which went pretty much like this:

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GPS Maps 105: Northing, Easting and Mercators Oh My

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

Believe it or not both of these maps at the top of the post are REAL projections of the world map. I would hate to have to use them to ride offroad on my ATV but real projections none the less – just not the kind we're going to talk about today. In dutiful compliance with readers who have so far chided me for "ignoring" the UTM Coordinate system, this post is all about it.

However, I must confess that I sort of feel like a "lamb going to the slaughter" because I don't promise that after we are through you will understand it any better than you do now. I know that I don't think I do, and I've been studying the stuff almost non-stop for five months.

If you thought the last post about spheroids and datums was tough – hang on, this may be a bumpy ride! You almost need to forget everything we've talked about so far (except that the earth is not round) because it's all different as we will soon see. And the bass-ackward differences couldn't be anything except deliberate.

Your best bet during this discussion would be to keep reminding yourself that this UTM stuff was invented back when most of our worlds were what we could display on one map – and did not need to be concerned about the 'big picture.'

Just keep your mind focused that you are trying to merely solve the problem of looking at YOUR journey in YOUR corner of the world, draw it on a paper making it "look like" the ground that YOU were on, be able to easily visualize and calculate YOUR distances and YOU don't even know that there are "THEMS"… much less that there is an Australia.

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GPS Maps 103: Coordinate Commandoes - Lewis and Clark

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

By now you realize that there are many ways to represent geographical data, even for the same location; and most likely you have found a favorite method based upon what works for you.

Decimal Degrees: 36.9956433, -112.0059717
Decimal Minutes: N36° 59.7386, W112° 0.3583
Deg-Min-Sec: N36° 59' 44.316", W112° 0' 21.498"
    (DMS)

And what works for you pretty much depends on how you go about navigating in the field and the ratio of paper to electronics you have in your life. The more paper – the more you fumble with degrees, minutes and seconds.

Also, after reading the previous posts, you should be able to recognize that every one of these coordinates point to the identical place – The Wave in southern Utah and Arizona. But, I can tell you, I had a mighty easier time obtaining these numbers than those intrepid souls who attempted it a hundred, fifty or even thirty years ago!

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Great Basin SUV Trails: Southern Nevada

Well it's done. There are some great SUV ATV offroad trails in the new map; but, I have to say that it's completion was pretty much through obsessive-compulsive cussedness. It wasn't an excessive amount of fun.

If I'm not riding, then going through others' rides and coding them for all to see — I like; sweating through and correcting errors, clarifying directions and filling in omissions – not so much!

I've spent the past month or so gleaning location information for trails from a book that I've had on the shelf for some time: "Great Basin SUV Trails, Vol 1 Southern Nevada."

I have to say that finding some errors and feeling that I needed to verify every waypoint…

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"Megalithic Portal" Website

Recently I was told about a webpage entitled: "Megalithic Portal Meets Google Earth" so for grins I took a look to see if by chance they had something in the area.

It turns out they actually did — at least a few. Additionally, it seems the site is based in England and was set up (at least probably initially) by persons selling information about Stonehendge, hence the grandiose name.  [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Megalithic Portal Sites]

I guess people had difficulty distinquishing between "lith" (meaning 'stone') and "glyph" (writing) because eventually their database began including "ancient" sites of all types and from all over the world.

I have extracted from their database, those sites which are found in the western US and put them into the Google Earth file linked above.

From perusing the sites they list in the area's I know well, it seems like their database is quite limited, and I cannot acertain its accuracy. However, as there are a couple near snowbird headquarters which I have not heard of, I thought you would like to see them too.

You should take a quick peek at the file, if for no other reason than to just see how many "ancient" sites people have submitted from around the world.

Ride 31: More of Whitney

You know, I'll bet that not 1 in 25 or maybe even 50 visitors to Whitney Junction/Pockets know who "Whitney" is/was. I'm not sure even now I understand the whole genealogy thing, but I have it on good authority it goes something like this:

George Burton Whitney settled in Bunkerville in the late 1880's as a farmer and school teacher. He moved to St. Thomas Nevada, taught school and fathered 12…

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Ride 30: Petro's and Cistern

After all the rain during the past couple of weeks (no complaint) dad and I decided to run down to the natural cistern near the 21 Goats Petroglyphs to check on reports that it was full to overflowing.   [For a free Google Earth file of this 10 mile route see: Ride 30: Petro's and Cistern] (500 ft elevation change)

We didn't feel up to too long…

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Ride 29: Doing "Whitney"

Pretty much everything on the Gold Butte can begin at Whitney Pockets (Junction). For one thing, it's at the end of the pavement! For another, roads go in all directions. And… it's a great place for a picnic.   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Ride 29: Picnic at Whitney]

Actually, if you want to be a purist (and who doesn't) the pavement ends at…

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Sierra Club Dilemma

If you are a card carrying, so-called, "Friend" of Gold Butte or Sierra Club member you may need to avert your eyes for this post
          — it isn't pretty.

[Dilemma, n. A situation that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive.]

Two of your most endeared "causes" are duke-ing it out! And, how oh how, will you ever choose?

The only thing that might make it worse would be if the avian involved would have been a Bald Eagle — but I think they're smarter'n to live in this kind of heat!

You see, a very public endeared species decided to set up…

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Ride 25: "Lollipops" Hike

You know most of us who ride "the Butte" very much have been lied to so often that it shouldn't really surprise us; but, still, whenever I find something that someone has sworn to me wasn't there it is hard to believe.   [For a free Google Earth file of this route see: Ride 25: "Lollipops" Hike]

Such was the case when three of us riding ATV's down Mud Wash a while back stopped to…

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Devil's Fire You Say?

We have visited, hiked around, geo-logged, photographed and posted about Devil's Fire many times now. And it still seems to draw a lot of attention from out-of-area visitors — some from great distances.

And actually I have posted more maps to the place than just about anywhere else.   [For free Google Earth files of this area see: Fire and Man  —  Devil's Fire - The Hike  —  Ride 12: Devil's Fire Hike  —  Devil's and Kurt's  —  Mud Wash and Devil's  —  and Petro and Oasis] [Type in "Devil's Fire" up in the right-hand-corner search box and see how many articles have mentioned the area.]

With all that, you might well imagine…

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