S California Offroad Map: Whipple Mountain Trails

An entire new trail system has been added to the Southern California Master Map file available for free at the Offroading Home web site.

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Offroad: Beaver Dam - East Pass Loop

I got a chance to take a ride in Gordon's CanAm and jumped at the opportunity. We joined Hugh and the "Beaver Dam Gang" on their adventure up "The Wash" to "however far we can get before the snow stops us" – not really expecting to get all the way to East Pass, which I think was Hugh's secret goal.

The Beaver Dam Bridge seems, to me at least, to have a new entrance this year after all the repairs to the bridge caused by last years floods. It actually makes it quite easy now for all the town's residents to head to the trails on their ATVs – a major past time activity for them.

There was but the tiniest trickle of water in Beaver Dam Wash this winter but you could tell that there had been major runoff by all the broken limbs and debris strewn along the banks and caught on rocks.

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URGENT: Help Rescind Mesquite's Wilderness Bill

Tuesday, April 25th, the NEW Mesquite City Council will discuss a resolution to RESCIND former mayor Susan Holecheck's (now a paid lobbyist) resolution to close off the entirety of Gold Butte, clear up to the outskirts of Bunkerville, from offroad use and make it the largest wilderness area in the state.

All interested offroaders should attend the 5pm meeting as we have been told that Susan, Nancy and their Sierra Club type contingents intend on bussing people up from Vegas and stuffing the meeting at City Hall. Naturally, as is probably their intent, the latest battle is occuring after the large number of senior offroaders have left for the summer.

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Offroad: Anniversary-Oar Car Mines

For some reason this year, it has taken nearly everyone a lot longer to "ramp up" for the offroading season in Mesquite – the "oomph" just didn't come easy.

I thought it was just me, but all the locals I know are going through the same thing – a touch of the ol' "lakawanna." It could be the weather, it could be the "been there, done that" syndrome or it could be that pretty much every time we hear of Gold Butte or the Bunkerville Mountains any more it's in the context of some political idiocy.

The weather was cold when we arrived (unusual), got intermittently wet (not enough to do much good), snowed (not really unusual, but early) and completely warmed up (odd) – so perhaps that's it.

With the weather being so capricious, and gas prices being so unearthly high, we didn't want to trailer very far; so, I guess it might be a bit more difficult to get excited seeing the same things over again. However…

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Southern California Desert Offroad Map: Anza Borrego

Now that the California ATV Master Map has been split into two parts, the Desert Offroad Riding Area is undergoing major additions.

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GEO-tography: Silhouette

Photography of the "Geo" is what these sessions are about: GEO-tography. We look at them because as long as we are on the off-road most of us are taking photos, and as long as we are taking photos we might as well at least TRY to do a good job.

Are we photographers who need to go off road to get good photographs? Probably not… oh, let's call a spade a spade– mostly not. We're offroaders who either: want to prove where we've been or merely need to be able to remember where we've been.

This session is about a topic which all of us mostly overlook and most of us always misspell: silhouette's. They're not all that difficult to obtain, and most of us have accidentally gotten them unintentionally– some more than once – yes, you know who I'm looking at!

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California Trail Map - Split

The California Offroad Trails Master Map has been split into two parts: Northern California Trails and Southern California Trails.

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Offroad: Carp-Caliente Loop

Literally the very first "offroad" trip we took when snowbirding into Mesquite for the first time five years ago, was the dirt road exiting I-15 toward Carp-Caliente. We were in a touring car, which wasn't so bad, but noticed that we were at around a quarter-tank of gas, running through some pretty isolated country.

Couple that with the fact that there are absolutely no route or place signs out there, AND it was before I had bought my first GPS unit, and what it meant was that, although we knew Carp was up here somewhere, we had no idea how far it was from where we were or even where precisely WE were.

We turned around long long before seeing what we expected might be something called Carp, let alone Elgin; but, we did make it back before running out of gas. So, every time we have passed that exit since then, we had a nagging sense of failing to find out what was up there.

So, after the trip into the Tule Desert this year on ATVs, and having a much better understanding of the relationships between places, we decided to see how far the van would get us up that road.

Although, as Murphy seems to have decreed: because there have been so many waypoints plotted on my GPS that I have begun to "archive" them, yet again this year I STILL hadn't brought any of the landmarks for the area! Couple that with the fact that there STILL aren't any place signs for most of the area's historic places and it means that we STILL haven't seen Carp!!   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Offroading Home: 05-Carp-Caliente.]

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Offroad: Black Warrior Mine

It's a rare opportunity when Gordon will offer to give up his new pup's "sidekick-seat" to someone, so when it happens you take him up on it. He, dad and I wanted to take a "quick" ride somewhere shortly after Christmas and we ended up heading north up the good ol' highway 91 from Beaver Dam Arizona.

Gordon had ridden the area above Lytle Ranch Road a few weeks before with Hugh and wanted to show us the general area where they went. With plenty of time and no real plans, we stopped at the mouth of the canyon to see the caves that always looked interesting enough to wonder about but not enough to have stopped.

This time we stopped and found… pretty much nothing much. They must have been something at some time but it's probably anyone's guess as to what, this late in the game.

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Offroad: Quick Trip to Lime Kiln Pass

The winter of 2011 is a funny snowbird year weather wise. Snow came and then … went. Just after Christmas it had warmed up and the snow had all but gone from the mountains.

We decided to get out of the house and take a quick afternoon ride up to the "fish tank" – the name the locals have given to the huge stock tank at the mouth of Lime Kiln Canyon which everyone has taken on as a project to keep stocked with goldfish. (I've written about that before).

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Offroad: Toquop Gap

Charlie and I needed some space to clear our heads in the fall but haden't quite gotten our "oomph" levels up to where loading and unloading and trailering our ATVs interested us yet.

So, where to ride when you're completely surrounded by dirt, if you can get to it? Most everywhere close we've already been to many times. Where could we go that we didn't need to trailer, we wouldn't mind seeing again and we would stand a high probablility of seeing something we hadn't seen before?

For us, this season, it was up into the Tule Desert (pronounced too-lee). Yes, if we weren't going to trailer we needed to start the ride with the standard (and at least comparitively speaking: "tiresome") ride up and over Flat Top Mesa, and yes, we then had the "long and arduous" washbords of Toquop Wash; but this is offroading we're talking about!

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Offroad: GB Mines

The last time Charlie and I trailered down to Gold Butte (the town) we decided that it was easier to ride our ATVs down than pull a trailer, so we wouldn't do it again. However, the allure of being able to ride in air-conditioned comfort down a road you've already been on plenteous number of times before, makes one reconsider past decisions when conditions change.

Such was today. Gordon brought his much more rugged frame trailer and we wanted to test to see if it would ride better than the fairly massive toy-hauler did before. The findings: 1) it did ride better, 2) the road was no better than before, and 3) it still is easier to take the ATVs.

However, the break in the weather gave us a chance for a 'shake-down cruise' to loosen up the shock absorbers, limber up the springs and see what surprises, if any, 'the Butte' and the BLM had left for us over the summer.   [A free Google Earth file of this route is available at: Offroading Home: 02-Gold Butte Mines.]

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GEO-tography: Dirt Roads (mostly)

Roads - it's what Offroading Home is all about. Whether it's being ON them or OFF them all together in an ORV. The lure of going somewhere to see something often puts our mind on something other than the road; but, it's there none-the-less.

On the other hand, sometimes for us off-roaders it's the road which is uppermost in your mind, whether it is in the high-uintas or looking down the Scanlon Ferry Road and wondering if you're going to ever going to be able to get back out. But, surely (excepting New Yorkers) it's a rare human these days who hasn't trodden at least one dirt road.

So, here is a collection of photographs of some of the world’s dirt roads just to show you how universal a dirt road is and how they can be used to add interest and perspective to the photographs we take.

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Utah's Got It Right: Public Land Bill

I've just recieved word that the Governor of Utah will Sign the Public Land Bill tomorrow. It's being called A modern day declaration of independence designed to stop and prevent Obama's government from any more "land grabs."

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Gold Butte: Bloom Alert

The spring wildflower bloom on Gold Butte is within hours of being upon us. On a ride taken to the (former) Treasure Hawk Mine on 21 Mar 2012 we noticed that a few specimins were fully open but thousands more were budded and ready to burst any minute. The whole of "Pleasant Valley" (valley with the old generator to the south of Gold Butte (the town) should be ablaze next week. However, it doesn't look like…

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