There was no way Mike @Digiratus, Zane @Speedytech7, and I were going to run the entirety of the East Mojave Heritage Trail when we set out to do it at the end of November. At something more than 700 miles long - not including the nearby side-adventures that I added for our enjoyment - it might seem like a Backcountry Discovery Route, but the roads are significantly slower and more technical, and the percentage of on-dirt miles is significantly larger. Frankly, these two things make it easily twice the length of a BDR, not to mention the fact that we…
6 CommentsTag: rock art
I don't know if it was the coldest night of the trip from an absolute perspective, but when I climbed out of my tent, it was the only morning I found the rainfly - and the cab of the Tacoma - covered in a layer of frost. Luckily, as the final full day of our trip, we'd decided that no matter where we were, it was where we were going to cook our shared breakfast. And that meant we'd have a couple extra hours for our tents to defrost. While I waited for Mike @Digiratus and Zane @Speedytech7 to wake…
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There aren't many nights that I close up all the windows and doors on my tent, as - especially when there is a full moon as there was on this night - I enjoy being able to gaze out on the surroundings if I wake up in the middle of the night. But parked under the watchful gaze of Easter Island Rock, with temperatures in the my-feet-are-numb range and a 10mph breeze blowing through camp, I zipped everything up tight, inserted my earplugs, and hoped for the best. It worked, and I was nice and toasty when my alarm -…
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Prologue For the first time in five years, the "annual" TacomaWorld trip has morphed into two trips. I suppose, technically, I should call it a trip-and-a-half, given the debacle that became Half a Trip in Montana, but I prefer to see the glass always full (there's always something in there) so we're just going to call it two. The timing of the second trip - in December - clearly ruled out anything up north, so returning to Montana for redemption would just have to wait until next year. Plus, given the unexpectedly good time that we had in Death Valley…
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Our exit from Big Rocks Wilderness after lunch on Thursday gave us only a few hours in the afternoon -- and a couple hours the following morning - before heading to Las Vegas for our $27 flights home on Spirit Airlines. How Spirit can provide flights for so little money is beyond me, but it has made the decision to leave the Tacoma in Las Vegas even easier - for the cost of a single tank of gas, both of us can fly roundtrip, saving 40 hours of travel time in the process - on the ends of a trip.…
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The Pahranagat Valley and its surrounding wilderness' have been my nemesis throughout 2023. I set out in January - nearly a year ago now - to follow the Pahranagat Trail in search of rock art that I'd discovered through the trip reports of other intrepid explorers. Ultimately - and luckily, quickly - I realized that without more information, I was searching for a needle in a haystack, so I headed east and south - to Utah and Arizona - where I discovered some of the most amazing rock art that I was not looking for. Strike one. Determined to succeed…
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One of the dots I'd hoped to connect on our trip through Nevada was hiking to the top of Boundary Peak in the White Mountains. Boundary is an interesting peak. Appropriately, it sits on a boundary - the state line between Nevada and California. At 13,147 feet, it's the highest peak in Nevada. And hilariously, along the same ridgeline - less than a mile away, and just across the California border - Montgomery Peak rises 298 feet above Boundary Peak, yet Montgomery Peak does not rank amongst the top 100 of California's highest peaks. Sounded like the perfect peak to…
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Stage 4 of the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route - through Nine Mile Canyon (sort of), and through the Uinta Mountains to ... Wyoming? Shortly after 6:00pm, we pulled out of the Chevron station on the outskirts of Wellington on our way to Nine Mile Canyon. We were surprised when we discovered that Nine Mile Canyon was on the Utah BDR because when we'd visited - a little more than a year earlier - we'd spent an entire day in the canyon, completely overdosed on rock art, and still hadn't seen but a fraction of what it has to offer. How…
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Stage 3 of the UTBDR - from Moab to the Book Cliffs to the San Rafael Swell. Pulling away from Dewey Bridge a little after 6:30pm, we'd already been on the road for 12 hours and we were spent. Unfortunately - as long as we wanted to continuing making forward progress on the route - there was no real elevation to be found until the beginning of the following stage, and we knew there was no way we could make it that far, even if we drove long into the darkness. So, we resolved to keep an eye out for…
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Lockhart Basin in our rearview mirror, it was time for the main Stage 2 route through the La Sal Mountains. Having wrapped up our brief time in town with a quick meal and a refreshingly cold Coke - kept icy cold in my favorite stainless steel vacuum cup - and chocolate frosty from Wendy's - it was time to find some respite from the heat. A hotel room - with a shower - for instance. Sure, it wasn't triple digits anymore, but no one wants to sleep in this, either. Alas, there was no hotel room in our future, though…
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Before running the official stage 2 route, we were headed to the alternate (red), a more difficult trail through Lockhart Basin. Of all the stages on the Utah BDR, I was most looking forward to the expert route through Lockhart Basin. This stretch of road piqued my interest for a couple reasons: first, it skirts along the edge of Canyonlands National Park, an area that never ceases to amaze me, no matter which district I happen to be visiting at any given time. Second, it was a segment of the M~U~D trip that Monte @Blackdawg and Mike @Digiratus ran back…
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The first stage of the UTBDR meanders - like the San Juan River - through some of Utah's most recognizable landscape. It's hard to say that it was way too early when my alarm went off at the base of Mexican Hat, but it's safe to say that we'd gotten way too little sleep given our arrival at this place only three hours earlier. Still, with daytime temperatures in the triple digits, we were no dummies - though one might argue otherwise given our voluntary arrival to such conditions - and planned to get as many miles in while it was still…
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A few months ago, I headed to Nevada in search of several rock art sites along the Pahranagat Trail. After starting out with a bang in Arrow Canyon, my search in the South Pahroc Wilderness was a total flop, as I didn't find any rock art at all! After popping into the local BLM office for some tips - which they couldn't share - I aborted my plan altogether for an alternate, ultimately amazing, itinerary. Returning home, I had a "brilliant*" idea. Like many other Americans, I watch and read a bit of news here and there, and one of…
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With the warmer weather finally making its way north, and the Tacoma at home for a bit of maintenance after the last several months of living in Las Vegas, @mrs.turbodb and I thought that it would be fitting to mark the anniversary of our very first trip in the Tacoma by visiting the Owyhee. We wouldn't explore exactly the same spots - we rarely do - but we'd find ourselves in wonderfully similar surroundings, the fleeting green grass of spring welcoming us back. This time we decided to explore the Idaho side of this amazing wilderness, setting off on a warm…
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Where was I? Oh right, I'd just completed an 11-mile hike before lunch in order to avoid the weekend crowds that never developed - at least, as far as I could tell. Still, I was left - in one of the most beautiful places in our country - with half a day to explore; the only thing standing in my way was figuring out where to go! Ultimately, I only seriously considered two options. The first - having just hiked the South Fork of Mule Canyon - was to hike the North Fork. I had almost no info on it…
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Just as I was nodding off after a peaceful day of hiking Road Canyon, I realized that it was Friday night - a fact that was interesting only in that it meant that the following day was Saturday. Now, bear with me because I'm going to spend entirely too much time making this point. You see, Saturday itself wasn't all that interesting, rather, it was the fact that it was a weekend. And even the fact that it was a weekend wasn't very interesting, except for the fact that I'd planned to hike the South Fork of Mule Canyon -…
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I was pooped when I climbed into the tent on the edge of the West Fork of Johns Canyon. A full day of hiking (I'd covered more than 16 miles), after only a few hours of sleep (about five), meant that I knocked out a full three minutes of reading before my eyes closed and my thumb stopped "turning pages" of Tom Clancy's Red Winter. Sleep was bliss. I'm not sure I woke up at all before the soft charm of my alarm - a little diddy that everyone probably knows from YouTube survey ads that play before videos but…
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Having thoroughly enjoyed my time at Cedar Point, I figured it'd take me about an hour to make my way north, up the Moki Dugway, and to my next destination along Johns Canyon; this time the West Fork. But, as had been the case earlier in the day, events conspired to distract me as I pulled up behind another stopped truck in the middle of UT-261. At first I wasn't sure what was going on. Then, I was fumbling to get my zoom lens fitted to the camera. Mama cow was putting up a good fight to protect her little…
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Note: Visiting Cedar Point (and Cedar Mesa in general) requires a pass. For more information, check out BLM Utah Cedar Mesa Permits and Passes Information. My trip got off to a rough start when my plane from Seattle to Las Vegas was delayed by an hour, just after I arrived at the airport. While it was "only" an hour, I knew that even with my flight south, I had quite a bit of driving to do after I touched down and picked up the Tacoma. Driving that would now extend past midnight, shortening the amount of sleep I'd get for my…
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Even with the wind - and intermittent snow - buffeting the tent through much of the night, a good pair of ear plugs enabled us to get a reasonable night's sleep at the southern end of the Mojave Preserve's Mid Hills, near Hole in the Wall. We'd camped in this spot once before - when there was much more snow on the ground - and so upon waking up just as the sun was peeking over the horizon, I climbed out of the tent to do a bit of exploration. Good morning swiss cheese butte. Knowing of some nearby petroglyphs,…
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