Explorer 1
Explorer 1
Took a 3 day trip visiting the Southern Sierra Nevada Mountain range thinking we would enjoy some early summer weather.
Ended up with 8 vehicles and a good group of guys exploring and on day 2 got to explore some new territory for me.
We traveled up Hwy 14 through Palmdale and Lancaster exiting west at Jawbone Canyon. We traveled through some easy roads up to just over 6000 feet where we made our base camp. Even though the weather forecast was for clear skys the Sierra's sometimes can "make" its own weather. When we arrived early Friday morning our camp was socked in with fog, drizzle and low temps. Out came the sweaters and coats as we set up tents and emptied our vehicles of the camping gear.
Shortly we were off exploring and as we desended the mountains east into the desert, off came the sweaters and coats as the temps soon reached the low 80's.
Even though several of the vehicles were pretty much stock that didn't stop most of the guys wanting some kind of a challange so off we went taking trails with names like Nightmare Gulch overview and Last Chance Canyon.
Most had fun along with a couple of guys doing the "V" notch in the Canyon.
We enjoyed the usual sights like Burro Smidt's famous tunnel through the mountain and then later in the day took a different route back up into the Sierra's to our base camp through Dove Springs OHV arriving later than we would have liked at camp.
That night it continued to blow with cold drizzle and some temps in the low 30's (so much for summer weather) but in the morning it had blown out and we had a clear cool refreshing day to greet us.
Day 2 was a trip driving various mountian trails north over to Lake Isabella and then taking on the challanging Freeway Ridge Loop. A difficult trail with lots of challanges and beautiful views.
Fun to actually see some indian grinding holes just like the ones I saw in my school books when I was a kid studying California history.
I didn't know there was any gold in this part of the Sierra's!
Here one of the stock vehicles, a Dodge Durango, makes it way up but not without a suffering some front left bumper damage.
Chuck hit a rather large boulder and sheared off the bolts that held his steering together, It was a two hours trail fix but the guys in this group came prepared.
Chuck made it down the mountain and had to call the trip short but still had a great time. I think he was just glad that he didn't have to leave his rig on the trail and come back another day to try and fix it!
We made it back to camp late that evening and on the way we got a great view of the bigger than usual appearence of the moon:
The final day was spent packing up and then having a little fun in the Dove Springs OHV before we hit pavement:
I was tired than afternoon when I got home, but it was a good kind of tired........if you know what I mean.
Thanks,
Fred
Explorer 1
Ended up with 8 vehicles and a good group of guys exploring and on day 2 got to explore some new territory for me.
We traveled up Hwy 14 through Palmdale and Lancaster exiting west at Jawbone Canyon. We traveled through some easy roads up to just over 6000 feet where we made our base camp. Even though the weather forecast was for clear skys the Sierra's sometimes can "make" its own weather. When we arrived early Friday morning our camp was socked in with fog, drizzle and low temps. Out came the sweaters and coats as we set up tents and emptied our vehicles of the camping gear.
Shortly we were off exploring and as we desended the mountains east into the desert, off came the sweaters and coats as the temps soon reached the low 80's.
Even though several of the vehicles were pretty much stock that didn't stop most of the guys wanting some kind of a challange so off we went taking trails with names like Nightmare Gulch overview and Last Chance Canyon.
Most had fun along with a couple of guys doing the "V" notch in the Canyon.
We enjoyed the usual sights like Burro Smidt's famous tunnel through the mountain and then later in the day took a different route back up into the Sierra's to our base camp through Dove Springs OHV arriving later than we would have liked at camp.
That night it continued to blow with cold drizzle and some temps in the low 30's (so much for summer weather) but in the morning it had blown out and we had a clear cool refreshing day to greet us.
Day 2 was a trip driving various mountian trails north over to Lake Isabella and then taking on the challanging Freeway Ridge Loop. A difficult trail with lots of challanges and beautiful views.
Fun to actually see some indian grinding holes just like the ones I saw in my school books when I was a kid studying California history.
I didn't know there was any gold in this part of the Sierra's!
Here one of the stock vehicles, a Dodge Durango, makes it way up but not without a suffering some front left bumper damage.
Chuck hit a rather large boulder and sheared off the bolts that held his steering together, It was a two hours trail fix but the guys in this group came prepared.
Chuck made it down the mountain and had to call the trip short but still had a great time. I think he was just glad that he didn't have to leave his rig on the trail and come back another day to try and fix it!
We made it back to camp late that evening and on the way we got a great view of the bigger than usual appearence of the moon:
The final day was spent packing up and then having a little fun in the Dove Springs OHV before we hit pavement:
I was tired than afternoon when I got home, but it was a good kind of tired........if you know what I mean.
Thanks,
Fred
Explorer 1
