On Sunday June, 28, 2009, I took my 1987 Nissan Pathfinder out to explore Red Rock Canyon State Park (RRC) with several objectives in mind. The first was to take my visiting cousin and her husband out to see some desert scenery, as well as an offroading trip since I cannibalized the 1995 Pathfinder that I had purchased from her 3 years back to get my ’87 back on the road/trails after sitting for almost 4 years. The second objective was to see how much more travel I gained in the rear after upgrading from Rancho RS5118′s to RS5112′s. The final objective was to explore RRC since I have lived within a 15 min drive of it for a little over 2 years and never took advantage of what it has to offer.
Some tertiary objectives that were to be completed were to further examine my burning clutch in 4-lo, see how miserable it is wheeling in the desert heat with no AC and to make it back home in one piece since this was a lone expedition (which I don’t recommend and highly discourage). I am glad to say that all primary and tertiary objectives were completed with some minor hiccups. We actually stumbled upon some pleasant surprises. To the left is one example of the contrast in landscape throughout RRC. There are a wide variety of colors in the desert and were complimented quite nicely by the blue California sky. We were graced with some cloud cover throughout the day and saw several rain showers off in the distant which is a rarity this time of year.
There were a few discoveries througout the day, starting with the posting of the “closure” of the park, which from what I could tell is no Visitor’s Center and no patrolling by rangers which is a reinforcement of budget problems that California faces and the State Parks and OHV trails being some of the initial victims. One of the soon there after discoveries is that the trails aren’t always clearly marked and many trails are not shown on the map that can be picked up at the Visitor’s Center. We did a lot of guessing and trying to depend on data available in the GPS. There were some makeshift signs along the trails but I don’t know if they could be trusted 100%.
I was reluctant to trust the GPS since the trail it had us head down was missed on the decent of what I would call a massive rock (shown above) the decent and climb were both fun and not really challenging but the steep grade did give my passengers a little excitement. After crawling back up we spotted the trail that we had missed on the way down. It had definitely been a while since it had been traveled but I wasn’t confident in where we thought we were on the map vs believing the GPS since it had us getting back to a main road within 5 miles; it was also getting within a few hours of darkness. All was well and the trail was mostly what I would rank as a “green circle” to maybe a light “blue square” but the trail
was narrow and didn’t have good places to turn around when the GPS about 2 miles down the trail said to take a left. That left was…well…more or less vertical. So we continued down the trail since we saw some other trails across the valley. We spotted an abandoned mine which led me to believe that around the bend we would at least get to the mine and would be able to turn around but know there was no way they carried the gypsum (what I believe was mined there) out on the trail we were on. My gut was right and there were 3 entrances that I saw to the mine (one shown above and the left). As we approached the Mine I noticed several other roads on the GPS and used it as a virtual map to lay out my path and not rely on it to get me
back to civilization. Probably the best part of the day was finding the mine, it was an awesome find to break the tension of being “lost” as well as provide a natural air conditioner being that the cool air of the ground was rushing out of the shaft and was a great relief from the 108 temperatures we had dealt with throughout the day. The temperatures were bearable and we hydrated frequently. I have been conditioned pretty well by living in the desert but did take it’s toll on the relatives, who were visiting from NC. We did not explore the mine due to the obvious instability of the earth and probability that the ground could start to move while we were inside and leave us in a bad situation if not dead. This was our second relief from the sun, our first was on the scenic loop which led us below a bridge on SR14 that provided us a nice shady spot to cool off and relax before getting back on the trails. A cool shot is shown above but doesn’t show how shady it was due to the time the shutter was left open.
Overall I was satisfied with the trip and did a lot of researching on Google Earth and YouTube after returning to see where we went wrong on the trails and the location of the “Extreme Offroading” trails were, Last Chance Canyon and Nightmare Gulch. I hope to plan a trip with some guys that have pretty capable rig’s to explore these trails, along with others to determine what kind of group run may be in the future. The family had a great time and the truck preformed nicely. I only smelt my clutch once which was a relief; so all in all it was a success and leaves me salivating for the next trail run.
The area also has a few other OHV parks like Jawbone Canyon and Dove Springs OHV that may lend it’s hand to a long weekend offroading extravaganza. I saved my favorite image for last, being that my garmin could have put me on this “dirt road” in my Camry. Since the image is small the GPS has me on “unpaved road”.
