Mojave to Mammoth

[DesertGoat]

Slapped together a nice long trip starting in Ridgecrest & ending in Mammoth Lakes.
We did the thing from the morning of Thursday & ended with driving home from mammoth on Sunday and we needed every bit of that time for our route.

Ridgecrest - Beatty, NV
Beatty, NV - Bishop
Bishop - Mammoth

Had a fun group consisting of mostly thicc boy prerunner style trucks, then a gen 1 raptor and me in my JL. Fortunately everyone was 4x4.
Since I did the route planning I ended up getting the big boys to shove their rigs through some tighter canyons than they would have otherwise gone.
This came to the tune of "man I can't believe my truck was able to get through some of that stuff you pushed me through"

only real carnage we had was a loosening camper shell & a coil wire getting rubbed through a little bit.
spent about 4 hours stuck in snow though.

Anyways, day 1 photos.
Fighter jet (not pictured) flew over our head & gave us a wave.
first of the big canyons
burros
night wheeling (not pictured)
badwater basin, lowest spot in North America at -241 ft. (check out the sign)

 

[DesertGoat]

Day 2, Beatty - Bishop
Had aspirations of going through Titus canyon, but it was closed due to severe weather damage
So we took the road around to Scotty's Castle - also closed to weather damage.
so kept on going to Steele pass, more wheeling - only a little bit of a smooch of some fiberglass on the tundra against the squeeze rock.
My jeep just walked right up, idk what the big deal was.

Drove our way outta there, past the hippies at the Saline Valley hot springs. saw some Bazookas on this one hippy - what a pleasant surprise. (Not pictured, obviously)
Treated to a lovely sunset.
drove out the north end of the park out past the pines & just hi-tailed it into bishop for the night.

 

[DesertGoat]

Day 3, Bishop to Mammoth the hard way
Climbed up to 9800 ft, ran into some ~2 ft deep snow.
got stuck for 4 hours.
at one point only 2 of the 5 trucks were able to move under their own power so we decided to start trying to turn ourselves around. Had to go off-trail to use the shrubery & rocks as traction just to get a little movement. sorry, earth, for real.
crap tons of winching & side-hilling & shoveling to tuck our tails & go back the way we came. It ended up being fine, but at one point we were seriously talking about what we do if we have to leave the Ram on the mountain for the night.
we got it out right at sunset, though.
Teamwork.

wish we could have finished the run offroad but we gave it our best shot.
Heckin' hell of a place to be stuck though. so there's somethin'

 

[SteveG]

Super cool! I’ve been wanting to do something similar. Can you share GPS tracks or route?

 

[DesertGoat]

the forum won't allow me to attach the GPX but i'm happy to send that to you. Maybe via DM? or dm me your e-mail and I can forward it, no problem.

 

[SaltyMethods]

Awesome! DV with snow!? That's great.

 

[WW_RANGER_X]

So sick. That gives me anxiety just looking at those pics lol

 

[DesertGoat]

brother, right there with you - i wish the photos did the thing justice, felt so sketchy at times.
from the photo of the deep snow looking back on the sidehill - that's where I got when everyone was stuck & we decided to turn around.
so I had to go uphill, to the left of the image, and sidehill my way back across to the group so I could 1 - make it back. and 2 - be a winch anchor.
My jeep has inclinometers on it and i hit 20 degrees of tilt. and for a former prerunner dude let me tell you that my sphincter was tight enough to flatten coins. i'd go as slow as possible for tens of feet then just stop and chill for a second to calm down.
blegh.

 

[dwphoto]

Day 2, Beatty - Bishop
Had aspirations of going through Titus canyon, but it was closed due to severe weather damage
So we took the road around to Scotty's Castle - also closed to weather damage.
so kept on going to Steele pass, more wheeling - only a little bit of a smooch of some fiberglass on the tundra against the squeeze rock.
My jeep just walked right up, idk what the big deal was.

Drove our way outta there, past the hippies at the Saline Valley hot springs. saw some Bazookas on this one hippy - what a pleasant surprise. (Not pictured, obviously)
Treated to a lovely sunset.
drove out the north end of the park out past the pines & just hi-tailed it into bishop for the night.

more info on said "bazookas"... hhaa sounds like a epic trip, that snow climb woof!

did he get stuck way up there ? or just had to slip and slide his way backward.

Well done. Love it

 

[Gearmonkey23]

Fork yes. I need more long distance trips in my school bus of an offroad rig. Would definitely be interested in the files for this as well!!

 

[DesertGoat]

that snow climb woof!

did he get stuck way up there ? or just had to slip and slide his way backward.

Slip & slide backwards.
After he tried, we sent the Ram up since that driver has less give-a-shit & hit the climb at full woopow. once it was "plowed" the climb was much easier for everyone else.

The real trouble was the off camber steep stuff from post 3. when i was driving through there, front & rear lockers were on & the revs were up and i was going straight but turned pretty much all the way left. crab walking my way through that mess.