Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

you guys are awesome. thanks for all the replies. i've noticed a lot more fluffy, deep sand in Anza Borrego as well the past year. I'll probably avoid that trail unless my buddy w/ his 4runner tags along with me. With that said, traction boards really do work great. I've got myself and another truck out of deep sand with traction boards and a shovel. I was pulling my trailer the boards saved our asses.

 

i had no intention of going that route, just went to look from the N. got out walked to where the “deep sand” begins. they call it deep sand, but its deep flour,...err maybe its talc powder. no one set of tracks to follow, just a bunch of squirrllee s tracks, they look like 12 to 18 inch deep. i drove across last year, and several times before that. seemed ok last year. i watched from a distance, a rig go thru in a big cloud of dust and then stop and pull out to the right near the narrow end of that island...and seemingly go off road illegally, then stop get out. and later continue on south.

 

Probably old news but the KNP complex has triggered evacuation orders in Fresno county and the parks. Sad news as the past couple of days have felt pretty good about protecting the park.

 

It’s a little off topic but hilarious. Ninjas in Ridgecrest.

 

WTF is that all about??

 

Wacky but concerning it took over 20 minutes for Ridgecrest police to respond to a report of a person with a weapon attacking people at the airport.

 

Glad he attacked Special Operations...WTF?

 

It is concerning, but not completely surprising...

 

That was the question I had. But then they're probably not armed stateside or some kind of jurisdictional problem. No idea why it took so long to get the po-po out there tho.

 

Guaranteed, and if they had weapons there was no ammo. I'm wondering if the police thought it was some kind of a gag?

 

Doesn't look like he attacked ground pounders, he attacked flight/ground crews.

"...helicopters to insert Navy SEAL teams and other special operators. ... which uses Chinook and Black Hawk assault helicopters ...drones."

Still, I am surprised they didn't have their own armed security at the hangar.

 

Not their airport?

 

Looks like a F18 went down in the southern portion of the park yesterday. Pilot had minor injuries and was the only occupant.

 

Glad to hear the pilot is OK!

NPS Press Release: https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/news/navy-super-hornet-crash.htm

Not very specific on location. Southern part of the park, perhaps "near the the Nevada border" from some articles. In a wilderness area but really almost the entire park is a wilderness area.

For reference VX-9, the squadron the plane/pilot came from, is the operational test squadron out of China Lake. These are pilots that rotate out of operational squadrons for a fixed period and are not meant to be "test pilots" as the whole point of the squadron is "operational" evaluation by bog standard pilots from the fleet without any sort of special training. A separate squadron, VX-31, is for RDT&E and is full of "test pilots" with special training for such.

 

I was stationed at China Lake back in the mid to late 80's in VX-5 (Now VX-9 since they merged with VX-4 that was at PT Mugu....see VX5+VX4=VX-9) We tested all Navy air 2 ground weapons...new variants of existing weapons and new weapons getting ready to be introduced to the fleet. VX-4 at the time did all navy A2A weapons. They wrote the tactics that the fleet pilots would use and would take this knowledge back to the fleet when they rotated out.

 

That’s awesome! Thanks for the first hand knowledge!

 

Definitely glad to hear injuries were minor.
I am curious to hear the cause tho suspect it won’t happen for a while.

 

Just came back from a few days DVNP and it was glorious. We did many firsts for us...Lippincott Rd (pucker factor high), Hunter Mtn (Trees in DV?), Hidden Valley (the 'talc' section was interesting), Butte Valley (beautiful), Steele Pass Rd (fun) and Eureka Dunes (mesmerizing). I have not rifled through all of our pics so here are few for now.

Striped Butte


Hunter Mtn


Dedeckera Cyn - Steel Pass Rd


Eureka Dunes


The drive over on 10/8 was hampered by the passes closing so it was a longer day than we had anticipated. The drive back on 10/11 to the Bay Area was adventurous for sure. The wind from Bishop up to June Lake was brutal to mpg. Had snow from about Toms Place to June Lake loop and 120 was open so returned via Yosemite.

 

Can you camp at eureka dunes?

 

You didn’t need to reserve for Yosemite?