Mojave Road Trail

Lol I saw that guy in Joshua tree. They're heading to Costa Rica!

 

haha awesome, was it this dude?

 

I don't think I saw it mentioned yet but, get the book.

$38 Mojave Road Guide - An Adventure Through Time (Mojave Road Guide)

https://www.amazon.com/Mojave-Road-Guide-Adventure-Through/dp/0914224379

It has everything you need to know.

 

I saw a unimog last time I was out there too! Sweet rig. It was a photographer taking time elapsed photos of the cavern. Pretty cool set up.

 

Here's a sweet camping map to review. I also have garmin GPS files if you want to peruse them.

 

No!! Wtf, how many are there?!? Guy I talked to was from Berlin and his Mog was like twice the size. Was traveling with his wife

 

I've recently been eyeing this road too.

There's a overlander Jeep dude on Youtube, TrailRecon or something that has a pretty good and detailed video he posted. He posts the lat/lon of the places he stopped. I mapped it all out my google earth that I'll load on Backcountry Nav.

The water crossing definitely gives me pause. I'm currently on 32's with maybe 1.5 or 2" lift and I have a stupid K&N "cold air" intake so that really limits the depth I can safely ford.

I'm going to assume that Oct/Nov is likely to have to lowest water levels in the river. I'm going to see if I can track down a stream gage nearby (I work for USGS - that's kind of our "thing") and see if I can figure that out...

 

Lol, that better be me when I'm old!

This road looks fun, I was thinking of running it next fall/winter since I regularly have to go to SoCal and Las Vegas.

 

Thanks for sharing this is awesome!

 

Okay folks, here's the (preliminary) lowdown on my streamgage thing.

USGS has a streamgage that appears to be pretty much right at the water crossing. I need to do a little more work, but with the info at the streamgage (discharge and gage height).

If we can get the dates/times from a few of the people who have done the water crossing, and a qualitative description at the time of the corssing, I might be able to correlate those two things and be able to give a decent prediction for future events.

Something like what @eon_blue described...

Here's a link to the raw data if anyone cares:
https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/...od=&begin_date=2010-01-25&end_date=2019-02-01

 

The desert can change so fast and has so may different tributaries during a storm that your calculations may be all for not. My theory is if the guy in front of me made it, then so can I. If that doesn't work I fall back to when in doubt, gas it out.

 

Keep a tarp handy, for random deep water crossings. Better than nothing!

 

This is merely for planning purposes. I'm not saying you should check this before you cross. But it may help people tell what time of year might work best when they are planning their trip.

The data goes back several decades, and you can start to get a good sense of what are "normal" seasonal, and even diurnal variations.

Here is a quick and dirty chart I threw together for the last year or so.

Same data but from December 2018-Jan 2019...

This all might tell you if that on days were the discharge was on the order of 0.2cfs, people were getting drowned with 32's, and you wanted to head there this weekend where discharge is 0.25+cfs, that might make you think otherwise.

 

I was only joking a bit, but certainly look before you leap. Cool information there. If I'm reading your graphs correctly, it look like it always about 4' deep with exception to June July where its 3'6" and October through December where it can raise up to 4'6"?

 

Streamgauge isn't going to do any good for this crossing, unfortunately.

The water level of the Mojave River has little to do with the depth of the crossing. When I was there in December, the flow was so low that the creek dried up a couple miles below the crossing. The problem rather, is that the crossing has been carved out / worn down / deepened by everyone who crosses it. So, even when the creek level is essentially zero inches, the water crossing (essentially an elongated hole) is full.

Sorry, I know that's a crappy description...you'll see what I mean in my trip report next week.

 

That's at the gage station, so those values are meaningless at the crossing. You want to look for changes.

There is a caveat with the most recent data. That jump at the end of November seems suspicious to me but I don't work in this area so I'm unfamiliar with the specifics.

The data during this time period has not been approved. This data goes through a fairly rigorous review process, and is often times updated given new data. There could be a number of reasons that is a legitimate jump though. Flooding or construction etc... can alter the stream channel.

 

That's good to know. The gage station is, as far as I can tell, just on the other side (south side) of the railroad bridge. It might even be attached to the bridge infrastructure.

I am of course operating under the assumption that there is some sort of hydraulic connection between the crossing and the river level. I've read and heard many trip reports where the water level in the crossing varies depending on time of year, so I'm just trying to quantify it a little.

The hydrologist in me (I am literally a hydrologist) just wants to find out if there's any correlation.

If this is anything like most of the proposals I write, it'll just go nowhere, lol...

 

Dont do this trail if there's rain in the forecast due to possible flooding and turning the trail into a very long and continuous mud bog !!!

 

I did this trail with @DannyBFresco last Feb. Great weather and the trail was awesome but we were unprepared for the wind storm that ravaged through camp and destroyed some of our RTTs.

Now we have a little more "covered" locations marked for future use. We did the trail in 2 days but went around the river crossing at the time. Hopefully going in May this year.

 

Thank you so much, really appreciate this.