Death Valley Off-Road Adventures

Pretty much this. Titus is like a funnel for rain, so conditions may change drastically near the last part after a storm.. Ten years ago when I first went to Titus I drove in my car from the pavement on Scotty's Castle road to the exit point of the canyon and the trail was a small rock garden. Never seen it that bad since! My poor car! ROFL!

 

This guy was on his way to the springs..

 

The picture says it all.
Last time I was there I must have passed a dozen small cars / crossovers crawling on the first part going up the hill. It must've taken them 5 hours+ to make it.

 

This guy was going so slow there was zero dust behind him. I can't do that, go that slow..

 

It's nuts where people decide to take their vehicles. They are either exceptionally brave, or have no clue what they are doing. For me, having a modified Tacoma is exceptionally satisfying when traversing trails, negotiating obstacles, and challenges with grace and comfort. Love it! All the hard work is totally worth it.

 

I remember when we did our first reunion trip in 2013 a Toyota MR2 passed by us while we were parked at Leadfield in Titus Canyon. He made it, we didn't pass him on the way out.

 

This last week was my first time on my new LT KO2’s. So I felt a lot more confident picking up the speed. To the point where I actually aired down for the return, something I hadn’t bothered to do for years. Then of course, I started thinking about new $pring$ and $hock$ ... it’s pretty hard not to be tempted by speed in some parts of DV.

 

I've started to realize that one of the benefits of airing down and a nice suspension is I can now choose most any speed to go. Most importantly this has meant I can choose to go slower. In my old truck I often ended up going faster than really desired because anything higher than 10 mph but less than 50 mph would be murder on washboard. But of course going 50 mph on dirt can be wicked dangerous. Now I can set a 40 mph or 35 mph limit depending on the road and the aired down tires and suspension take it admirably while I enjoy a smooth ride at a much safer speed.

 

Good points - thanks. I used to air down only for low speed crawling traction on previous rigs so this is the first time trying it for washboard. I generally cruise, and smell the roses anyway ... err, sagebrush and creosote ... as well as to conserve fuel. And thanks again for sharing your truck setup, camping and DV experience with all of us here.

 

Airing down - enough - is one of those things that once I started doing it I was like "why in the living hell haven't I always been doing this?". In my old truck I'd air down a tiny bit, but not enough to make any sort of difference. I could have added a simple on board air setup to that thing for like no dollars and would have been so much happier for it. Decades wasted shaking my fillings out!

 

Airing up again when I got back to pavement in the wind, light snowfall, and about 25 degrees wasn’t quite as satisfying though. I held on until the pressure gauge in my air line (which I rarely use) read 35 psi, but the dash reading was 5 psi lower and I think I paid for it in gas mileage on the way home, with my new Load Range E KO2’s. It rode nice even on our choppy California freeways though

 

Yup. Why they find so many vehicles rolled! Almost happened to me years ago in my 1st gen when I was purposefully fishtailing/drifting on the road to Bodie and didn't realize how fast I was going. ALMOST got away from me. I still cant help sliding it a bit sometimes, I'm just Wiser now! I think.
Airing down is wife approved. She used to give me shit, till she realized how much smoother it is in all conditions, but no sliding then.

 

OEM is different than OME @m3bassman

 

Neither of which should be confused with EMO suspenders:

 

I almost died and ripped off the pass side suspension in one of the last big dips before turtle Jim's that had a huge washout in it last March.

 

If you went with a proper coilover setup from fox or king those letters may not have rattled around in your brain and ended up in a different order after the washboard

 

I broke eggs and beer bottles coming out of Bat Rock Road during one of my first trips in/out.

 

learned a long time ago not to bring beer bottles on the trail..

 

... which is a good thing, because I could see the dust cloud from the CHP unit approaching me from a long way. Plenty of time to slow down even going downhill.

 

When I passed through Rasor OHV in the fall I was pleased to see that glass containers of any kind are banned from the entire OHV area. Can’t even have them stored in your cooler. Not sure if that is true for all OHVs but it is a darn good idea.