Monthly So Cal Off-Road Run

Fallbrook is N. County San Diego; just south of Temecula. Grew up on a farm in NE; so very used to mud/ruts - but not rock crawling, sand, etc. One more question - looks like Gaia or OnX are the maps to have?

 

Yeah a lot of people use those two GPS apps. And HAM radios really are the most popular form of communication amongst Tacoma owners that I've seen anyway. CB radios are more popular with the Jeep crowd.

There's a pretty big group of guys on here from the SD area, quite a few on this thread actually...I'm sure they'll chime in soon with some recommendations on trails. I'm further north in northeast LA county and don't get down that way very often except for maybe the Joshua Tree area

 

Man, you're around a gold mine of wheeling options around you. Lots of 2wd friendly stuff. Ocotillo Wells, and Anza Borrego is near you, and a must see for scenery, and wheeling options. A lot of people use AllTrails to find local runs. Welcome to town!

 

Just keep watching this thread and the SoCal forum. As @eon_blue said, there are generally multiple runs each month, some advertised, some not, but word of mouth spreads pretty good. There is a lot that a stock Sport 4x can do which is what I am. I would recommend Palomar Mountain or Lusardi as a first run since they will both give you a small taste. There's Black Mountain too, but I haven't been on that one yet.

 

Thank you; hoping to do Palomar Mountain Saturday.

 

The first 1/3 of Palomar is paved, so don't use 4x on that part. You'll know when you get on dirt by the excavation site and when you get to the end of Palomar, there will be a locked gate ( preventing you from getting to the observatory ), but there's a parking area a few hundred yards before that. There are lots of view points and stop at the heli pad on the way down for the view. Also, you should be able to get up the off-shoot for the actual fire watch tower. If one of the volunteers is there, they might let you up on the tower for one hell of a nice view!

 

went to go pick up a bumper at the same location and they ended up loading the wrong bumper on my truck, and when i finally get the right bumper, they didnt have the bumper bracket and i had to wait another couple days. they need better staff

 

Fox, Icon or King?

 

Ive always had a such a hard time finding good trails on AllTrails... Maybe I'm just not using it right?

 

Are you filtering by OHV??

 

I havent used it in a year or two, but I would filter it by off-road driving and half of the trails would be closed and a lot of the time it didn't have much information about terrain.

I also could never find any BLM trails through AllTrails, Gaia, or OnX Offroad... Still trying to find out the best way to do that.

 

BLM trails are hard because there is no mandate to map them like USFS roads. Gaia works way better on a computer using their web interface. That map allows you to see tracks created by other people.

 

That is what I have done in the past for BLM as well. The only problem with that is that you never know how they are getting around out there (ATV, motocross, hiking, OHV, etc...) I tend to over plan things GPS wise but it would be nice to be able to filter that in the app as well haha

 

Any idea when the next run will be?

 

Soon I hope.

And ... Welcome to TW David !!!!

 

Any word on the dog? Hope he got a ride home and is back with his family.

 

Thank you! I’ll keep my eye out

 

That was a fun day. Had a great timeout the and seeing everyone. I did push it a little bit on the way home. Didn’t want to stop for fuel but made it ok.

 

Oh Jeeeeeeeez hahaha. We both pushed it, I ended up stopping in Monrovia right after you cut off to the 605. Glad you made it dude.

 

I tend to just use Google maps on the desktop to find tracks through BLM land, and then map them out on AllTrails for when I go out. As for things being closed, that's kinda just how things go everywhere... Especially during / after fire season, the comment section for each road in AllTrails is usually pretty helpful with that. I've only found one closure that wasn't listed so far, and made sure to comment that it was closed as of xx/xx/xxxx date to let others know the current status of a run. I guess that's the one thing that's lacking in Gaia, is the community aspect.