NorCal places to offroad!

I would also like to know this, would be nice if there was some local dirt, even just a little bit. Closest stuff is up at Cow Mtn, Mendocino or Knoxville from what I know currently.

 

Heading up to the Mendocino national Forrest for anyone that wants to join on November 26. Message me for details. We are getting Christmas trees. You'll need a permit. I'd say it's a family Friendly event.

 

We're meeting at the windmill cafe at 7am in ukiah if anyone would like to join. Please print and purchase your permit upon arrival. Look up Mendocino national Forrest Christmas tree permit

 

I am looking for winter camping spots closer than Usal (5 hours from Sacramento). I'm thinking there must be good spots in the Southern tip of the Mendocino National Forest, between Indian Valley Reservoir and Clear Lake, and north of that. My 4Runner is on 33s with a 4" lift so it is pretty capable. I prefer to go places where a Subaru or Expo-Van would bottom out so there are fewer people there and it makes it more fun to get there. Does anyone want to share good spots, or will I need to just start exploring? Can anyone share sections or roads to explore off of?

 

Go up to the mendo national forest. I think hull mountian has snow now. The trip to the top will test out your suspension without snow. I'd be a little sketched out. I made it stock but slide back down twice and just had to gun it. My brother had a 22 trd offroad with the factory 2" lift and made it easier. There are some good trails on the way up as well. If you go up and come in by pilsbury there is a lower trailer I've done and it's tight but doable. Not hard but your on a cliff side. That's lower powder house I belive. I haven't done upper powder house. Then you come up on refuge trail I believe and that's a fun trail. You can also take m1 all the way to covelo or take m61 back to m6 and go back to pilsbury. Let me know if you need help in that area

 

Camping tonight overlooking Indian Valley Reservoir and thinking I’ll make my way to Letts Lake tomorrow. I’m on a spur below Cold Spring Mountain.

 

Surprised there's no snow up on the mountains yet.

 

Awesome bro! This area was in my list of “to do camp” this year, especially on the eel river bed. Have fun!

 

I want to camp up there during the elk rut and just watch them. If you haven't seen that yet it's a great one. The bugles will blow your mind

 

I’m quite further south than Eel River. The purple line is what I did yesterday and today.

I’m camped overlooking Clear Lake tonight. Happy New Year everyone!

 

Very cool! What mapping system did you use in your screenshot?

 

Does anyone use trail forks for finding trails?

 

I use onx offroad

 

I downloaded the app. Haven't activated the trial yet.

 

I use both off road and hunting. I do both so both serve a huge purpose. I've noticed that a lot of trails up at lake pilsbury area aren't marked. So I can use onx hunt and see if it's at least public or private property. I which I could get both apps for a deal but nope. Onx off road is like 40 a year or something but hunt premiun is like 100 a year for all the states otherwise 25 a state and I hunt in 3 states

 

Hmm the public vs private land part is very helpful I'm sure. I do a lot of mountain biking so I have subscriptions for trail forks, strava, and my lady pays for alltrails. I know trail forks has a mvum layer which shows many trails, although haven't put it to the test yet. Here are some trail forks screen shots of mammoth lakes, what do you (you guys) think?

It's definitely a dilemma which apps serve the greater purpose haha. Hunting, mtb, 4x4 etc etc.

 

Gaia has private land, mvum and tons of other layers that you can even run overlapped. You can also import waypoints and routs from other places. It’s really helpful.

 

Followed the winter storm over 88 to Mammoth this past weekend and used the free trial of OnXOffroad. I get it now, it was a very useful app and I'm now subscribed to it!!

We had an awesome 3 days in mammoth and we had equally as much fun using all of our recovery gear! We started on the northern side of the hot creek trail with the intent to wheel to the geological site and then the hot springs. We made it about a mile cutting fresh powder at 8 psi until we got bellied in 15" of it! Did some shoveling and used crawl control with our recovery boards and got out successfully. We were losing daylight so thought it best to go back the way we came .

We did some snow hiking at big pine the next day and offroading the Crowley Lake trail to the Crowley Columns. They can be found at 37.60766, -118.71826. It's best to enter the trail from the 395 hwy side as there's a pretty deep water crossing which we opted not to do.

3rd day we tried to do the hot creek trail from the crab cooker hot spring and had a fun 10 miles before the trail started to get more technical with snow. We opted to take trails back to town so we can start our trip back home before losing daylight. On the way out, we stumbled on a bellied Tundra and pulled out our yankum rope weekender off-road kit to do a snatch recovery. Easing into it, we got him out on the 3rd tug. He was a really nice guy and bought us coffee in town as a thank you!

Parted ways, aired up, refueled and started driving home. Drove through some decent snow fall, but the worst of the entire storm was the last 40 minutes of driving home where it was dumping rain, the irony .

See below for some photos!

https://www.tacomaworld.com/media/albums/mammoth-weekend-trip.79149/