Hi everyone! A friend and I are looking to run Barstow to Vegas here in a couple of days and I am wondering if anyone has a good GPS track for the ride? Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
We did a trip in thru the Mojave in Jan 2008 that included a nearly all dirt leg from Barstow to Primm NV. The tracks of the entire trip are attached. We rode Kingston Wash which is off the beaten track for this trip. It was a narrow sandy arroyo and was a handful on the KLR. We went over the hill south of Mequite Lake into Primm. This was very rocky. A major highlight of this ride is Afton Canyon about 40 miles east of Barstow. One can also do the Mohave Trail instead of the power line road we took into Baker, but we decided not to because it looked too sandy. We had an option for a dirt road from Baker to the Kingston Wash road, but took pavement to save time. You can get to Vegas if you go out the north end of Mesquite Valley instead of going to Primm. There are some pretty obvious dirt county roads on maps that bring you out in the southwest part of town
Ther are not real good routes from B to V. Look at SMTS routes on GPSXchange.com Mojave road or Trona to Vegas.
We have done a ride from San Diego (Alpine to Vegas specifically) and I found a bunch or routes on dualsportmap.com. Here is the GPX file we used.
I rode a KLR. Others in the group had the same or KTM 640s. The KLR did not do well in the sand. And being desert there was a lot of it. There are a lot of whoops on the portions using the old Barstow to Vegas race/trail ride. The KLR did not do well on them either. I think my KTM 690 would do better, but my KTM 500 would be my bike of choice if I had enough gas range.