After seeing Canpiles posts on the Eastern Sierra, I finally got motivated to post some pictures from the Ridgecrest 300 ride last month. I've driven through this area many times traveling between LA and Mammoth, always wondering what was 'out there'. The Ridgecrest 300 Dual Sport Ride looked to be a perfect opportunity to check it out. The ride was a two day ride starting in Ridgecrest, overnighting in Lone Pine and then looping back down to the start. Heading due West into the Sierra foothills, the first stop was the Nadeau Magnolia Mine. Watch that first step! Only 2 feet inside the mine, there's a shaft straight down of unknown depth. Turning North through the foothills. We rode North through the hills on a wide variety of terrain. Nice fire roads, a section of loose/sandy/side hill single track and some abandoned railroad bed. We even did the SuperMoto thing for a while on the concrete lid over the aqueduct. After crossing the 395, we did some more technical riding around the Haiwee Reservoir. My intended ride partner for the trip (twowheelsgood) was spending the month of October getting in way more bike-time than any married man has a right to. By the time of this ride, Rich decided to opt out. I end-up hooking up with Randy through the D37 Message Board. Randy turns out to be a really cool guy with quite a bit more experience than me. I end up learning a lot from Randy through the course of the weekend and only hope that I didn't slow him down too much. Lunchtime! There are a lot of miles to cover before dark, so we gas-up quickly in Olancha, choke down a ready-made sandwich from the store and hit the trail. Some of our fellow riders do likewise: More to come...
After lunch we head East through the Olancha Dunes, paralleling Hwy 190 and the Southern 'shore' of Owens Dry Lake. I am somewhat inept in sand, but I manage to get through it without any drama. Randy and I regroup as we cross 190 and head up into Santa Rosa Flat. "Two roads diverged in a wood??" ...and we took the one less paved Santa Rosa Flat Passing through Santa Rosa Flat we climbed over the moutain and past the ghost town and mines of Cerro Gordo. The road up to the Salt Tram was incredible. Great views into the Owens Valley to the West and the Saline Valley to the East. After one bear of a steep, long, loose climb we arrived at the Salt Tram. The Salt Tram is like a giant ski lift system. It was used to haul the high quality salt mined on the Saline Valley side of the mountain over to the railroad on the Owen's Valley side. It was built in 1911, operated off and on for a while, but never proved economical. This is a panorama of the top station. The picture is a bit warped, but you can see both the Saline Valley on the right and the Owen's Valley to the left. After the Salt Tram, we take a fun sketchy old jeep trail down into Swansea and slab it into Lone Pine for the night. I think we started about 8:30am and pulled into the Hotel at around 5:00pm, that's a long day of riding for me. I'm a bit of an Advrider noob, so forgive me for not having pictures of beer, food and waitress to insert here.
Day 2 Sorry, no breakfast/food shots either. After breakfast, we take Hwy 136 back down to the town of Keeler at the base of Cerro Gordo. Here's a pic of Keeler with the Sierras and Mt. Whitney in the background: We head up the main gravel road into Cerro Gordo.
We climb back up and through Cerro Gordo crossing some of the same tracks we were on the previous day. Down the backside, for a while we railed along an old erroded double track. Then it was back out over the high-speed hard pan roads of Santa Rosa Flat. Crossing Hwy 190, we continued South on Darwin Rd and into the strange ghost town of Darwin. This town couldn't be more in the middle of nowhere. Darwin is actually a pretty sizeable town. Apparently 45,000 people once lived here back in 1877. Most of the original buildings have been destroyed in various fires. The present iteration looks like a small mining town circa the 1930's. Most buildings are either boarded-up or decaying but a few show obvious signs of current residents. Old trucks, mining equipment, cars, etc. are everywhere. I really wanted to stay and poke around, but we've got a lot of ground to cover and kept moving. We head East out of town on Main Street which quickly returns to a desert track. We duck down through a steep little wash littered with some old mining equipment. We pick-up the Nadeau Toll Rd and continue East. We're passing through some really desolute terrain. To call this a road is really pushing it. It's more of a sandy wash... really deep sand too. Again, I struggle a bit but ultimately make it through. At one point we round a bend and find lush green trees. This is China Garden Spring. The spring has been improved over the years and there's a nice clear pond at the outflow. It's quite a sight to find this Oasis in the middle of such a desolate and remote area and then see it stocked with a thriving population of goldfish! We decide that these are actually KTMfish as they are really orange and not gold at all. We continue East and into Panamint Springs for gas and lunch. The weather is picture perfect and even a little warm, especially for November. We've been making good time, so we decide to take a break and have a sit down lunch. The food is great. It couldn't be a better lunch spot. We sit out on the covered porch, take in the scenery and chat with some of the other riders.
Michaelfish - YLB! Ridgecrest is a great town for riding. There can't be many towns in the country where you can take off on just about any compass heading and find such epic riding.
Sweet, Bullseye. My pops lives in the house up on the hill out past the college, the one you can see from town. Lots of folx ride up around there (all BLM land except for pop's plot) and I plan to as soon as I can get out there after I get a bike next year. Thanks for posting, it's nice to see my dad's neck o' the woods.
Home Stretch From Panamint Springs, the route drops South straight down through the Panamint Valley. We follow a trail along the shoulder of the valley, cutting across a multitude of alluvial fans and washes. It's fun riding. One of the other riders gets caught off guard by one of the deeper washes and stacks it hard right in front of us. He lands pretty hard, but is OK. We stop and spend a little time helping him sort-out his now mis-aligned front-end. Along the way, the route angles a little West around the Panamint Crater. I'm not sure if they have compleletly figured out what caused this crater. Apparently, meteorite has been ruled out as the cause. A collapse of the geological structure below is another theory. Pananmint Valley Panorama We continue down through Panamint Valley and into the town of Trona. After riding through such beautiful scenery, Trona is a bit of a slap in the face. Trona is located on the Western 'shore' of Searles Dry Lake. The Dry Lake is chocked full of minerals and has seen 100+ years of mineral and chemical production, and it shows. There are giant pipes running all over, tall piles of various minerals, large rusting corrugated metal buildings and lot's of fencing topped with barbed wire. It's not a pretty sight. We push on through towards Ridgecrest. The route takes a hard right off Trona Rd., we crest a ridge and continue South across Hwy 178. Approaching Ridgecrest from the East, we ride some classic Ridgecrest desert singletrack. Hi-Speed and smooth, it's like skiing deep powder. We're back in Ridgecrest by about 3pm. I get a total of 350 miles for the weekend.
Don't they refer to Trona residents as "mutants?" That whole area around R'crest is just chock full of interesting and bizarre people and stories, from meth heads to water rights battles to people dissapearing down mine shafts. Keep riding, keep posting. Thanks, Bullseye!
Great pictures and story!! I had no idea there was a crater in the Panamint Valley.:eek1 Great riding up there!
Looks like you had a great time. Did they change the route? I thought it was supposed to go east (through Searles Valley) from Ridgecrest, and then north to the Cerro Gordo area? I was going to do that ride, but I had a get-off at Trona Pinnacles a couple weeks before and separated my right shoulder. Missed the CL 300 and the LA-B-LV events.... If you get back this way, we'll have to get all the locals together and go ridin', I ride year round, especially winter! Jerry
JB- I haven't done this ride in years past, but it sounds like it was a change from the previous iterations. We basically did a clockwise lap around the naval base.
