Upper Johnson Valley (Ord/Rodman mtns) Oct 9th

[Ritsui]

CA: Upper Johnson Valley (Ord/Rodman mtns) Oct 9th

My wife and I are planning a day trip of geologic interest in the upper Johnson Valley this coming Sunday, October 9th. The location is north of the Johnson Valley OHV area, south of Barstow/Calico and east of the Ord Mountains (heading into the Rodman wilderness area). This area (mostly BLM land) is filled with dry lakes, trails, rock climbing, camping, mines and wildlife, however we are most interested in the general geology, volcanic history and petroglyphs of the area.

This is not so much a 'wheeling trip' as a trip where wheeling gets you where you're going. That said, the area is often sandy and some of trails could be a little bit rough and not a good idea to travel solo. Thus, we are looking for a few more people interested in this sort of thing to join us.

Required:
- Working 4wd.
- Working spare.
- Tow points.
- Radio or cb.
- Lots of water.

Optional/useful:
- GPS and topographic maps.
- Onboard or portable air.
- Decent boots and jeans.
- Backpack and ability to hike a few miles into the desert.
- Even more water.

Stock vehicles should be fine (we're not planning any rock crawling), but you should have "some" off highway experience and a truck you don't mind pinstriping a bit if necessary.

We will be starting from Lake Arrowhead early AM Sunday and driving north into Johnson valley from Big Bear. We plan to return sometime before sundown. If you have the day free and would like to join us, please post/pm/email.

 

[Ritsui]

Here are a few pics from a previous trip to the area.

It's desolate and beautiful (if you like the desert). Conditions will vary, but as you can see the main roads aren't bad at all. 4wd and clearance shouldn't matter much until the "last mile" areas off the main road which could get quite a bit more rutted or rocky.

 

[RockRanger]

cant make this run but let me know next time. Give me a few weeks notice and Ill see if I can make it. It sounds like a trip my girlfriend would love to take.

 

[Ritsui]

If she likes desert landscapes and wildlife... she'll love it. My wife is dying to get back even though we were just there only six weeks ago.

We probably won't risk many questionable trails this time if nobody else comes along, so let me know your schedule and we can start to plan another trip. Even if we were to exhaust the Rodman area (not likely), it's just over the hill to a ton of other interesting places, then Calico, Black Canyon and more to the north.

We'll probably do this several more times depending what we find and our gas budget, so just let me know when you have a day (or two) free for it .

 

[Ritsui]

Sorry nobody could make it. We had a blast though. We found our way to an area with a substantial amount of (mostly) ancient petroglyphs. We took hundreds of pictures, but I only uploaded a few today.

Trip was mostlyeasy roads other than some occasional deep sand. On the way back we splurged on a minor hill climb just to actually excersize the 4wd for a few minutes

as I said above, "mostly ancient". Fortunately this wasn't carved over other glyphs

The entire Johnson Valley was surprisingly empty for a holiday weekend. Just the usual few dozen campers at the dry lakes south of this spot.