Trail Events

For our Gold Rush Run, we decided to explore the short but difficult rated Snake Lake Trail which is located on the eastern edge of Gold Valley and then circled around down and out west on the Mother Lode Highway until we reached the historic town of Downieville. From there, we headed on a long journey north and off pavement to the old mining town of Poker Flat and eventually, La Porte before calling it a day.

As many of you know, we spend our July’s up in Tahoe and typically use our time up there to hike and wheel the extensive network of trails the area has to offer. And, while we still plan on doing that again this year, we decided to change things up a bit and utilize our northerly location to explore some of the Northern Nevada desert as well.

Unlike previous years, summer arrived up in the Sierra’s a lot sooner than I’ve seen it in a really long time and, because of this, we decided to head up and do our annual Rockin Rubicon run a lot sooner than normal too. In fact, in spite of the fact that we ran the Con in June, the trail was surprisingly dry and with wildflowers already starting to wane.

Tuesday, June 5th was the 2nd of two Transit’s of Venus for the century and the next viewing would be until 2117. Needless to say, this was something we had to see but unfortunately, cloudy skies over our neck of the woods would have prevented us from doing just that.

If you can believe it, this was the 3rd year in a row that our traditional Summer Kick-off up in the Sierra’s ended up being more of a Winter Final. In fact, I’m starting to think we’ll have to change it’s name for next year with the hopes of getting an opposite effect.

A couple of weeks ago, I read about an Annular Solar Eclipse that was to occur in our neck of the woods on Sunday, May 20, 2012.

After extending our Arizona adventures with a side trip out to Sedona, we decided to make our final push back to Southern California by way of Route 66. Starting from Flagstaff, we made our way across the Mother Road, into the Hualapai Indian Nation and it was there that we found ourselves drawn to yet another side trip in the town of Peach Springs.

Rather than heading straight for home after the awesome weekend of wheeling we had in Arizona last week, Cindy and I decided to make our drive back a bit more interesting and took side trip up through Sedona.

Last weekend, our good friends Greg and Dave of Powerline Patrol invited Mel, Cindy and I out to Arizona to run a few of the trails out in the Florence Junction area. To be exact, we ended up running a total of 7 beautiful and epic trails including Box Canyon, the Martinez Mine Loop, Jack Handle, Orville’s Loop, the infamous Axel Alley, Upper Woodpecker and a better part of Highway to Hell before Mel’s steering pump quit on him and forced us to bail out.

Over the weekend, we got a chance to hook up with some really old friends of ours, Matt and Heather (aka doojer & doojette) and do some camping out in the desert or, what some like to call, “overlanding�.

With the economy still in the dumps and gas prices through the roof, I suppose it really shouldn’t come as any surprise that the 2012 Moab Easter Jeep Safari was by far one of the least crowded ones I’ve seen to date.

About a week before Christmas, we flew out to Niagara, New York to visit our good friend Ken (HappyCurmudgeon) who’s been fighting a losing battle against cancer, buy his silver 2-door JK and drive it back home to Southern California.