Driving the Mojave Road to Lava Tubes

5 Days in the Desert travelog #14
Cima, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 4pm

This past Sunday afternoon— Christmas Day, for those still keeping track amid this prolific series of blog posts about our "5 Days in the Desert" trip— we visited the lava tubes in Mojave National Preserve. This was our third adventure of the day, after hiking the 650' tall sand dunes at Kelso Dunes in the morning and visiting historic Kelso Depot (aka 🎵 Welcome to the Depot California 🎵) after lunch. Actually it was both our third and fourth adventure of the day, as just the drive there (and back) constituted its own adventure.

Ordinarily the lava tubes would be about a 3.5 mile drive on Aiken Mine Road, a well graded dirt road off paved Kelbaker Road in Mojave National Preserve. Right now, though, a few roads in the park are closed due to washouts in the last monsoon season. Kelbaker is one of them. The next shortest way to get there is via the Mojave Road, adding 16 miles of dirt road driving.

Watch on YouTube

The Mojave Road is a legendary unpaved route. It stretches 150 miles west from the Colorado River. It follows a trading route long used by natives to connect desert dwelling tribes to those in coastal areas. Spanish missionaries learned about it in 1776. American settlers began using it in 1826, and the US military used it as a wagon route from 1859 until a railroad was built across the Mojave Desert in 1883. (Hmm, seems like we were just at that railroad at Kelso Station.)

Driving the Mojave Road was easy in our 4x4 with high clearance, though we were limited to 10-15mph much of the time because of the whoop-de-doos in the soft dirt (see video). A medium clearance sedan or wagon like a Subaru could navigate this stretch of road, though it would probably need to go even slower. Once we got to Aiken Mine Road mine road the trail conditions were easier. Until the last 300 meters or so.



The trail descriptions said to park in a primitive parking area then follow the trail 300 meters over volcanic rock to a small spur trail. Well, the first 300 meters of trail were a two-track... as in, vehicle two track. But they were over fist-sized lava rock. We decided F--- it, Subarus can park in the lot while the big dogs drive all the way. We parked just steps away from the ladder down into the lava tube.

This is where the adventure switches from driving to hiking.



A steel ladder leads down about 10' into a collapsed portion of a lava tube. From that point one can scramble down rocks on either side, into the tube itself. The picture above shows the less forbidding direction.

"Enh," I thought, "I'm not sure I want to do this."

But then I considered the considerable time and effort it took to get to this spot— including over an hour driving on bouncy dirt roads just to get here. I wasn't going to let that time and effort go to waste just because I didn't want to crouch down a bit to navigate over sharp rocks and climb into the bowels of the earth!

To be continued....

Update: Into the Lava Tubes & Back!

Exploring a Lava Tube; Getting Back to Civilization

5 Days in the Desert travelog #15
Cima, CA - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 5pm

I left off in my last blog entry with us descending into the bowels of the earth after an hour+ long drive to the remote lava tubes in Mojave National Preserve. I decided that after all that effort I would not be deterred by having to crawl on my hands and knees a bit, so in I went.



Well, I didn't have to crawl right away. The entryway (above) was tall enough that I could pretty much stand and walk as I carefully lowered myself down the jagged rocks. Not far inside, though....



The ceiling dropped low, not much more than 3 feet high. "Is this the end?" we wondered.

Hawk delved deeper as she was able to navigate under the low ceiling merely by bending over and squatting. It opened up again after 10 feet or so.

"C'mon," she said. "It's worth it!"



On the other side of the low ceiling was this fairly sizable chamber. Overhead are three windows to the outside. Two are obvious at the top of the picture (above), split by a small arch. The third is at the far end of the chamber, where you can see an orange light filtering down. We'd seen the split window along the trail on the surface as we walked to the tube entrance but not the smaller window.

Good new/bad news: While this chamber was a great find, the lava tube definitely ended here. And the other direction from the ladder ended in about 15' with nothing but a pile of rubble from a collapsed roof. Oh, but there was one other thing on the way out....



This rock struck me as looking something like a geode. Well, not a geode because those aren't crystals hanging down from the topside. It's a volcanic rock shell with some smoother minerals on the underside.

Speaking of underside, it was time to leave the underside of the earth and get back to its surface.

We returned to the car and picked our way carefully down the lava 4x4 trail. Back at the Subaru parking area we met another pair of visitors arriving— in a Subaru— and chatted with them about road conditions. We'd seen them arriving from the opposite direction and wanted to know how passable routes other than the Mojave Road (link to my YouTube video) are.

It turned out to be a two-way exchange of information... like the best 4x4 backcountry conversations are. Our new acquaintances were Chinese visitors who spoke limited English. But their English was better than my extremely limited Chinese.

I unfolded a paper map and used that to help frame our halting conversation. They'd come from the north on different roads than we took from the east. Their route was obviously passable, though they warned they had to drive slowly, like 5mph in some difficult parts, and never faster tha 15mph in the best parts. I cast a side eye toward their Subaru and figured that we'd do better than that. In exchange, I explained for them how to drive the Mojave Road. They were using only Google Maps on a phone... and there really wasn't any signal out here, miles from the nearest paved road.

We parted ways; they went toward the cave while we started north.



Right away the road was smoother than the Mojave Road. It was graded dirt and did not have those whoop-de-doos (YouTube video link) that had forced us to keep our speed down— otherwise we'd have been looking like stunt drivers from The Dukes of Hazzard!

There was one tough part about a mile out where we climbed a rocky hill navigating past a mostly defunct mine. Our capable 4x4 walked it. After that it was smooth sailing. We picked up a route following along utility lines (pic above). That confirmed we were headed the right way. If in doubt, follow the telephone lines back to civilization!

A Tale of Two Highways. Christmas Dinner.

5 Days in the Desert travelog #16
Back at the hotel - Sun, 25 Dec 2022, 8pm

After quite a busy day in the desert wilderness— climbing Kelso Dunes and shooting video coming back down, visiting a filk-inspiring historic train depot, and driving miles of dirt roads to a lava tube then a journey beneath the earth and a drive of miles more on dirt roads— we returned back to civilization. "Civilization" was, in this case, the comfort of being on an interstate highway; I-15 in this case.

Two interstates form a "V" shape heading east from Barstow. I-40 runs due east, 2,554 miles to Wilmington on the Atlantic Coast. I-15 runs northeast to Las Vegas and points beyond. We've driven I-40 in this area a few times between yesterday and today. I-40 has been a pretty sedate road. More than half the vehicles are big rig trucks, piloted by professional drivers. Traffic overall is light. I-15, by comparison, is an overcrowded day care center for antsy toddlers with car keys. Traffic is packed in all lanes in both directions, and everyone's jockeying to get that one extra car length ahead.

"What's got this road so packed on Christmas?" we wondered. Southbound, we figured, is people returning to Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California from Christmas in Las Vegas. Northbound is... people heading to Las Vegas after Christmas. Yes, I-15 between the LA basin and Las Vegas is a mess on any weekend or holiday. We were happy to get back to Barstow and be done with it.

Oh, and since it is still Christmas day.... We found more restaurants that are open than just cheap, mediocre Chinese. There's also a cheap, mediocre Mexican restaurant right next to our hotel that's open today. We had dinner there this evening in lieu of eating microwaveable food in our hotel room. And TBF, what we consider "mediocre" Mexican food in California is 4 out of 5 stars in most of the rest of the country.