Mohave Wash Trail

Corinne National Parks & Monuments 2 Comments

Outside Lake Havasu City, Arizona, there is a lot of off-roading. We were camping with the Boomers (again) and some Boomer friends took their Jeep down the Mohave Wash Trail one day. That sounded like fun! We have a Jeep. The Boomer friends would lend us their maps guide book. Heck, I even found the Avenza with free topo maps. Let’s do it!

This is a screen shot from the website that accompanies the guide book we borrowed. Note the word EASY. Note the time of 4 hours. Keep that in mind.

So early the next morning, we grabbed our friends Amy and Dan for an adventure. Things started out pretty well. Jim popped the Jeep into 4 wheel drive “Sand” mode. we were cruising!

A few miles down the road, we made our first stop and got out to look around.

The Jeep at a cross road.
This is the BLM’s (Bureau of Land Management) idea of a street sign.
Yup, the “street sign” was right. That’s where we were according to the Avenza app on my tablet. Let me tell you, we were VERY grateful to have that app every time we came to an intersection.
At our stop, we smelled the flowers.
We admired the agave plants.
Here’s Amy standing next to an agave plant with a spike that will hold flowers when it blooms.

At this point, Dan and Jim rigged up Dan’s GoPro camera onto the passenger side mirror of the Jeep.

Here’s the GoPro camera. It’s amazing what you can do with a bungee cord and a rock.

Then the real “fun” began. Let me say I was glad I was in the back seat and could not see what was in front of us. Also, not many pictures were taken because we were hanging on for our dear lives!

UTVs (Utility Task Vehicles) are the types of vehicles that can easily handle trails like we found ourselves on.
And this is what we were driving. Notice the lack of similarities! We are bigger, heavier, and can’t fly over the washboard surfaces like the UTVs can.

Remember how I said this “Easy” trail should take 4 hours. Nope. Nada. Zippo. We were experiencing what turned out to be a 6 hour trip at an average of 5 miles per hours. For 34 long, long miles.

This is a quick 11 second time lapse that Dan put together from his GoPro to give you a feeling for what lay ahead. You can also use this link. https://youtu.be/NIvBXVsZDlk

We found the trail to have a washboard surf. Bounce, bounce bounce. Hang on, brace, hang on.

I got some of Dan’s video from his GoPro. I wanted to put annotations on it, but all the software I’ve tried is fighting against me. So, what you see is what you get. A narrow rutted road that we should not be on!

This video takes us up to a high point. But you can tell that we are tilting, not the horizon. At one point, the GoPro camera is lower than the top of the dirt bank on the right. You can also see Jim avoiding driving over rocks. The video can also be viewed at https://youtu.be/xciRDKbX55E.

Did I mention we were driving in a wash? Lets look up the definition of Wash.

A wash is an arroyo, or gully or wadi that is normally dry but quickly fills with water after a heavy rain.

They didn’t mention that the wash was also full of soft sand. There is NO WAY we would have made it through this trail without 4 wheel drive. At least this next video is a little more scenic.

For the final leg of the trip, we ended up in a sandy wash. Often we couldn’t tell what path would be best. You kind of guessed and hoped you guessed right. The video can also be viewed at https://youtu.be/AG9pCC9_frE

We survived our 6 hour (instead of 4) not-so-easy 4-wheeling experience. We made it back to the campground in time for happy hour which was MUCH needed!. In the guide book we borrowed, there was a very enjoyable trail we had driven at Organ Pipe National Park a few years ago. It was also labeled as “Easy”, so we thought we were OK on this trail. Jim remarked that Organ Pipe was an “Easy 1” where this trail was an “Easy 10”. Ugh.

We discovered about two miles into our adventure that the Avenza app would keep track of our path. You can tell where I turned recording on and where I drew in the orange line myself.

So what did we learn? We need to ask a few more questions before embarking on such a trail. If the word “wash” is in the description, I don’t want to be anywhere near the trail! It was an adventure and we mostly enjoyed it, so no regrets. But like I said, we’ll do a bit more research next time!


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2 thoughts on “Mohave Wash Trail”

  1. dominiquefeather

    Oh my, oh my — another adventure!!! Glad that you picked a dry day!! When you said that you were “4 wheeling”, I thought you might be on ATV’s. First video looked like a little more than 5 mph and the last one looked a little faster. But the in between — slow going. Glad that you made it safely — and back in time for happy hour!

    1. Corinne Post author

      I wish we had been in one of those ATVs! The trip would have been much more fun. The first video was sped up. The rest were at the actual snail’s pace.

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