OTR Calico NIGHT RUN
Calico(very hot) Night Run, September 2014
Friday night Mike, Laura, Marley, John, Wendy, Nova, Scott and friend Dan arrived at Calico. The temps were warm. Mike did not like his spot so he moved spaces. Chad, Joanna and Nash arrived early Saturday.
Saturday was spent going the back way into Duran, via Wall Street and finding mines. A lot of the deep mines now have grated covers over them. After spending a few hours in the heat we came out Mule Canyon and spent the rest of the afternoon in air conditioning. Since Scott did not have a MH, he and Dan spent it in Scott’s truck with the air running. Temp was 110 when we came back.
Rich and Corki came out from Apple Valley and spent dinner with us at Peggy Sue’s. It was great to see them.
We left for Duran around 7:30. The temp was in the high 90’s. Duran looked like it had seen some water with the number of rocks in the middle of the trail. At the top we stopped for a short break and viewed the desert with an almost full moon. Temps were still in the 90’s at 10pm.
From there we headed down to Odessa. The washed out spot on Odessa had all the rocks removed, so we spent some time determining whether we wanted to drive down or go out Mule Canyon. Mike tried going over the rock fall before the wash out, without success. So Chad convinced us we could make it through the washed out area. I was the first to go and managed not to brown my pants. Needless to say it was interesting. After getting through, I pulled the jeep around, drove up the face and parked the front tire in the wash out to keep anyone from sliding down. It worked great.
We arrived back in camp around 11:30 and the temp was still in the high 80’s.
Because the temps were so high we decided not to do the Duran Gatekeeper on Sunday and we were all gone by 10.
John