Saturday October 22. Meet at the Terrible's/McDonalds at the top of the hill on highway 95 through Searchlight. We'll roll out of there are 9:00AM. We'll be taking Route 164 toward Nipton, and leaving this road for the dirt a few miles outside of Searchlight.
We last did this run (officially anyway) in 2009. Here's what I said about it then, and it's still true now:
The trail heads through a beautiful forest of large Joshua Trees. Part of this forest, though not the part we're going through, is officially called the Wee Thump Joshua Tree Wilderness Area. Wee Thump is Yuman for “ancient ones” , and it refers to the ancient Joshua Trees of the area. We'll take a brief detour from the main trail to see some petroglyphs, and stop to inspect an old cattle corral that has a curious water tank. The trail eventually dips down into a wash that winds its way through the Highland Mountain Range. We'll stop at Cow Spring, where there are some old stone walls/foundations, and a spring that may have a bit of water. We'll also take a side trip up to a very large guzzler maintained for Bighorn Sheep. This site overlooks a rather stunning dropoff. Eventually, we'll end up on a powerline crossroad. Folks can either hoof it from there back to Route 95 north of Searchlight, or, continue on the dirt while longer. The ever-more-adventurous folks can even hook up with Beer Bottle Pass if they want. However, the official run will end at the site of two impressive solar power stations: Nevada Solar One, and Copper Mountain Solar.
Here are a few websites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Solar_Onehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Mou ... r_Facilityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_powe ... ave_Deserthttp://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fus ... ew&WID=634