We went on a really awesome ride on Nevada's Steam shovel trail from the Buena Vista Mine to the Abandoned "Steam Shovel", really a Speeder Deisel powered unit, this last weekend.. the Ride was truly awesome with scenic trail ride down a canyon from 7300 feet down to 4700 feet in about two miles ... off the side of the trail there was about a 2500 foot drop, and the trail was loose rocks....scary but way cool.....

The P700 and the two V-forces worked wonderfully, My P700 in 4WD Hi is an awesome, awesome package.....I can't get over how well the thing did in extremely rugged terrain. This trail was a tire shredding monster of a dangerous, rugged, scenic adventure, but the Kawasaki's made it childs play compared to the ancient Honda quad and dirt bikes with us....this was a 4 hour ride though just 38 miles round trip.....

It was sort of one of those trips from hell though.....the guys next door were out on their Rhino at midnight and when the thing rolled over the passenger stuck his leg out and got an open wound compund fracture of the leg.....and they had to Air Medivac him out at three in the morning.....We were sleeping and were awoken by by two helicopters trying to find this remote camp site 40 miles off the hiway.....when I woke up I was thinking ..."crap! there going to toss us out of here...." then after I woke up all the way ...oh yeah...medivac...duhhh.....

And then on the road back to the Bay Area, there was a fifty mph headwind/duststorm from Lovelock to Reno in 2nd gear at 50 mph.....ugg!, then going over the hwy 80 summit , we were about the last rig to get thru before they shut it down for chain control, then a blinding deluge rain storm back thru Sacramento.......tough trip home.....

But, great ride, no mechanical failures, no injuries,(to our party) and one of the guys with us got hooked up with a 2004 green V-Force with dual exhaust and suspension for $5000.....good deal......

 

BUDXXX, can you post some directions on how to get there, route, etc. This sounds like a must-do trail.

 

Ya, Basically East on hwy 80 and the next exit past Lovelock, is Coal Canyon rd. Take Coal Canyon rd to the south approx 30-35 miles. Note, Don't make any turns off Coal Canyon, stay on the blacktop till it turns to dirt, and then about seven more miles and the rd, if you have not turned off it, will dead end at the abandoned Buena Vista IRon mine site. That's a really good spot to camp. You can get even the very largest motothome or trailer in there..... If you turn right on a dirt rd two miles before the mine site, that road will take you along the west side of the Stillwater range, all the way to Fallon, about 45 miles more....but there are also some decent area to trailer camp along the way, but the trails are not as good....and if you camp up in Dixie valley on the back side of the Stillwater range, there are some very good trails, but they all start in narrow difficult canyons.....We have an 80 mile loop we do from Camp at the Mine, thru the Steamshovel trail, then down and out to Dixie valley, then north 15 mile, then west up another Canyon to Bolivia, then up and over the mountains to the Buena Vista valley, then back to the west thru several abandoned mines sites back to the camp....a grueling 8-9 hour ride.......and you will be done riding for a while....

From there there are many, many trails to explore, mostly dusty desert roads. But if you take one of the trails initially going south then turn east the SteamShovel trail is marked by a 4x4 club sign, they maintain it....it is difficult to find. But if you have a Delorme map book, of nevada, or Mapsource for Garmin, the trails are shown but not marked....

Camp N39 58.783 W118 09.644
Steamshovel trailhead N39 54.029 W118 07.670
Steamshovel N39 55.016 W118 02.042


If you have a GPS I can give you coordinates. If you have Mapsource or TOpo, I can provide you with "tracks" to follow....

The truly great thing about this spot is, you can do anything....shoot,...ride sand dunes.....dry lake beds, explore abandoned mines, and hit some really great, but remote trails.....and nobody cares......oh yeah, during the week, you can look out over the =dry lake bed and see navy jets bombing the target range in the middle......

THis place is not going to be as scenic as a lot of places in the Sierras, but the desert definately has a beauty all it's own.

 

Oh yeah, yo pretty much don't want to be any where near this place in the heat of the summer.

We pretty much only can go Oct thru November and then again from about Feb till June.

There is another group from my work going up there this weekend, but I think the hwy 80 under snow might casue them to think about it....

 

Thanks for the directions. I'll be doing some copy-and-paste with them.

I'm guessing there's plenty of snow up there between November and February?

 

Snow can be deep, but what really keeps us out of there in the winter months is, 1) the hwy 80 pass, I hate chaining up, and 2) more importantly, the mud to and on the trails gets really bad.....what is a dusty mess in the summer is a sticky goo in the winter....

We tried the Steamshovel trail ride one febuary, and when we got to the trailhead and started to climb, the bikes all got stuck, the 2 wheel drive quads got stuck, and the guy on the Honda 4x4 quad, went up the trail less than a 1/4 mile, came back and said, "I ain't goin up there in that mess!"

But in the snowy winter, all the other trails and the "dry" lake bed, are just about perfect, a little wet, keeping the dust down, and not sloppy enough to stop riding.... Hell, we love riding in the winter....just this last Feb we started our day ride just as a snow flurry/storm was just blowing into camp, we had watched it blow across the dry lake bed, and figured when it got to us, the lake bed would be clear..... We told ourselves that as long as it's snowing we'll keep going, but when it turns to rain, we would do a 180 and get back to camp.....we had a good ride, it never did rain....

 

BudXXX, thanks for sharing this riding area[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] I'll have to put it in the books for possible riding areas[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]