Nevada-Oregon Trip, Day 2 (Part B): Into the Isolated Desert Mountains

The general plan for the near future was simple on paper: a 51-mile off-road drive to the wild region of the Duffer Peak mountains.

But the backcountry, as we know, has its own laws.

The off-road route started exactly at the point where I finished the previous post, the gas station at Denio Junction in northern Nevada, right on the Oregon border. After a short drive west on Highway 140, I turned onto a side dirt road.

From here, I began a relatively easy drive on a good dirt road that took me deep into the remote valley.

Large herds of cattle were scattered around, grazing on the valley grass and creating a completely peaceful scene. After about 10 miles of relaxed driving, I reached a point where I turned left. From here, the road leaves the valley and begins to climb toward the high mountains, where remnants of snow could still be clearly seen.

In the valley, there was a large seasonal lake that looked entirely out of place against the surrounding desert landscape.

Before climbing into the mountains, this was the place and time to stop, get out of the vehicle, and air down the tires, a vital step to ensure stability, ride comfort, and better traction further down the road.

Every time I air down and head deep into the backcountry alone with the vehicle, something in me shifts. It is a familiar internal feeling of excitement mixed with a slight tension or fear, which immediately brings a sharpening of the senses and a heightened state of caution. It is hard to explain, it is just a feeling in your gut.

Driving with a single jeep in the backcountry is no joke.

I have a rich background of about 40 years in off-road driving, but I have learned that you must never underestimate the terrain or do foolish things. Sometimes it isn't the major obstacles; even small, momentary mistakes in locations like this can completely change the whole trip from one end to the other. Out here, you don't know what is waiting for you around the bend, what the road conditions are, what rocks and obstacles will pop up, and what the snow level is blocking the trail.

And indeed, I encountered some very significant obstacles further down the road.

My Toyota 4Runner is an excellent vehicle, but it is not lifted, I don't have underbody skid plates, and I don't have a front winch. The meaning of this is that any self-recovery becomes a complicated and complex matter, which forces me to be doubly careful.

At least I had a Garmin satellite device with me for backup, and I operated under the assumption that in case of serious trouble, there are people in the area here and there, maybe not many, but someone would eventually pass by.

From this point, the road began to climb.

At first, the ascent was moderate, but very quickly it became truly steep. The mountains around me were completely barren of vegetation.

I gained elevation with them until I reached a split in the trail: left led toward Onion Valley, and right turned toward Knott Creek Reservoir. I planned to sleep at the high Onion Valley, but instead of driving left, I decided to take a right and do the full loop that connects the two lakes.

At this stage, I didn't know it yet, but it later became clear to me that I was the first person attempting to complete this loop since winter ended.

The climb to the right continued to be steep, and as I gained elevation, more and more trees began to appear in the landscape.

At one stage of the climb, I unexpectedly caught a crazy wild sight: on the open ridge, a pronghorn antelope was chasing a large coyote at immense speed, with the coyote running away like mad. Apparently, the coyote got a bit too close, and she was simply driving him away from her herd. I pulled out my old camera that has a zoom lens and managed to take a few pictures of this amazing scene.

I continued driving, passing a few more traction obstacles on the steep climb, until I reached the ridgeline from which I began to descend toward the large reservoir.

While driving on downhills, especially in remote places like this, a constant thought always runs through my mind: "Am I capable of driving back up this way in the opposite direction if the trail ahead is blocked?"

Descending a rock ledge or loose scree is always easy, but climbing back up it is a completely different story. You must be aware of this at every moment.

I descended toward the large lake, Knott Creek Reservoir, and there I met people for the first time; there were a few groups of people who came out here for a few days.

Judging by their types of vehicles, it was entirely clear to me that most of them had not reached the reservoir via the challenging track I had just traversed, but rather through the more main and easier road.

I continued to skirt the beautiful lake and came out on its other side. After a short driving distance, I got to see another antelope standing very close to me. We spent nearly half an hour together until it decided to move away from the trail.

It was starting to get late in the afternoon, and I still had a drive ahead of me. I kept moving forward and reached another trail split: a right turn meant descending from the mountains and returning to the valley via the main road, while a left turn led to the big, tough climb toward the remote Onion Valley Reservoir.

I turned left. From this point, the trail changed completely; it became much narrower, it was clearly unmaintained, and it was obvious that very few vehicles, if any, drive on it.

The trail began to drop into narrow canyons and climb back up the mountain slopes. As I ascended, the amount of trees around me grew significantly, and in particular, I entered expansive areas of aspen trees that were just beginning to wake up from their snowy winter hibernation. There was no snow on the trail itself, but it became so narrow and the trees closed in on it from both sides to the point that I had to fold in the jeep's side mirrors.

My progress became very slow. Not because of a navigation problem, but simply due to the need to keep my eyes wide open and ensure I wasn't scraping a tree on the tight turns or getting too deep into the mud. Overall, there was no difficult technical rock crawling here, but the distance and the narrow, tight passage between the trees forced an excruciatingly slow pace.

I continued to climb, and suddenly, in the middle of the aspen forest, I hit the first barrier ("the first" is a hint of what was to come): a fallen tree that blocked part of the trail with absolutely no way to pass.

At that moment, the penny dropped and I finally understood: I really was the first one trying to pass through this trail since winter ended.

Luckily, this tree wasn't too massive. I pulled a small axe out of the vehicle that I keep with me and started chopping the dry trunk. After about 10 minutes of hard work, the tree broke, and I managed to clear it from the road and keep going.

I continued the climb, passing more groves and crossing several flowing creeks, and the ascent became truly steep. It was smooth and without difficult rock ledges, but the incline was serious. After quite a bit of slow climbing, I reached the highest point of the route. I was happy to see that even at this elevation the trail itself was clear of snow, and the white stuff remained only up high, on the tallest peaks.

This gave me a much better feeling about what lay ahead.

The way down, on the descent, passed entirely through particularly dense aspen forests that created a sort of very narrow trail tunnel. My pace on the downhill improved, and I started to feel internally that look, the hard part is already behind me and I'm close to the destination... but then came challenge number 2.

The narrow trail was blocked by a large tree that had fallen across the path; this time it wasn't a branch on the side of the trail, but a whole tree.

I cleared the small branches, pulled out the axe, and started cutting. After a long time and a bit of dragging and breaking branches, I managed to clear the tree from the trail.

I started descending to the lower area toward the small reservoir and thought that from here it would be a home run all the way.

Suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, a massive tree blocked the trail, the large dead tree had fallen completely and blocked the road, challenge 3.

This was already a serious problem!

The trunk was very thick, and several large, heavy branches extended from it, closing off the trail completely. It was impossible to pass through the dense forest; it was either move the tree and clear the axis or turn around, which was also a problem in the dense forest. And even if I managed to back up and find a place to turn around, I would have to make the whole drive back with my tail between my legs.

If you want respect, you have to work for it.

I pulled out the small axe again, and along with it, a small hand saw that I had in the vehicle. In those moments, I incredibly regretted that I wasn't equipped with a serious axe and a proper wood saw, or even an electric chainsaw; I noted in my head that I must buy these for the future.

I started working on the tree.

After nearly an hour of exhausting cutting, breaking branches, and sawing the main trunk, I decided to try using the power of the vehicle. I pulled out a tow strap, tied it securely to the trunk and the thick branch, and connected it to the front of the vehicle.

I backed up slowly, pulling with force, until the trunk and the thick branch finally snapped.

I repeated this several times: cutting, tying, and breaking until I eventually managed to drag the tree off the trail a bit to the side.

Finally, it was passable!

I felt immense fatigue throughout my whole body, likely a combination of the high elevation along with the physical effort and the long day I had already been through. Again, I thought what a shame it was that I didn't have a winch and a serious saw, which would have shortened this whole nightmare to a few minutes of work.

The sun was already starting to drop low on the horizon, and my aspiration was to reach the planned endpoint—Onion Valley—before it got completely dark.

I continued driving downhill toward Little Onion Dam. Admittedly, there were more places with fallen trees, but they were caught at an angle by other trees and didn't completely block the trail, so it was possible to pass underneath.

I felt that the truly hard part was already behind me; the incline leveled out and the trail became better and more comfortable.

But right near the small lake, I reached another obstacle, obstacle number 4.

A massive tree that had fallen here several years ago lay in the center of the road; it had been cut in the past, but a large portion of its trunk still remained protruding over half of the trail.

I was very worried about trying to pass over it with my vehicle. Passing with the front wheel isn't a problem, but because the vehicle isn't lifted, there was a real risk that I would simply high-center the vehicle's underbody on the trunk, leaving me hung up in the air without the ability to move forward or backward.

I got out of the jeep, stood in front of it, and thought about what to do. The passage was possible on paper, but too risky. I knew that nobody drives on this axis; since I left the previous lake, I hadn't seen a living soul, and I was, after all, the one who opened the trail and cleared the blockages.

This is really not a good place to get stuck alone, though the advantage of a tree is that you can always eventually cut it, but it was quite thick and that is a lot of work.

I decided to try to move it slightly to the side to clear a safe path for the wheels.

I took my tow strap, ran it behind another tree that stood stable nearby, attempting to use it as an anchor point and drag the laying trunk out of the trail.

This was the second time today that I regretted not having a winch; with it, this would have been easy.

I tied the strap to the back of the vehicle and tried to drag the giant trunk by backing up. The trunk was insanely heavy and didn't budge. I shifted into reverse and backed up with determination. Out of pure concentration on the trunk in front and because I didn't look properly in my side mirrors, I veered off the trail and backed straight into a standing tree behind me.

What a frustrating bummer.

I got down to look at the damage and saw that the plastic rear bumper was almost completely torn off its mounts. I knew at that moment that this mistake was going to cost me a pretty penny; never mind the money, but what about the pride?

I minimized the damage in the field: I saw that while there was visual damage, I managed to tie the bumper tightly and securely to the body of the vehicle so that it wouldn't interfere or drag on the ground during the rest of the drive.

The small consolation was that at least the pull worked, and the giant trunk had indeed moved slightly and cleared the trail, making it passable!

I continued driving and finally managed to reach Little Onion Dam!

The sun was already touching the skyline and was a moment away from a full sunset in the west. At least I knew that I had made it out of the problematic and dangerous area, and it seemed that the short road down to my campground next to the main Onion Valley Reservoir was open and safe.

In those moments, I felt that I could finally breathe a sigh of relief and let go of the high level of tension that I had been under for several consecutive hours in the backcountry.

I continued to drive with the necessary caution so as not to drop into some hole or hit a rock, but I knew I was already on much wider and better trails. I reached Onion Valley right in the final twilight of the day. I was happy to discover that two other groups of people were already camped at the campground; they had, of course, arrived there from the main and easy road, the road on which I plan to drive tomorrow.

The relief was immense.

The hard and challenging area was left behind me.

A wonderful quiet settled all around, a beautiful lake surrounded by towering mountain ranges and fresh, green aspen trees. What crazy serenity after a day like that.

I started getting organized for the night and made myself a light dinner.

The area was swarming with masses of mosquitoes because of the water, so I gave up on the experience of sitting and cooking outside and went inside the vehicle.

I began the routine of every evening: arranging the vehicle for sleeping in the back (moving gear to one half of the space and setting up the mattresses and sleeping bag), copying all the files from the camera and video footage for backup on two external HDs and the computer, and eating a light dinner of canned sardines, canned meat, and other dry items, this time without an omelet.

In total, this challenging off-road drive alone spanned 31 miles to the campground, and adding up this entire day, I logged 366 miles on the odometer.