Adventuring In The California Desert

The latest Sierra Club Adventure Travel Guide is the most comprehensive guide available to the scenic desert regions of California. Includes area maps, access and information on climate and gear. 10 black-and-white photographs. 11 line drawings. 10 maps.

Presents 65 desert trips from Bishop to the Mexican border, including expanded coverage of popular destinations such as Death Valley National Park, Mojave National Preserve, and Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. This book makes high-walled canyons, lonely ghost towns, and soaring peaks from Mexico to the Great Basin easily accessible to recreational drivers. Tony Huegel's glove-box-sized Byways have been leading drivers to the hidden surprises found along unpaved backroads for more than 10 years. These books are for recreational drivers who want to use their four-wheel-drive or sport-utility vehicle beyond the pavement to explore, but who might not want to do hard-core or lengthy off-road driving. They are also for adventurers who use these trips as jumping-off points for muscle-powered exploration, such as hiking and mountain biking.

The latest Sierra Club Adventure Travel Guide is the most comprehensive guide available to the scenic desert regions of California. Includes area maps, access and information on climate and gear. 10 black-and-white photographs. 11 line drawings. 10 maps.

One might not expect to find much in the middle of California's hot, dry deserts. But to the curious explorer, they're scattered with strange and extraordinary sights. On old Route 66, the desert traveler can find quirky roadside art and mementos left by motorists. In the El Paso Mountains of the Mojave, the daring adventurer can crawl through a tunnel that was hand dug by an old prospector named Burro Schmidt. In Landers, the weary wanderer can enjoy a rejuvenating "sound bath" in an acoustically perfect dome supposedly designed by aliens. From astounding natural wonders to remnants of ancient civilizations and the Wild West, discover treasures of history, puzzling mystery and uncommon eccentricity alongside seasoned road trippers Alan and Claudia Heller.

Backpacking California is a collection of more than 70 of the most intriguing backpacking adventures in Wilderness Press's home territory of California. With contributions from more than a dozen Wilderness Press authors, the book describes routes ranging from one night to one week. Backpacking novices as well as "old hand" California hikers will find expert-crafted trips in the Coast Ranges, the Sierra, the Cascades, and the Warner Mountains. Expanded coverage includes trips in Big Sur, Anza-Borrego, Death Valley, and the White Mountains. Several trips have been described in print nowhere else. Each trip includes a trail map and essential logistical information for trip planning.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... II How We Found Mojave WHEN the automobile was delivered into our hands at Los Angeles we wanted to turn around immediately and drive back through the Cajon Pass into the Mojave Desert, but our inquiries about directions met with discouragement on every side. It seemed to be unheard of for two women to attempt such a thing; the distances between the towns where we could get accommodations were too great and the roads were apt to have long stretches of sand where we would get stuck. Our friends drew a dismal picture of us sitting out in the sagebrush beside a disabled car and slowly starving to death. "You could not fix it," they said, "and what would you do?" We suggested that we might wait until somebody came along. They assured us that nobody ever came along. We went to the Automobile Club; they received us with enthusiasm and told us about all the places California is proud of and how to get to them, but California seems not to be proud of the desert, for when we mentioned it our advisers became gloomy. They seemed to have no very definite information and were sure we would not like it. In the face of so much discouragement we hardly dared to ask about Death Valley and when we did, hesitatingly, the question was ignored. We simply could not get there, nobody ever went. The Imperial Valley seemed to be almost as bad. One of the maps they gave us showed a main highway from San Diego over into it, but they said that it was only a gravel road, mountainous and steep, and that we had better stick to the main routes. Evidently they had no faith in our skill as drivers, nor belief in our purpose, so we soon gathered up the maps and innumerable folders about resort hotels, thanked them, and went our way. The collection contained no map of the...