MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE, Calif. – The rain started before I fell asleep and eight hours later it still hasn’t stopped. This is no big deal overnight; the sound of every drop of water falling on the polyester rainproof tent drowned out most of the surrounding noise and helped me fall asleep. Now that it’s morning, I have to leave my tent behind, jump in a Nissan Frontier Pro-4X and continue along Mojave Road.
Most of the Mojave Road is protected within the Mojave National Reserve, but this is not always the case. Before the California Desert Protection Act passed in October 1994, the same legislation that created both Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley, Mojave Road was vulnerable to destruction and development, along with That is the history of this area of the United States.
More than 30 years ago, in 1962, a young conservationist named Dennis Casebier began fieldwork on Mojave Road. In his words, “the road” was “the early and important east-west wagon road that ran through this country and preceded it with the ancient Indian Mojave trade route … not much has changed since the defunct wagon road in the early 1880s.” In the mid-1980s, he published several books on the historical importance of the road, launching a conservation effort that would last the rest of his life. One of these books is responsible for this trip.
In 1983, Casebier guided a group of Nissan employees, a photographer, and some journalists from familiar shops along a 130-mile road in a 1983 Nissan 720 pickup truck. Each truck is equipped with a CB radio that crackles with Casebier’s voiceover as they cross the trail, driving through history.
Forty years later, we were in the same spirit on this trip, although much has changed. The voice on the radio was not that of Casebier, who died in 2021 at the age of 86, but that of Sean Holman, director of the Mojave Desert Cultural and Heritage Association. And instead of two-door 720s, we’re sitting comfortably in the latest generation Frontier Pro-4X that debuted last year. More specifically, they were pre-production vehicles that the Nissan PR managed to save for a little longer before they inevitably met their demise.
Our trip began two hours south of Las Vegas, at the road’s easternmost point, Beale’s Crossing, along the banks of the Colorado River at about 500 feet. The wet winter in California’s history has swelled the usually slow-moving, narrow stretch of river into a stretch of ice more than 500 feet long. Coincidentally, one of the last times there was so much rain in this part of the country was 40 years ago, when the first group of journalists and Nissan trucks drove on a wet desert road.
After a while to take pictures, we turned the gearshift knob to 4 Hi, pulled over to the sidewalk and hit the sand, heading for our first stop: Fort Piute.
The first thing I noticed about Mojave Road was how empty it was. Sometimes the trail crosses a paved highway, but other than that, we barely see anyone. It was a perfect storm with imperfect weather and the fact that we made our cruise midweek. Only mountains and an army of Frontiers were destroyed. Even the box turtles and bighorn sheep for which the area is known have not been found.
You gain 2,000 vertical feet in the first 10 miles of the trail as you approach the Piute Mountains, which is nothing in the heated seats of a modern vehicle. But Casebier, before realizing the best way to see the road was in a four-wheeler, walked 133 miles in eight days, averaging 17 miles a day. “Twelve miles a day is enough,” he wrote. I’m no stranger to long hikes in the mountains, but at least the mountains of Colorado have trees and therefore shade. Seventeen miles a day in the sand in the hot sun sounds brutal.
As we climbed higher, the bushes quickly gave way to desert grass, prickly pears, chollas and yucca giving the nearby national park the name Joshua Tree. The road itself is up to this point largely unremarkable, as far as the terrain challenges. From time to time, you’ll hear the creak of the skid plate as we’re traveling at good speeds, but the compacted sand and rock we encountered were nothing for the Frontier to worry about. The 3.8-liter V6 faded after we left the pavement, and 310 horsepower and 281 pound-feet of torque were more than enough for the slow driving we were doing.
Our first campsite, if you can call one with running water, electricity, and (a bit weak) Wi-Fi was a campsite, sitting outside the steps of the MDHCA in Goffs, Calif. As we pulled into town, located along historic Route 66, the welcome sign said the local population was 23. After driving less than a mile to our campsite, I began to wonder. whether 23 is an overestimate.
After a tour of Goffs Schoolhouse, now the museum and headquarters of the MDHCA, we ate a sumptuous dinner and sat around the campfire until rain clouds threatened and I decided to pause the evening. I slipped into the tent, put on a few more layers of fabric, and looked at my watch. Not long after 9pm. I was trying to figure out how to use a comforter to sleep for the first time (preferably not in the dark) and when I closed my eyes the last thing I could hear was the sound of the rain hitting my tent before fall asleep.
I must have been out for a few minutes before regaining my sanity, thanks to the clear, high-pitched and extremely loud sound of an oncoming train warning anyone driving on 66th Street at this point in time. night that that was not what was going to happen. Slow down. “An average of 65 trains a day pass through Goffs,” we were told as we drove across the tracks. More than a few of them are at night.
Although there were a lot of trains, luckily I got a good night’s sleep, and after packing up the truck, we hit the road again, lining up one by one. In less than half an hour, we were back on the road.
The rays of the morning sun crept through the rain clouds, lighting up the Joshua Trees on either side of the trail as if by design. Sometimes we hit 25 mph, only to be slowed down by rocks and water washing away. As the middle truck in the convoy, we were alerted to any large rocks or water washout, either via the radio or the creaking of the front skids. Many times we found ourselves out of sight with the caravan ahead and the rest of the trucks behind, but Mojave Road wasn’t often divided so it was easy to catch up.
By mid-morning, the rain clouds had given way to increasingly brighter skies, but as we continued west with the New York Mountains to the north and the Providence Mountains ahead, the danger of rain again loomed. presently.
Casebier wrote of the ’83 caravan stop at Marl Springs: “Our timing was so short that we had to move quickly. In that respect not much has changed over the past 40 years. While our team of reporters were leisurely moving at half the speed of a normal group of off-roaders, we sped up dramatically as the threat of a torrential downpour loomed. Arab. That’s understandable, if a little disappointing. Right now we were driving on the soft sand near Willow Wash.
To our right was a breathtaking sight: a 10-foot-long wall of black volcanic rock sealing us off to one side, remnants of eruptions that took place thousands of years ago. Outside the wall rising to a height of nearly 6,000 feet is the dormant Cima Dome. At this point, I’m riding shotgun and admittedly have forgotten why we’re really here: to test the capabilities of Nissan’s newest midsize truck and learn about its history. road. Instead, my mind wandered to what this area must have been like thousands, even millions of years ago. In a large place that has been around for so long, it’s easy to feel insignificant, because that’s exactly what we’ve been.
As we thundered toward the river crossing and our final campsite of the Afton Canyon trip, the sky thundered again, flashes of lightning slicing across the sky for miles ahead. The rain was not far away, a downpour that blocked the Mojave’s way through the dry Soda Lake bed. For the first time that day, we switched to two-wheel drive, hopped onto the dry pavement, and headed toward Baker.
By the end of the day, the sky was clear, and I feared that the trip might be cut short due to the rain. As we drove down the sidewalk to Afton Canyon, I couldn’t hide my disappointment that we wouldn’t be able to cross the river. During the dry season, the 2-foot-deep river presents a modest challenge. After the cataclysm we’ve experienced over the past few days, not to mention the unusual weather in this area this year, who knows how deep the crossing will be.
After dropping off our gear at the respective campsites, some of us hopped on the vans to see what we were missing. After crossing the railroad bridge, we reached a stretch of river, a stagnant, flowless body of water more akin to Yoohoo than majestic Colorado where we began our trek. On the water, mosquitoes buzzed around, sheltered from the wind by tall grass on either side.
I looked down the street to see our guide Sean walking towards us. He paused for a moment at the riverbank before crossing, stirring the water as he walked. Safe on the other shore, he turned and came back the same way. The river has been crossed.
If you’re looking for a story about a truck that gets stuck or has trouble getting through obstacles, this isn’t it (If you’re looking for a Comprehensive review of the Nissan Frontier, which you can find here). We’ve only had a truck put into 4 Lo; a mid-morning sandy descent on day 2 that could only become more enjoyable if we turned around, climbed it, then drove down there again. Also, it was 4 Hi until we reached the sidewalk. That said, thanks to the weather, we didn’t make it all the way to Mojave Road, which should be on every border crossing’s to-do list.
Only one of the much worse 1983 trucks got stuck in the daytime and needed to be towed out, so it’s no surprise that the Frontier Pro-4X makes this trip easy. It doesn’t take much more than some off-road experience, an original 4×4 vehicle, tent, sleeping bag, some food and water to start landing. It’s important to get out of there. No cell phones, no e-mail and just the environment to focus on, allowing you time to reflect and reset. Or at least, have a lot of fun.
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