Expoordition 2011 Thread
- Thread starter cbradley
- Start date
nwoods
Expedition Leader
It's not secret... It's just unknown
Scott pieced together the route over the past year or two, but as I understand it, the first part has changed due to closures and gates and things, so we'll be doing a bit of pathfinding along the way. I am a planner to the core, and not knowing the route has NOT been easy on me. Sometime today Scott is giving Chris a GPS unit with GPX tracks already loaded up, but that is certainly not the same as knowing in your head where your going, and has prevented me from assembling hardcopies of maps and trail books that I normally have on hand. It's made planning extra difficult in that sense. To compensate, Chris purchased Topo! software for the whole state, so assuming his old borrowed laptop doesn't crap out, we hopefully have some way to navigate around unforeseen obstacles.
There is a rough map of the Traverse posted by Scott in the Adventure Moto section, where he recently asked for participants for a group of motorcycle riders to run the Traverse. I don't have the link handy. I think our truck based trip is going to happen first.
Initally, we were hoping to schedule some meeting points to hook up with folks along the way, such as in Prescott at OJ's headquarters, but without good route info, that has been impossible, we don't know how far we'll get each day, where we are camping, or when we'll be at a given point, or even where that given point will be
All I know is that we leave SoCal the morning of the 13th, heading for the border just southeast of Yuma, starting our adventure at the fence line, then heading towards the South Rim of the Geand Canyon somewhat west of Williams. It should take between 6 and 8 days. Then we haul butt over to Holister Hills in NorCal for the OEX event on Friday and/or Saturday the 22nd, editing photos along the way in a hope to have a slideshow put together to present at the Expo.
loren85022
Explorer
Keeping the route known by few up til' now makes sense. Hopefully afterwards, the rest of us can get some clues. Happy trails!
cbradley
Adventurer
As Nathan said, it's not classified, it's just not ready for primetime. Part of the trip will be route confirmation.
cbradley
Adventurer
Thanks again for all your help. We'll get on working on the tie downs when I get back.
nwoods
Expedition Leader
Update: Yuma AZ
Had fun this morning prep'ing for the trip. Both Chris and I work at the same firm, and we both have projects pretty far from the office, so neither of us has been home to pack since this weekend, which instead of packing, we ended up spending every minute of it getting his rig ready for the trek. We couldn't prep earlier due to conflicting schedules and a lot of unknowns (route, gear, funds, etc...). So we didn't start packing and sorting out gear until this morning. It's a bit challenging to coordinate a 10 day trip in a two hour window. As Wyatt Earp famously said while explaining his pistol dueling technique, "Take your time, in a hurry!" I am sitting here wondering what all we forgot in our rush.... I'm sure we'll soon find out!
Made it to Yuma at 3:30 to check in at the MACS air station to get a Range permit to proceed down to the border (its an active bombing range apparently). So we pulled into the main gate to learn that the permit desk closes at 1500 (3pm)..... There is no plan B. We were supposed to camp near the border and start the adventure from there. iPhones to the rescue! After a quick search, we discovered that BLM has a station nearby.
So we hustled over to the local BLM office and they recommended some open land near the Mittry Lake Wildlife Area near Laguna Dam. Currently topping off the tank here at Starbucks and updating our family on the scenario. Realized we pushed the wrong button combo on the SPOT so it was not tracking our trek from SoCal. I think we have that sorted out now, so our SPOT tracking page should start updating automatically every 10 minutes or so once we leave here. Link: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0qr9B83Ic8KzADd6WMgWq8Vj4nWR6FC9n
Off to the Wildlife preserve for tonight's camping spot.
I think the plan now is to return to the Air Station at 9am when the permit desk opens back up and then head down to the border rally style (haulling butt!) Scott says it takes about 3 hours to get there from the main gate. This means we'll hit the border and have lunch, then return and head north of the Proving Grounds towards Castle Dome Mining Museum for our second night. Our original goals were closer to Quartzite, but not getting the permit today was a major set back to our schedule.
Depending on cell coverage, we'll probably update from Yuma again tomorrow afternoon, and then again from Quartzite on Saturday morning.
Stay tuned!
Had fun this morning prep'ing for the trip. Both Chris and I work at the same firm, and we both have projects pretty far from the office, so neither of us has been home to pack since this weekend, which instead of packing, we ended up spending every minute of it getting his rig ready for the trek. We couldn't prep earlier due to conflicting schedules and a lot of unknowns (route, gear, funds, etc...). So we didn't start packing and sorting out gear until this morning. It's a bit challenging to coordinate a 10 day trip in a two hour window. As Wyatt Earp famously said while explaining his pistol dueling technique, "Take your time, in a hurry!" I am sitting here wondering what all we forgot in our rush.... I'm sure we'll soon find out!
Made it to Yuma at 3:30 to check in at the MACS air station to get a Range permit to proceed down to the border (its an active bombing range apparently). So we pulled into the main gate to learn that the permit desk closes at 1500 (3pm)..... There is no plan B. We were supposed to camp near the border and start the adventure from there. iPhones to the rescue! After a quick search, we discovered that BLM has a station nearby.
So we hustled over to the local BLM office and they recommended some open land near the Mittry Lake Wildlife Area near Laguna Dam. Currently topping off the tank here at Starbucks and updating our family on the scenario. Realized we pushed the wrong button combo on the SPOT so it was not tracking our trek from SoCal. I think we have that sorted out now, so our SPOT tracking page should start updating automatically every 10 minutes or so once we leave here. Link: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0qr9B83Ic8KzADd6WMgWq8Vj4nWR6FC9n
Off to the Wildlife preserve for tonight's camping spot.
I think the plan now is to return to the Air Station at 9am when the permit desk opens back up and then head down to the border rally style (haulling butt!) Scott says it takes about 3 hours to get there from the main gate. This means we'll hit the border and have lunch, then return and head north of the Proving Grounds towards Castle Dome Mining Museum for our second night. Our original goals were closer to Quartzite, but not getting the permit today was a major set back to our schedule.
Depending on cell coverage, we'll probably update from Yuma again tomorrow afternoon, and then again from Quartzite on Saturday morning.
Stay tuned!
cbradley
Adventurer
Day 1 - California to Yuma
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go askew, and leave us nothing but grief and pain, for promised joy." - Robert Burns
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I've had a photo in mind from the moment I learned we would be starting our great adventure from the border fence. I had pictured a twilight shot of the fence running from the right hand side of the frame, close enough to see the texture of the materials in full focus, with the seeming infinite run of the fence trailing off toward the left hand side of the frame. Our footsteps to that point would be visible trailing off into the distance. I have wordsmithed the lines that would go with this image-- the image that would be the opening frame of the Expoordition story-- over and over again. Twenty four minutes, one misunderstanding and one failure to coordinate our schedule meant my twilight is being spent in a Starbucks rather than making that image. A painful lesson indeed, but a lesson. Perhaps that opening shot will have to be a black frame.
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"Life is a succession of lessons that must be lived to be understood." - Helen Keller
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Images from Expoordition 2011 Day 1
Starry Night
.
Enjoying the Night
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go askew, and leave us nothing but grief and pain, for promised joy." - Robert Burns
.
I've had a photo in mind from the moment I learned we would be starting our great adventure from the border fence. I had pictured a twilight shot of the fence running from the right hand side of the frame, close enough to see the texture of the materials in full focus, with the seeming infinite run of the fence trailing off toward the left hand side of the frame. Our footsteps to that point would be visible trailing off into the distance. I have wordsmithed the lines that would go with this image-- the image that would be the opening frame of the Expoordition story-- over and over again. Twenty four minutes, one misunderstanding and one failure to coordinate our schedule meant my twilight is being spent in a Starbucks rather than making that image. A painful lesson indeed, but a lesson. Perhaps that opening shot will have to be a black frame.
.
"Life is a succession of lessons that must be lived to be understood." - Helen Keller
.
.
Images from Expoordition 2011 Day 1
Starry Night
.
Enjoying the Night
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nwoods
Expedition Leader
Photos uploaded here: http://nwoods.smugmug.com/Other/Misc/expoordition/
Running into some challenges. Laptop we are using is a notebook with a very small screen, and the programs I am using don't scale down well. The dialog boxes are larger than the screen, so I can't click buttons like "Save" or "Export". And apparently Windows Movie Maker can't use the music in my iTunes library. Darn!!!!
Here is a quick timelapse of our packing the truck this morning. This is a good video to show, because hopefully from it you will see how little we know about taking photos and videos, and how far we'll go by journey's end. I hope!
http://nwoods.smugmug.com/Other/Misc/expoordition/19522458_gLPGvH#1528754318_HNrpwNs-A-LB
Running into some challenges. Laptop we are using is a notebook with a very small screen, and the programs I am using don't scale down well. The dialog boxes are larger than the screen, so I can't click buttons like "Save" or "Export". And apparently Windows Movie Maker can't use the music in my iTunes library. Darn!!!!
Here is a quick timelapse of our packing the truck this morning. This is a good video to show, because hopefully from it you will see how little we know about taking photos and videos, and how far we'll go by journey's end. I hope!
http://nwoods.smugmug.com/Other/Misc/expoordition/19522458_gLPGvH#1528754318_HNrpwNs-A-LB
Scott Brady
Founder
Good stuff guys, keep the updates coming!
nwoods
Expedition Leader
Stay tuned! We both just got done processing a bunch of photos and Chris wrote up a great report. He will be uploading momentarily.
cbradley
Adventurer
Day 2 - Yuma to Mexican Border to Yuma
The blood and sweat had long since seeped into the sand by the time we got there. Sand and dust completely covered the hastily dug graves that had swallowed their occupants -- four hundred of them by the latest count. Now they have disappeared. I wondered if I might be standing on one such grave as I peered into the Tinajas Altas tanks.
The tanks were bone dry, just as so many travelers traversing this stretch of the Yuma Desert, the so-called “Camino del Diablo,” must have found them. My tongue was dry and stuck to the top of my mouth, peeling away from it like thousands of tiny suction cups being freed. I could feel the desert grime baked into my face and neck. The cholla needles I was unable to extract from my shoe dug into my foot, forcing me to shift my weight to the other. I wondered what it would feel like to be one of those whose last sight was the dry tanks nature had built, but had not seen fit to fill with water. Would it have been thoughts of such small detail of the moment or would it be delusions induced by the madness of dehydration and exhaustion?
I won’t know. I had not come by foot through the blistering heat of summer in hopes of striking gold in California. I was not attempting to start a new life in a land of promise to the north. I had come as a tourist. I had come by air-conditioned four wheel drive. I had nearly ten gallons of water no more than fifty yards away. I had come easy and I would return easy. I would never know what these people felt. I treaded carefully back to my vehicle hoping I would not step on any of the unmarked graves.
The day did not begin with thoughts of death. It started with an eternal wait at the rangemaster counter hoping to get permits to cross the Marine Corps range down to the border. While we waited for her, the person at the counter discussed her options for home air conditioning replacement with a repair person on the other end of the phone. Should she just replace the twenty year old broken part? Should she replace the whole system? What would her husband say? She would need to ask him. She just needed to call him really quickly before calling the repair person back. We waited. We waited some more. If only she could decide. I considered weighing in on the debate. I knew it would only prolong my agony. Great palms sprouted from the earth and bore shade. Infants became grandparents. Great empires rose and fell. Finally, she found her way to us. A line had formed and a treatise on work time personal phone calls had been written. Perhaps the day had started with thoughts of death after all.
Since we would be traversing a bombing range to get to our southerly objective, the border, we got to sign our lives away in the permit process. I’m quite sure that I in fact, signed my life away several times over. One such line I initialed in extreme trepidation had the ominous line, “permanent, painful, disabling, and disfiguring injury and death…” I’d say they had their bases covered by that one. Fortunately, there were fourteen more lines of this sort to cover any alternate possibilities the lawyers may have missed with the first line.
With permits in hand, my intrepid navigator and I headed to the entrance of the range, resolving not to become a crater in the landscape. We sped off south hoping to make up time lost at the rangemaster counter spent listening to the inanities of air conditioning coolant considerations. Within minutes we found ourselves precisely in one of those places where visitors become ordinance chum. “What was that sign back there again?” As fast as we got there, we left much, much faster, resolving to pay a little more attention to the signs.
Failing to get blown up, we headed south, where we met the bête noir of our excursion, the cholla catus. The bombs and eternal phone calls seemed like joys in contrast to the evil that faced us. The little devils were everywhere, assaulting us constantly. They would lie in the road, looking like rocks in the bright sunlight. Just as you convince yourself there are nothing but rocks in the road, their little needles and just a hint of green would come into focus. Sometimes we could swerve out of the way and other times there was simply no hope. We would be picking those infernal needles out of our tires with a set of pliers. Perhaps this is the true origin of the moniker “needle nosed” pliers. What I wanted to know was who named these “teddy bear cholla” Teddy bear, seriously? Cholla del diablo is more like it.
After four or five of these needle extraction breaks, we finally arrived at the border. It’s difficult to describe what it was like there. From one perspective, it is nothing more than a tall, rusty fence marking an arbitrary line in the middle of the desert. There is something almost silly about it sitting in the middle of what could only be described as wasteland. In that moment, it was hard to imagine any other soul ever seeing it, as though a monument had been built for nothing in particular. There were no signs of life for as far as the eye could see.
Simultaneously, there were thoughts that this fence was so much more. You could almost feel that here were two countries pushing against each other. One could almost imagine the fence heaving back and forth as a struggle ensued. I wondered if the Great Wall or Hadrian’s masterpiece had elicited these same sensations to their contemporary visitors. I let those contemplations fade and listened to the sound of my footsteps as I walked freely north, back to the vehicle. From here our trip would truly begin, from one great man made barrier to an even greater barrier carved by nature some six hundred miles from us. Let it begin.
.
Images from Day 2
Herein lies "permanent, painful, disabling, and disfiguring injury and death?"
.
Swiss Cheese, Barry Goldwater Style
.
How Did They Do that?
.
A Thorny Issue
.
Bete Noir
.
Glimpse of Sunlight
.
Hadrian's Wall
.
Pourous Border
.
Alone
.
End of the Line
.
Up Ahead
.
Omen
.
Up from Dry Tanks
.
Water
The blood and sweat had long since seeped into the sand by the time we got there. Sand and dust completely covered the hastily dug graves that had swallowed their occupants -- four hundred of them by the latest count. Now they have disappeared. I wondered if I might be standing on one such grave as I peered into the Tinajas Altas tanks.
The tanks were bone dry, just as so many travelers traversing this stretch of the Yuma Desert, the so-called “Camino del Diablo,” must have found them. My tongue was dry and stuck to the top of my mouth, peeling away from it like thousands of tiny suction cups being freed. I could feel the desert grime baked into my face and neck. The cholla needles I was unable to extract from my shoe dug into my foot, forcing me to shift my weight to the other. I wondered what it would feel like to be one of those whose last sight was the dry tanks nature had built, but had not seen fit to fill with water. Would it have been thoughts of such small detail of the moment or would it be delusions induced by the madness of dehydration and exhaustion?
I won’t know. I had not come by foot through the blistering heat of summer in hopes of striking gold in California. I was not attempting to start a new life in a land of promise to the north. I had come as a tourist. I had come by air-conditioned four wheel drive. I had nearly ten gallons of water no more than fifty yards away. I had come easy and I would return easy. I would never know what these people felt. I treaded carefully back to my vehicle hoping I would not step on any of the unmarked graves.
The day did not begin with thoughts of death. It started with an eternal wait at the rangemaster counter hoping to get permits to cross the Marine Corps range down to the border. While we waited for her, the person at the counter discussed her options for home air conditioning replacement with a repair person on the other end of the phone. Should she just replace the twenty year old broken part? Should she replace the whole system? What would her husband say? She would need to ask him. She just needed to call him really quickly before calling the repair person back. We waited. We waited some more. If only she could decide. I considered weighing in on the debate. I knew it would only prolong my agony. Great palms sprouted from the earth and bore shade. Infants became grandparents. Great empires rose and fell. Finally, she found her way to us. A line had formed and a treatise on work time personal phone calls had been written. Perhaps the day had started with thoughts of death after all.
Since we would be traversing a bombing range to get to our southerly objective, the border, we got to sign our lives away in the permit process. I’m quite sure that I in fact, signed my life away several times over. One such line I initialed in extreme trepidation had the ominous line, “permanent, painful, disabling, and disfiguring injury and death…” I’d say they had their bases covered by that one. Fortunately, there were fourteen more lines of this sort to cover any alternate possibilities the lawyers may have missed with the first line.
With permits in hand, my intrepid navigator and I headed to the entrance of the range, resolving not to become a crater in the landscape. We sped off south hoping to make up time lost at the rangemaster counter spent listening to the inanities of air conditioning coolant considerations. Within minutes we found ourselves precisely in one of those places where visitors become ordinance chum. “What was that sign back there again?” As fast as we got there, we left much, much faster, resolving to pay a little more attention to the signs.
Failing to get blown up, we headed south, where we met the bête noir of our excursion, the cholla catus. The bombs and eternal phone calls seemed like joys in contrast to the evil that faced us. The little devils were everywhere, assaulting us constantly. They would lie in the road, looking like rocks in the bright sunlight. Just as you convince yourself there are nothing but rocks in the road, their little needles and just a hint of green would come into focus. Sometimes we could swerve out of the way and other times there was simply no hope. We would be picking those infernal needles out of our tires with a set of pliers. Perhaps this is the true origin of the moniker “needle nosed” pliers. What I wanted to know was who named these “teddy bear cholla” Teddy bear, seriously? Cholla del diablo is more like it.
After four or five of these needle extraction breaks, we finally arrived at the border. It’s difficult to describe what it was like there. From one perspective, it is nothing more than a tall, rusty fence marking an arbitrary line in the middle of the desert. There is something almost silly about it sitting in the middle of what could only be described as wasteland. In that moment, it was hard to imagine any other soul ever seeing it, as though a monument had been built for nothing in particular. There were no signs of life for as far as the eye could see.
Simultaneously, there were thoughts that this fence was so much more. You could almost feel that here were two countries pushing against each other. One could almost imagine the fence heaving back and forth as a struggle ensued. I wondered if the Great Wall or Hadrian’s masterpiece had elicited these same sensations to their contemporary visitors. I let those contemplations fade and listened to the sound of my footsteps as I walked freely north, back to the vehicle. From here our trip would truly begin, from one great man made barrier to an even greater barrier carved by nature some six hundred miles from us. Let it begin.
.
Images from Day 2
Herein lies "permanent, painful, disabling, and disfiguring injury and death?"
.
Swiss Cheese, Barry Goldwater Style
.
How Did They Do that?
.
A Thorny Issue
.
Bete Noir
.
Glimpse of Sunlight
.
Hadrian's Wall
.
Pourous Border
.
Alone
.
End of the Line
.
Up Ahead
.
Omen
.
Up from Dry Tanks
.
Water
Last edited: