Mike's Garage
 

New Year in Mammoth, Dec. 26, 2006 to Jan. 1, 2007

We left on the 26th to head up to Mammoth for a week of boarding, snow mobiling, and a bit of good old fashioned relaxation.  It was just starting to snow as we pulled in on the first night.  We got about 6" of snow down in town overnight; the mountains got 12"-18".

We went out driving the third day and we found a "Pavement Ends Ahead" sign.  We followed the small road until it became basically what would be a dirt road in the summer.

I drove as far as I could in 4-hi with the center diff. locked.  Since there wasn't anyone else with us I wanted to save 4-lo to get us out once we couldn't get any further (I only had to break out the shovel one time, heh heh).  We drove down this road for a ways until we couldn't move forward anymore, a few hundred feet past the right edge of this picture.

Driving through 18" drifts fills in the wheels.

 

 

All of these trails had only been driven by snow mobiles before we got there.  We got to leave the first wheeled vehicle tracks.

On the 31st we went out again on an entirely different network of dirt roads.  These were a little more heavily traveled, as they led to various camp grounds, lakes, etc. and were all signed by the Forest Service.  The only pict I grabbed that day was on one trail that was signed "High Clearance Vehicles Only".  It had several snow-filled ruts and small rocks.  It ran 4.5 miles back to a lake whose name I forgot, but the ride was a bit too bumpy for some of my passengers so I didn't get to drive it all the way back.