Myself and my Long Travel 4x4 Ranger, Jon driving our Project RangeRunner LT 4x4 Ranger, and Brian driving his LT Tacoma set off to run the Mojave Road trail this past weekend (12/13-14/08). Our plan was to start the trail early Saturday morning, arrive in Laughlin Nevada that afternoon, then return on the trail Sunday morning.
It was a freezing cold and super windy morning in Barstow California where we unloaded the trucks and started the trail. We hit Afton Canyon at 9am, this officially started the trail for us. Things were going smooth until about half way through the trail a rogue rock decided to kill two tires. Jon and Brian both hit the same rock with the same result, a flat right front. After a brief break to fix the flats we continued down the trail when a couple hours later another rock struck, taking out Jon's driver front tire. Somewhere during this same section of trail the crossbar on Brian's front shock hoop decided it didn't want to play nice anymore and broke free causing it to hit the intake manifold and cause an annoying rattle, to say the least. After regaining the trail from being lost for about an hour we finally finished up in Laughlin at around 5pm.
It took us about 8 hours to complete the trail from end to end with stopping to fix three flat tires, inspect several rattles and knocks, lunch, and sight seeing. Not a bad first day.
Day 2 - Sunday
We hit the trail for the return trip home at 1pm after scouring the town for new tires and a welder. All we came home with was a hate for the rude people of Bullhead City Arizona, we didn't find a single friendly person in that town. So with Brian still broken and down to two smaller mismatched spare tires we hit the trail to return home.
This time we finished the trail in 5 hours, about 6pm, with no flats, no breaks, and not very many stops. We are sure if all the trucks were 100% we could have made it faster.
That was that, an end to an amazing weekend in the desert. Hope you all enjoy the photos!