Coyote Crossing

Off-roaders vandalize Pacific Crest Trail

The Pacific Crest Trail — restricted throughout its length to hikers and equestrians, with many sections hikers-only — has been repeatedly vandalized in recent years by Kern County off-roaders.

A Kern County local has posted some video of the

“Dumb-ass-teroids”

Our pal Bev over at Magickcanoe describes a heretofore undiscussed hazard of … (continues)

Protect Gold Butte

Most of you have never heard of it, but northeast of Las Vegas, in one of the least-visited parts of the continental United States, a desert treasure in Nevada needs your support.

I visited Gold Butte for the first time in 1997. I was just

CBD takes on the “1,000-miles of ecocide” ORV race

Via Rob Mrowka at the Center for Biological Diversity, a reminder about the insanely destructive “[Killing] the Best In The Desert” race, and a way you can do something to stop it. Deadline for these letters is Friday, but it will only take a half

1,000-mile OHV atrocity in Nevada: more info

Basin and Range Watch has the authoritative description of just how destructive the so-called “Best in the Desert Vegas to Reno Off-Highway Race.”

Talk about your insult to injury, with that title. These yahoos wouldn’t know the best of the desert

A thousand-mile swath of destruction?

The ORV boosters are pushing an event that could be more destructive than the infamous Barstow to Vegas Race, banned a dozen years ago.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Tonopah Field Office, will conduct an environmental review and hold two

Keep ORVs out of NV wilderness areas

Yes, this is Nevada. Castle Lakes in the Ruby Mountains Wilderness.

From our friends at the Center for Biological Diversity. The link on “please submit your comments” goes to one of those automated letter-sending sites. It’ll take less than two

Thrillcraft: The threat of motorized recreation

Via Terry Weiner of the Desert Protective Council, this short documentary by George Wuerthner on the threat to our public lands of dirtbikes, off-trail 4X4s, jetskis, quads, dune buggies, and other expensive playthings of the lazy elite. The

Coyote Crossing’s floors are getting knuckle-scuffed

Coyote Crossing has been discovered by a couple of off-roader sites, and I’ve had to throw comments into moderation to keep the worst and most badly misspelled comments from sullying our comment threads. I’ve been approving the ones that are merely

In Hagen Canyon

It makes no sound. If it did the wind would mask it, keening through the sere canyon. Look the wrong way and your mouth fills with dust, with flecks of gravel. It is constant, the wind, and it raises whistles across the crenellated canyon walls.

No. Just… No.

Via Larry Hogue and DesertBlog:

California’s Red Rock Canyon State Park, a resource-rich and stunningly beautiful park in the El Paso Mountains of the Mojave Desert, is now threatened with becoming yet another ORV-ruined landscape. These desert

Surprise Canyon

There’s snow on Telescope Peak right now. We saw it from the spot we hiked to in Red Rock Canyon State Park this afternoon, my first visit in years. (The Raven and I sat for a time where Zeke and I sat one night long ago.) And then a few hours

Review: Trespass, Amy Irvine

It’s not surprising that Amy Irvine’s erstwhile neighbors in Utah’s San Juan County have supplied some of the harshest online reviews of her book Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land, released earlier this year.  They don’t all come

Letters from the desert: DIY Rapture

The bumper sticker on the Hummer in front of me at the traffic light got me thinking. It read:

“Don’t let the car fool you. My treasure is in heaven.”

I was stuck in traffic in Las Vegas, which heightened the effect a bit. I’d been hiking in the

Letters from the desert: From the current High Country News

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