I finally had a chance to explore some territory that I've been eyeing for years. Piute Peak, Walker Basin, and the hills North of Tehachapi Pass. I started in Jawbone Canyon OHV, as I've done numerous times before. This is in the Mojave Desert, so I avoid it in the summer but every prior attempt had been thwarted by snow, so the window of opportunity to visit is narrow.
I drove past where I got stuck in snow last January, and came to find out that road was a dead end anyway. Multiple maps show it crossing a small ravine, but no dice.
So I backtracked about 5 miles to get back to the main Forest Service road to the summit of Piute Peak, where we had some weather.
We tried to hike to the summit, but the wind was absolutely howling and the temp dropped fast. Waves of fog blew past the ridge, the thicker ones accompanied by rain and sleet.
Ferocious wind. It felt like having your head out the window on the freeway, probably 60-80mph gusts.
We left, hoping to find another hiking area further down the mountain, but the West side of the pass was very steep and even finding a pullout was rare.
There were huge, exposed drop offs along the way. A couple thousand feet in places.
Finally rejoined the pavement at the summit of Bodfish-Havila Road and turned South. I'd been up Breckenridge Mountain a few years back, but never ventured south of there so again I was in new territory.
At this point I would've loved to trade the truck for my Civic SI, that's one twisty ribbon of asphalt. It took us through Walker Basin, a picturesque agricultural valley that's pretty remote by California standards. Then another steep canyon drop to exit the range to the south. This is the southern terminus of the Sierra Nevada range and the highway marks the divide between the Sierras and the Tehachapis.
We got down to the freeway and headed back to the desert for the return trip. By this point the storm had a chance to consolidate and it rained much of the way home.