One part trip recap. Equal part trail guide. Read below for all our Mammoth Wheeling adventures!
We really got super lucky with the weather and timing of the trip! This particular trip was planned a month out, and it was primarily intended for the celebration of Mrs. Wheeled’s late December birthday. We rented a one bedroom VRBO condo and reserved tickets for snowboarding at Mammoth Mountain. When we weren’t snowboarding, we planned on watching movies by a warm fire, grabbing coffee from a local shop, or walking around the Hallmark movie like village.
Also in preparation, we expected possible mountain pass closures and freezing temperatures, with black ice or wet slippery snow. We went with the decision to take our Jeep, as it has great gripping all terrain tires and we figured it would fair way better than driving our other two choices: A Volkswagen Jetta or a Chevy Suburban that needs new tires desperately!
We purchased tire chains just in case. And stocked up for a long drive in a soft top Jeep. We were pleasantly surprised the heater was able to keep us warm as we traveled along the base of the Eastern Sierras. Although, not a comfort long distance vehicle, our old 2009 Jeep Wrangler JKU did great as we drove long into the night. At one point, just before we arrived to Mammoth Lakes Village, the temperature on our Jeep gauge read 10 degrees! That’s a cold night! I don’t think the temperature got above 23 degrees the next day, and the elevation is right at 8,000-9,000 feet. I (Mr. Wheeled) don’t fair well in high altitude and generally struggle with altitude sickness, so I always kept a water bottle handy to continue to hydrate.
We left Poway, CA around 5 pm Thursday evening. And it took approximately 7 hours in total. Prior to our travel and arrival, the city of Mammoth, got 8-9 inches of snow, which I mentioned before, took our trip to a whole next level.
Snowboarding on Friday was great. We didn’t last long as we spent most of the time falling down then struggling to get back up, but overall a great experience which we hope to do more of. It was Mrs. Wheeled’s first time ever on a snowboard and if we had stayed longer, she would have been an expert in no time.
One mistake, was that we didn’t bring any food to the slopes, so that and the exertion didn’t allow us to stay as long as we would have liked. Lessons all learned, as next time we will be prepared! We made our way back into town got a coffee, had some food, re-energized, and set off to explore some of the back country mountain roads.
We love the snow. Especially not having to live in it all winter. However, we quickly realized that we love off-roading in it too!
What we didn’t realize, was that there are so many Forest Service Roads available to hiking, offroading, and dispersed camping (overlanding). With the recent 8-9 inches of fresh powder. It made the trails spectacular and yet still drive-able. At the time of this writing, the Mammoth area was expecting another storm set to dump several feet of snow, which, as I can image, will bury these roads and close down the trails. But for the window of time we had available, it was perfection!
Inyo & Mono County OHV Off-Roading
Details: Just North of Mammoth Lakes Village, CA Coordinates: 37.681872, -118.953075
Near US-395 and CA-203
Outside the Mammoth Lakes Village there are numerous offroad OHV and Hiking exploration trails! Inyo & Mono county offroad trails are mostly managed by the US Forest Service. We found the snow covered trails well marked with wood pylons as well as tree arrows. There are a few campgrounds in the area. You can locate and reserve spaces at recreation.gov.
For day use only, we found that you do not need a pass or permit, however, if you are camping overnight or overlanding in their dispersed camping areas, a WILDERNESS permit is required. Click here to check availability for a Wilderness permit. During the busy season (May 1-Nov. 1) these permits are limited to a quota. So grab your permit early! During the off season there is no quota (Nov. 2-April 30). During these winter months, you can check the weather and website because often these trails become impassible.
There is a great interactive and mobile friendly map available at essrp.org/camping/
This USDA Forest Service map is also incredibly helpful. The map displays the US Forest Service land and usage requirements. Check out all the maps on that page. However, here is the link to the specific offroad OHV trail map for the Mammoth Lakes area.
As you can see, there are miles of off-road trails to explore!
We can’t wait to go back to that area to adventure more. We probably hit 1/100th of the trails during our stay, and look forward to visiting during the summer or fall for further exploration.
Some areas of interest that we want to check out in the future include the Inyo Crators, Hot Creek Geological site, and the Devils Postpile National Monument.