Its been 8 years since drove them. I have a friend in LA that want me to take him out there next weekend (JK 4" lift 35's open-open, hi lift, rails, winch, bumpers but its all stock underneath-no armor). Obviously not going to run the gate keeper. I ran Odessa & Doran easily in my XJ on 31's (again no gate keeper) though I was spooled in the rear. We plan on making a day of it and covering as much area as possible on Saturday. Any reason the rig described above couldnt handle it with good spotting an little stacking if needed?
1) Are any of those trails closed?
2) I saw Sequoia's post that Odessa has gotten a lot harder. Any details?
Assuming you go the traditional way (up the right side) key points are:
- entering the narrow box canyon sets the tone for the day
- a series of rocker high bolders to work throug
- first test is a hood high fall you'll wish you had lockers for but it should be do able depending on the stacking
- the squeeze climb ironically with remanants of asphalt - watch your driver side on the canyon wall.
- keep your eye out on the left for a side ramp that leads up to a cool mine spot
- red rock ramp up has a narrow wash out (scary for the drive perspective)
- continue up and left to big mine spot and/or explore the hills
Coming down other side:
- rocky, rocker high jaggedy stuff with a few drop offs
- one get out and watch 4' - 5' drop with an odd wedgy rock on the right. It can be scetchy depending on the stack.
- more jaggedy rocky stuff
- you'll reach some smooth off camber stuff toward the end. It's a little more difficult than it looks.
- keep right to avoid going down gate keeper.
- drop down to your left, you'll see the ghost town on your right
- drop in and u turn left to see gate keeper or head out
It's a great day run spot. Nice challenge with low stress.
You can run the loop in a couple hours, or spend all day exploring.
It's our go to day run, too bad it's been a long time.
I've had lead YJ open on 31's, and a stock JKR up no real problems.
I did a night run up Doran last Saturday night by myself. It was really torn up from the recent storms. I've run it a few times over the years and have never seen it this bad. I'm locked on 35's and had to back up a couple of times to get a better line at obstacles.
Have fun!
I sure appreciate updates and tips. I think we will do the Phillips loop first, staying out of Odessa canyon until I have a good idea of his ability to listen to a spotter and his brake, throttle control. If all is well then we will move on to either Doran (bypass gatekeeper first) or loop back up on Phillips and go up Odessa.
I expect we will be there around 0830-0900 if anyone wants to come along.
Well we are not going to have any sort of problems like that. Greg (my friend) will have a great spotters who was taught to spot on that very trail by one of SoCal's finest, you.
Well we are not going to have any sort of problems like that. Greg (my friend) will have a great spotters who was taught to spot on that very trail by one of SoCal's finest, you.
Lol thanks for that vote of confidence . It is a great trail and probably my favorite one and it's been way too long since I've been out that way..... Maybe next year when the little one gets bigger!
It was an fantastic day. I think i like spotting newbs almost as much as driving. Nothing quite equals seeing them get it and realize just how capble their Jeep is.
Up the east side of Phillips, up Odessa, down the east leg of Doran, up the west side of Phillips and down the west side of Doran. He was open open (JK swb) so going up either side of Doran would never have worked.
Met several groups going up. One included a full width D60/14bolt full size Bronco. Spotted him up the top of the east side of Doran where it gets super narrow (up hill wall on pax 6 ft drop on driver) he had just one set of driver side lugs on the trail with the rest over the edge.
Met a SoCal member in another group (forgot the screen name, sorry, it was a long day), Hit the trail at 0900 got off at 1730. Why the hell did I ever move east?
Thank you all for the updates and reccomendations on routing. The driver had a great day, I had a ton of fun and it was a wonderful 52nd birthday present to myself, more than I could hope for.
I took lots of pics but I figured that everyone on here kinda knew the trail and wouldnt be interested in seeing JK photo's. Posted at ton on the Northern Virginial Jeepers Associations site. Here is the link:
As far as trail report goes....its really torn up and a lot rougher than when I ran it last in my XJ back in 2006. No way we ever would have made it going up either leg of Doran open open or with out and second rig to winch off of or give us a strap. The falls are steeper, a lot more loose rock is stacked under them and most of the asphalt is just flat GONE. The girl in the TJ (see NVJA thread) was high on pot and made a point of doing hip thrusts and pointing the pink "only on a Jeep" sticker on her rig.
The full body Bronco was flat territying to spot through the narrow ledge on upper Doran. His buddies were not willing to spot him so I did. I had just one row of tread lugs on the trail to work with, the rest of the tire was over the edge. Talk about precision driving, he really paid close attention and did exactly what I told him to do. My buddy Greg took a video of this, I hope to post a link to it when he gets it up on You Tube.
I don't know her, but she was with our group. Later on I offered to lead her group out of a mess that she put them in, and she threw a fit and drove off without them. Watch out for "JEEP GURLZ," I guess.
garret83
The pictures on the NVJA site of the gatekeeper were taken back in 2006. The green rig is RyuRabbit, it got torn all to hell. This last weekend we ran the trail alone and DID not do the gate keeper. We saw several other groups on the trail including the one that travisk was in (the most organized and experienced by the way).
travisk
You may be right about the routing.
I had a couple differerent maps to work with and they did not agree. The one we relied on was a google maps topo/trails overlay on a I-phone. It showed Doran as a loop and then to the east of the Doran Loop was the Phillips Loop. The two loops connected via Odessa canyon and some misc. trails at the top near Bismark & Sweetwater Springs.. Both times we drove over to mule canyon and then went up one side or the other of Phillips and then came down one or the other side of the Doran Loop. Both legs of the Doran Loop (on our map) emptied into the same wash a few hundred yards apart with the loop leg that has gate keeper the southermost of the two legs.
We never climbed any real ledges. The driver had never been off road before and I wanted to keep it easy on him, especially since he was open open so we did everything of any severity down hill. We had a couple of small ledges after (after we branched off to the west from the west leg of the Phillips loop) that were a foot or so high but I took no picutres up there. That trail by the way had a little asphalt on it. At one spot, just before the little ledges the trail got narrow, probably 15 feet wide with drop to either side into a canyon, guessing there was tunnel under the trail down there someplace to let the water flow through.
I will defer to anyone out there who runs these regularly as to what we ran in which sequence. Far be it from me sitting here in McLean Va to disagree with you guys on navigating your backyard trails!!!
member in another group (forgot the screen name, sorry, it was a long day), Hit the trail at 0900 got off at 1730. Why the hell did I ever move east? 
