I started driving from Cadiz, and by the time I was anywhere near Nightmare Gulch, it was dark. So I decided to grab an empty lot in California City for the night. Found a sweet spot on C Street, with a view! The neighbors didn't mind. In the morning:
This is the first time I've been in the populated part of California City. Feels like any small desert town. Not quite Palmdale, but probably a bit better than Lake LA. Maybe.
I vaguely recall somebody saying that Last Chance canyon was cool, so I'd make a loop: up Last Chance canyon to Cudahy camp, where I turned off the last time, coming from above. Then I'd ride up to the head of Nighmare Gulch, and take that down. I couldn't find any maps that clearly stated where the mouth of Nightmare Gulch is, so it wasn't clear if I'd come out on hwy 14, or on Redrock-Randsburg Rd.
So I started at Redrock-Randsburg Rd at the mount of Last Chance Canyon. I packed ludicrous amounts of water for some reason, and started riding
For the first little bit, until the road enters the mountains, the road is hard dirt. But as soon as the canyon proper begins, the road dumps into the drainage. It is very, VERY soft:
Not remotely rideable, and I have 3" tires even! So I ended up hike-a-biking for the next 1-2 miles. This canyon is completely pointless. There's nothing to see. It's just dry, boring and unrideable. I don't remember who said that this canyon is cool, but that person was wrong. My recollection from the last time, is that the part above Cudahy camp is soft and not-terribly-exciting too, until the canyon turns E-W. The N-S section is dumb.
So yeah. Below and above Cudahy camp is uninteresting, but Cudahy camp itself is cool. There are other ways to get here. It has a firm road, and the canyon opens up to lots of very colorful rock.
The software in my camera can't believe that the rock is as red as it really is, so the photos it's producing are washed out. The rocks are really colorful. At Cudahy camp is a mine:
Only goes back 6ft. Probably it was sealed, or something. There're probably other mines around, but I didn't look for them. I climbed out of Last Chance canyon at this bullet-ridden water tank
As before, you climb out on these cool white badlands
And I got to the head of Nighmare Gulch again.
The bird crap on the sign is a nice touch.
The gate is still locked, but I'm now legal, so I hopped the fence. Nighmare Gulch is EXCELLENT. Unlike Black canyon (the next one to the NW), this doesn't have an obvious "road". It's just a wild dry canyon, with everything that implies. I don't know for sure, but my suspicion is that this is no longer open to motor vehicles. Ever. It's hard to imagine how a jeep could get through. A motorbike probably could. This works well for beefy mountain biking, and for hiking. I actually saw a few people walking around.
So anyway, you start at the top layers of the cool rock formations, and as you descend, you get deeper down, so their apparent size grows. A bit past the gate:
Further:
The middle section has many cool side gullies, some of which are NARROW:
It then opens up to the lame scene on the other side
The main route is down the main drainage
You eventually run out of white rock, but that's OK. We got red and brown rock too:
The surface is partly soft sand, partly red boulders, and some slab mixed in. Biking it is fun, but it's not a flowy "mtb trail" at all. So eventually the canyon is done, you hop another fence to a good dirt road that dumps you out on hwy 14. This was a 20-mile loop for me, but you could make a loop with Black Canyon or something, and end up with a shorter and better loop.
