Afton Canyon Flying Trip

I just took my RL to Afton Canyon (between Barstow and Baker) off the 215, two other flying buddies and I went out there to fly our Powered Para-Gliders.

I finally took my vehicle OFF-ROAD :eek: and got it very dusty and dirty. Drove down into the Manix Basin to the Mojave Riverbed. I'm so glad this machine has 4WD as it was extremly soft, but I was even more grateful for the GPS .

I missed the trail I took down and ended going way past where I should have when trying to find my way out. I finally found a freshly graded power line access road to get out on but was now quite lost, turned on my GPS and there was my "breadcrumb trail" that was recorded earlier when we were looking for a launch area :D Just followed the service road until it cut the breadcrumb track and was able to find my flying buddies.

I have attached a couple of pictures, sorry for the out of focus one - must be dust on the lens :rolleyes: The aerial shot is of the campground, the white specks are covers over the concrete table the yellow dot shows where I camped. The actual launch site was about 15 miles south of the campground, we flew to the canyon and back following the Mojave River bed, dry except for a few places where the river comes above ground and there is some greenery. All in all a grand weekend out :)

Greg.

Way cool aerial shot! I used to ride motorcycles in the Mojave River bed, but farther south, by Adelanto, off Helendale road. Long time ago, though -- 1970's.

And I was able to get a reasonable facsimile of your shot with Google Earth! :D

The whole trip was over 350 miles, 90% was highway, mpg came out at 15.5, I'm not too jazzed about that.

Google Earth is great isn't it? I use it prior to flying a new site to see what the terrain looks like, it provides quite a good idea of what to expect although the true "down in the canyon" images are a little deceptive.

It's okay for finding launch/landing areas but gates and fences are not very visible so we usually pick several places in the hopes that at least one is accessible.

The R/L still has the protective layer of dust on it, we are expecting high winds in LA and the last time I cleaned it we had high winds with some rain and all my hard work was for nothing - the truck was covered in dust and leaves, so I'll probably wait until Sunday to wash it.

Greg.