Badwater Road

rogdeb · Jun 2, 2006

Help please

Any of you guys have first hand knowledge of the road surface & condition of Badwater Road, going south from CA 190 then swinging east (and calling itself CA 178) to Shoshone on CA 127

It's just a thin grey line on my Streets & Trips

Thank you.

Rog

chickey191 · Jun 2, 2006

it is a fine road. like every other park road - little tough on the aggregate and it looks loose, but it isn't. You should watch the area for wash outs and crap in the corners. You can check the Death Valley website - or park service for road reports. There have been washouts and repairs over the last 2 years. don't know if they got hit this spring or not.

Wildrose Canyon Rd has been pretty rough forever and some pretty large chunks were washed out 2 springs ago.

I'd check the website for up to the minute

Naked girls being very bad in Bad water (& link to maps)

03silverbullet · Jun 3, 2006

I was up there a couple weeks ago.

The roads were fine, all paved.

I stayed in Shoshone and there is a neat little bar/resteraunt called the Crowbar. You should check it out.

Be careful of the heat, it should be well into the triple digits by now.

chickey191 · Jun 3, 2006

was 114 in death valley yesterday and looks to be hotter today. A coolvest or the like would be appropriate. Take water - fo sho. Take LOTS of water. and for heaven's sake - don't pull a typical HD rider through DV and wear a only a t-shirt. You'll BAKE.

There really is no escaping the heat without proper gear - cover up and stay out of the sun by getting into shade or stopping at a tourist attraction with shade (not all that many). Heat stroke KILLS.

The worst I've ridden through there is 117 or 118.

I wore a soaked long sleeve shirt - Cool Vest - Darien Jacket - Darien pants over shorts and put my helmet in the freezer in Trona for about 1/2 hour before starting.

Freezered helmet stayed cool for about 4 minutes. Soaked t-shirt sleeves stayed wet for about 10 minutes. Cool vest kept me alive. Drank 1 gallon of water between Trona and Beatty and only took 1 pee. Might have leaked a bit of that water back down my stich (from the water tube... not from pee !!)

my suggestion is to keep the stich relatively zipped up. just enough air circulating to keep the air moving. Not so much that it drys out your cool vest prematurely.

and one last point. - after all that - make sure you have a DRY shirt to put on when the sun goes down. You could freeze to death. Not all that unusual to have the temp drop 30 or 40 degrees and after a day over 110 - a night at 60 or 70 feels like an ice bath. - you don't want to be wet if the temp goes down.