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This tour covers a short section of dirt road between Caliente, Nevada and I-15 between Mesquite and Glendale, Nevada, or more specifically, exit 100 on I-15.  The road starts at the south of Rainbow Canyon, south of Caliente, Nevada.  It is one of two roads that start at that point, the other being Kane Springs Road that runs between the end of Rainbow Canyon and Highway 93.  Being that I had already ridden Kane Springs Road in 2004, I opted to ride the Carp/ Elgin Road on this trip.

This road was supposed to be a graded gravel road.  After the fact, I found out first hand that much of Rainbow Canyon and the Carp/ Elgin Road was wiped during a flood in January 2005.  The road was technically closed, which only fueled my determination to ride it.

At the date of this article, the Rainbow Canyon and the Carp/ Elgin road are projected to repaired by 2008.  Presently the roads are passable by cars and motorcycles (even though they are marked as closed), however some short sections of deep sand might prove challenging if you are on a street bike.  Only sections of the once awesome asphalt road still exist in Rainbow Canyon; the rest being crude single-lane dirt roads and bridges to replace what mother nature destroyed.  Even sections of the Carp/ Elgin road from the end of Rainbow Canyon to I-15 were obviously damaged by the flood and have been crudely reconstructed with sand and loose gravel.

Click here to view the log book for this ride

The slideshow may be viewed by clicking the icon to the right.

 

Free Downloadable USGS Topographic Quadrangle Maps The following 1:24,000 scale USGS topographic quadrangle maps covering Rainbow Canyon and the Carp/ Elgin Road in Nevada are available for download by clicking on the respective map-image to the left: Caliente, NV Elgin NE, NV Elgin, NV Leith, NV Lyman Crossing, NV Carp, NV Toquop Gap, NV Davidson Peak, NV Moapa Peak SE, NV These maps are a great way to find all the potential side trails, and are a great reference if you plan to hunt CIA spy-plane crash sites in this area.  Each map is contained in a Zip file in TIF format.  The map images are georeferenced for display in some mapping and GIS software.  If you have no idea what that means, just open the TIF file in an image viewer and call it good.

Downloadable USGS 1:24,000 Topographic Quad maps covering the Carp/ Elgin Road and Rainbow Canyon, Nevada

 

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