Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest/Bureau of Land Management
District
Spring Mountains National Recreation Area/BLM - Las Vegas Field Office
Highlights
The Spring Mountains National Recreation Area (SMNRA) is part of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest. Better known to locals as Mount Charleston, it is located west of Las Vegas and encompasses more than 316,000 acres of remarkable beauty and surprising diversity Lovell Canyon Road is really a pathway to adventure in the Spring Mountains NRA. The paved road has no 4x4ing opportunities, but trails that connect to it offer some great 4x4 offroad challenges. There are seemingly endless dispersed camping opportunities located along the many short side roads that connect and parallel Lovell Canyon Road.
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From Las Vegas, take Nevada 160 toward Pahrump. Lovell Canyon Road is 3.1 miles west of the fire station at Mountain Springs summit.
From Pahrump, take Nevada 160 toward Las Vegas. Lovell Canyon Road is approximately 30 miles from the intersection of Nevada highways 160 and 372.
We were in the Las Vegas area for a few weeks hitting as many trails as we could. We've found some interesting things along the trails but never an rolled and abandoned Jeep. We found a Renegade on it's side on one of the side trails. It looked to be stolen and ditched on a dead end trail. Just in case, we reported the location to authorities. This was our first time out in our recently acquired Jeep TJ. We just wanted an easy route to check for rattles and squeaks. The trail was perfect and we never needed 4x4. There was a little bit of snow and ice on the trail at the higher elevations but wasn't an issue. We connected this with Lovell Summit and out Trout Canyon for an easy scenic two hour drive.
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Brian has been 4 wheeling since 1976. He first learned at age 7 that "The best things in life are dirty" in a brand new 1958 Jeep FC-170 on his aunts Nebraska farm. That forward control pickup seemed like it would go anywhere and he was hooked, even though he didn't know it yet.
Jump forward to 1972... Brian's first duty assignment in the US Air Force was as a vehicle operator assigned to the USAF Survival School at Spokane, Washington. Part of his duties required hauling equipment and transporting vehicles to a remote training area in northern Washington national forest locations, and he often would be asked to take radio equipment to a mountaintop radio antenna site. The road was awful, or at least seemed that way in a 1967 6 passenger Dodge Power Wagon with 45 lbs of pressure in the tires, but it also hooked Brian on backcountry 4x4 exploration.
Brian's first 4x4 was a used '76 Ford F150 pickup. It didn't take very long to figure out that the long wheelbase of the pickup didn't work well on the narrow Colorado trails near his home, so he traded for a brand new 1983 Chevy Blazer S10. The S10 was a nice vehicle, but it wasn't a Jeep, and that was what Brian ultimately wanted. Well, it didn't take long to move over to the Jeep brand, and Brian has been the proud owner of 7 Jeeps of one sort or another over the years.
Brian has been 4 wheeling from Mexico to Alaska. After moving from Colorado, he ended up in southern Nevada where his current home is completely surrounded by public lands with thousands of miles of back roads and trails to explore.
He recently moved to eastern rural Nevada, and looks forward to sharing trails in his new area.
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