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Posted by: Chris142
Thx for the info. Sounds like my kinda place.
Posted by: flashturbo
My brother, our buddy, and I took our DS-650, Raptor, and V-Force out to Rowher Flat today.
Why they call it Rowher Flat I can't figure out... there's almost no flat. The trails are up, or down. Seriously. Very little Flat except in the staging areas.
There's a large variety of trails. Some are fun, fast, and wide. Some are narrow, steep, and rocky. You can make yourself happy if trails are your thing. We kept our rubber side down all day except for one backflip on the DS-650 when my brother had to downshift on a hill and got the tires slipping in a soft spot but then they dug in and rotated him. Fortunately, he got out of the way, we turned it back over. and nothing was broken. That Baha X plastic wasn't as pretty, but mechanically it was fine.
Man the view of the Bouquet Reservoir from the northern slope of the big ridge is beautiful. Too bad that lake is "hands-off" private property. It would be a nice place for a swim.
We didn't know the area and despite our trail maps we went out of bounds by going too far north on the Rowher Trail and found ourselves dead-ended up against the 2 lane paved highway. Fortunately, Artesia intersected the same highway about a half-mile to the east and we only had to break the law for about 30 seconds to get back on that trail (yeehaw - riding on pavement is fun). There was no way in hell we were going to try to go back up that northern slope on Rowher. That was nasty coming down.
If you go there, don't forget your adventure pass as it is required to park in the staging areas or anywhere else in the area. From my perspective, there's no reason to park anywhere but Staging Area 1 unless you want to pull your trailer across more nasty road unnecessarily. The facilities at Area 1 seemed to be the best anyway (bathroom, picnic tables, loading ramp).
The northern slopes of the big ridge have some really nice forested trails. I can't wait to get back there in the spring. It was nice to ride in something other than arrid brush desert.
The terrain, we thought, was challenging. We rode the trailes marked on the map as "most" difficult and made it, but I enjoyed the stuff that didn't require as much concentration and I wish there was more of it. Artesia is a fun way to get around at high speed.
Compared to Hungry Valley and El Mirage, Rowher Flat has the best trail riding of the 3. It doesn't have the long sandy wash or the ferocious challenging hill climbs of Hungry Valley, nor does it have the Dry Lake of El Mirage for all out full speed runs, but for trails, I think it's the best.
I'd be interested if anyone has any other observations about Rowher Flat. I didn't get all the way over to the eastern side on the south slope, but we saw most of the rest of it.
Posted by: GusinCA
Hey there,
I plan on heading up there for some riding on Sunday, I guess Hungry Valley is closed until the 14th.
Do you have a trail map you could scan in and send me?
Maybe even a digital picture at full res?
My address: gus@chyba.net
Thanks!
