Gold Butte is primitive. No ranger station, no facilities except a couple of trail head toilets. It has a small Mojave Desert oasis that you can camp at, some fantastic rock formations, and an interesting sink hole that you can only see into with a drone. It is just off I-15 north of Las Vegas and once you leave the main trailhead area almost no one is out there. Explore it with us!
Washouts and almost vertical climbs and descents in remote areas of Valley of Fire State Park push our van to the limits! In the end it was a full back tracking retreat but what an adventure!
For our March 2025 Southwest Traverse we were looking for lessor known routes and avoiding most of Mojave Road and such. Bitter Springs Scenic Byway south of Valley of Fire State Park is scenic, remote, and interesting. The colorful rock formations on the north end were incredible! We saw no other vehicles so certainly off the beaten path.
As we traversed the Southwest deserts in March 2025 daytime temperatures climbed into the upper 90’s, too hot to camp. So after leaving the Mojave Preserve we drove to McLaughlin, NV on the Colorado River to check it out and get a hotel room looking down into the clear Colorado River. We passed a sign to Christmas Tree Pass and I checked it out on off-roading map apps. Easy and scenic. Perfect as we head north to Bitter Springs Road the next day. It is only 17 miles but much of it is very scenic rocky mountains. Explore it with us in this video.
