The Road -- Cabin Canyon Road to across Desert Dry Lake Playa

From Cabin Canyon Road, Alamo Road heads north and east for 2.7 miles crossing the deep playa dust on the southeast corner of Desert Dry Lake for a total of 42.4 miles from Corn Creek. Because of the deep playa dust, this is the most technically difficult part of the road.

This part of the road never is graded and usually is suitable only for high-clearance 4WD vehicles. After storms, the road can be wet and impassible. After the mud dries, the road can be easy until people stir up the poof-dirt again.

This part of Alamo Road provides access to a couple of cattle tanks, but in reality, it just provides a way to cross the playa.

Link to map. See Alamo Road for GPS coordinates.

Alamo Road

Staying left at the intersection (Table 1, Site 0098) with Cabin Spring Canyon, Alamo Road runs northeast and descends towards the edge of the shrub zone. Most of our shrub species can't live in the silty playa dust, and the end of the shrubs (about 0.5 miles out) once marked the end of Alamo Road (Site 0489) for north-bound drivers.

Here, signs used to announce that the road was closed. Signs used to prohibit (but did not block) further travel. The closure was to prevent people in 2WD vehicles from driving out onto the playa and getting stuck in the deep playa dust where they might encounter life-threatening conditions.

Alamo Road is now open, but drivers should be cautioned that the road was closed because tires break up the heavy playa dust and churn it into a flour-like consistency that creates surprisingly difficult passage even in 4WD vehicles and even when dry. The dust seems bottomless, and the road develops deep ruts that can easily high-center high-clearance vehicles.

Unfortunately, the road conditions are so bad that drivers just turn out of the ruts and drive through the low-growing vegetation, which creates multiple sets of deep ruts. During wet conditions, stay off this section of road.

The road runs northeast, then bends east, bends northeast again, and finally bends east to climb onto slightly higher and firmer terrain. In this area, the road passes berms of mud on the right. These are spoils piles from cattle tanks where ranchers dug pits to collect water off the playa. As the climate dries, these represent the last-gasp attempts by ranchers to keep cattle on the land, but even this was in vain, and as can be seen, the land is now so dry that the era of ranching is long gone.

Dropping off the higher terrain back to playa level is again badly churned up, but crossing that area marks the end of the deep playa dust (Site 0543). This is also the trailhead to the South Dunes, which lie about 3/4-miles off to the east.

Return to Alamo Road or continue to the next road segment.