Nevada Off Road Race Tears Up the Desert
August 22, 2008 -- Beatty, Nevada
The quiet Oasis Valley was awakened early this morning by no less than six helicopters rushing by in a hurry to get to the staging area of the largest off road race in the U.S. Motors rumble and pickup trucks loaded with gas cans crowd the sides of Highway 95, as everyone waits for the race to begin from the staging area five miles north of the the small historic mining town of Beatty in Nye County.
More than 200 race-cars lined up at the starting road (which heads to the ghost town of Pioneer), engines revving, most custom-fitted with large tires to speed as fast as 100 mph on shrubby desert surfaces and washes. First a group of motrocycles take off. Next lines of race cars drive from the staging area on private land, across Highway 95 (stopping traffic for periods of time on the busy interstate for an hour as flaggers controlled traffic). As they rev up to race in groups, we see clouds of dust come up from the canyons in the Bullfrog Hills as the racers head north at high speed through the Mojave Desert and into the Great Basin.
Terrible's "Best in the Desert"
The annual Vegas to Reno Off-Highway Vehicle Race, crossing hundreds of miles of public lands, some private lands, and county dirt roads, has had increasing problems from angry Nevadans. Clouds of dust lowering air quality, access roads ruined, habitat destroyed, and trespassing are some of the local complaints.
Originally a 550 mile race starting in 1996 (although 2,000 miles long across the entire state in the year 2000), the distances and routes have changed through the years as the main land-managing agency, BLM, has modified its Environmental Assessment (EA). The race is now 456 miles long.
Residents of Amargosa Valley to the south last year banned the race from their area due to damage caused on powerline roads and dust issues. Beatty people told their town council at meetings that local roads were impassable after the race went by, and that racers were often rowdy. Nye County voted not to support the race this year as well.
We talked to one long-time resident of Oasis Valley who told us that ten years ago the racers went so close to one spring that they "kicked dirt into it." The spring is currently Amargosa toad habitat (see sidebar). Helicopters circled over her during last-year's race, and several associated vehicles trespassed on her land. "They were rude! I was scared to go out of my house!"
Racers line up on Pioneer Road at the start of the race.
BLM specified that the race go in washes and pre-exisiting roads. But this race often goes over habitat that we would not consider washes or bedrock, but desert shrub basin communities, places where no pre-existing road occurred. The desert track can be rough -- in 2007 a racer died in Esmeralda County.
After the close of the Barstow to Vegas race in California in the 1980s, Nevada is the last state to allow a race of this magnitude.
See the Best in the Desert website at www.bitd.com.
--L.M.
2009 UPDATE: OHV Use in Nevada Public Lands
More start PHOTOS and Photos by Death Valley National Park.
Access road ruined for tourists.
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