Route Comparison - LA to BRC

It seems every year someone is asking about the best route to take to Black Rock City. While Cap'n Shady does a fine job explaining the major different routes on the burning man website no one seems to read it. Or, at least, don't believe him when he says the "Spooky Desert" route is the best for vehicles that can't take steep inclines since that is what folks are most often asking about.

So, thanks to the fine folks at RouteSlip.com along with a fairly ridiculous amount of patience and effort, i mapped out the elevation change in the three routes Shady listed, plus a couple others. (It's a neat site, but trying to do a single one of these graphs took about 3 hours on my laptop, so if you want to duplicate the efforts, be forewarned.)

Distance

Another thing people wonder about is how far each route is. Thanks to Google Maps, this is pretty easy to check out. Of Shady's three, the Spooky desert is not only the one with the least inclines, it's the shortest distance, but you can shave even more miles off if you can handle some inclines. Of course, none of this takes into account speed limits or traffic.

These are the numbers that RouteSlip gave me as the distanceshese are the numbers that RouteSlip gave me as the distances:

Elevation

First... a word on the "flat route". There is no flat route! Los Angeles is at or really close to sea level; Black Rock City is at 4,000 feet. The best you can hope for is a long ramp up and a nice coasting back down. However, there's a big mountain range in between LA and BRC, and it holds the highest peak in the 48 states, so you get to hit at least 7,000 feet on your journey if you go any of these routes.

Thus, it's really more a matter of how high you're going to climb, how quickly and how often. Hopefully these graphs shed some light on that. (Oh... and don't forget to look at the routes from back to front to see the slopes for the ride home.)

The first graph is the composite of all the routes. Most noticeably (to me at least), there's a hill at the end of all the routes that don't line up. That's because all the routes are different lengths, so each route is getting to that hill at different point. Other than that, you can see decent differences between the three main routes and then some minor differences between all the routes that go by Mono Lake.

Note: The rest of these graphs are not all to the same scale, that's what this image is handy for. The others are all the same size, so they might look similar when they aren't.

Astroturf Highway

Option One is the Astroturf Highway. Taking the 5 up to Sacramento and then the 80 through Reno to Fernley. Basically you go from Sea Level in LA to 4,000 feet over the Grapevine and then plummet back down to sea level until you hit Sacramento. There you sky rocket up to 7,000 feet through Donner Pass before you coast back down to your final playa elevation at 4,000.

American Dream

Option Two is the American Dream: Taking the 395 to Reno and the 80 to Fernely. This has a quick climb up to 3,000 feet in the Mojave Desert, then a few dips and climbs up to 4,000 feet into the Sierras. After Bishop, there's a quick climb up to 7,000 feet, a few more big dips and peaks and then a meander down to 4,000 feet.

Spooky Desert

Option Three is the Spooky Desert route: Taking the 395 to Bishop and then the 6 and a few other roads through Nevada straight to Fernley, skipping Reno. This route has the same dips and such through the Mojave, but has the least steep climb up to 7,000 and there's only one. (Actually, this isn't quite the Spooky Desert route; it goes through Fallon instead of Silver Springs, but the distance and elevation differences are pretty negligible.)

Rommel's Route

Rommel listed a deviation from the American Dream that goes straight into Nevada past Mono Lake. This shares the same climb up by Mammoth, but only has one smaller peak after that.

Shortest Distance

Finally, using Google Maps to find the shortest distance route, you find a route that's skips a couple peaks that the American Dream has along with the Nevada cities along the 395.

Death Route

Or even more finally, i played with Google Earth to find other passes that might be lower and found that going on the east side of Death Valey only gets you up to 6,200 feet. It's 120 miles longer than the Spooky Desert route, and has the same issue as the Astroturh Highway of dropping back down to near sea level and thus needing to climb again. The only real benefit to this route is if your car explodes upon hitting 7,000 feet elevation or the Wild Kat Ranch isn't enough for you and you want to hit the cat houses between Pahrump and Tonopah.

Getting to the 395

Since the 395 seems like a fairly good route, there's another thing to consider. There are two (main) ways of getting to the 395, via the 14 or via the 15. From Orange County, the 15 saves about 15-20 miles, from LA, the 15 adds about 20-40 miles. The climbing comparison is a bit tricky. The 15 goes higher and has some steeper climbs, but they aren't as long, so it might be a benefit. However, traffic along the 15 is also a big consideration.

Here are the mileage differences taking the different routes from Costa Mesa and Downtown LA. The actual mileage difference varies pretty greatly across both counties.

Here is the composite of the two different routes from Costa Mesa. I think distance and traffic might be a more important factor than the climbs themselves.