Owyhee Desert pt. 2

On 9-28-2012, my buddy Bill and I continued where some friends and I had finished off last time.  He had actually backpacked from the Nevada State line to the Bruneau Canyon Overlook over three days in the last part of the 2011 summer.  Like my previous bad experience on the first portion of this leg, he too ran into water issues.  Our journey this day would be on mountain bikes, and he didn't mind backtracking and starting at WinterCamp with me.  The first ten miles to the Bruneau Canyon Overlook went well.  We stopped and looked over the edge for a little bit, then continued straight north.  Problem is that you’re actually supposed to travel out to the east to continue on the ICT.  So, after two miles we realized our mistake and had to fix our predicament.  We made it back onto the trail, found the Clover 3 Creek Rd, paralleled the Bombing Range, and were able to see a few fighter jets flying by pretty low.  The ride down in Browns Creek was beautiful, and we didn't have to pedal for almost 4 miles, but then came the suck!  Apparently at this time of the year, every cow in the desert has used this road as a central highway, which doesn't make for a good riding path.  Almost 80% of the road was made up of 4” of super soft dust, which made it impossible for bikes.  A vast majority of our time on our journey was getting the dirt out of our gears and just walking the bikes.  We got to Pothole road and took a long well deserved break.  We continued northbound and met up with our pickup team at the Snake River Bridge on Hwy 78.  So we picked a great day to cover these 35 miles; as we didn't encounter any rattlesnakes, it never hit over 80 degrees, and there was partial cloud cover.