Bodie High Desert Highway

Total Miles
64.3

Technical Rating

Moderate

Best Time

Spring, Summer, Fall

Trail Type

Full-Width Road

Accessible By

Trail Overview

This route takes you from the high desert of Nevada to the chaparral of the Sierra Front Range. The Nevada side is dominated by wide, generally well-graded dirt roads, while the California side takes you through narrow creek canyons. You'll follow the Walker River and pass through the Walker River State Park, Barron Hilton's famous Flying M Ranch, the ghost town Bodie and other historic ranches. Be sure to keep an eye out for the foundations of old buildings. This route connects the paved highways NV 208 and CA 270. Roads can be heavily trafficked by farm trucks and equipment as well as OHVs near Walker River State Park, so be sure to ride on the right and keep an eye out.

Photos of Bodie High Desert Highway

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Difficulty

There can be at least one creek crossing, and roads can have large washboards. Some sections may be flooded from flash floods in the summer. There are also a few intermittent miles of narrow, rocky roads.

History

Bodie is a ghost town that came about in 1876 after the discovery of gold. The Flying M Ranch was owned by the hotel tycoon Barron Hilton.

Technical Rating

Status Reports

Colton Patterson

Jun 21, 2025

2024 Polaris RZR PRO XP 4

Open

There are large sections on the trail through the canyon that are washed out but it's still passable. My RZR is a Pro XP 4 and is 64 inches wide and made it with no issues. I wouldn't want to take anything much wider unless you have more ground clearance (I have about 13 inches of clearance). Be careful coming from the Nevada side that you don't drive off the washed out culvert as it's hard to see the drop off

Tony Guarascio

Jun 12, 2025

Permanently Closed

We came down from Walker River campgrounds about 48 miles on the trail. we came to a makeshift gate which stated " gnarly rocks a head" about a mile. We proceeded and came to an impassable trail. The trail is now the new course for the river with huge boulders.

Trail is fine from Bodie State Park to the Nevada border but about a mile into Nevada the road is basically gone from storm damage and the stream has hopped it's banks and is now using the road as it's stream bed. We turned around and didn't see how far the road was gone, so be careful.

95% of this trail is generally a 2. One section though keeps getting rearranged by the creek. Between this points, I would say this is a 6/10. 38.30889, -118.92917 38.29803, -118.93028 I made it through on 31s, 2inch lift, and rear locker.