Beneath these admonitions, independent travelers have scrawled their own impromptu commentary. "It's true," one confirmed the previous October. "Total washout 2.1 miles."

"Ford Explorer got stuck but our 4Runner pulled him out," another survivor reported in December. "One casualty."

"Death to Explorers," added another agitator in April. Then, to the point of my purpose: "A challenge to MTBs."

At the moment, I happen to be straddling an MTB -- a mountain bike that I intend to ride down Lippincott Mine Road.

Apparently I'm in a land of legend. Lippincott Mine Road connects the "Racetrack" -- a folklore-laden dry lake in Death Valley National Park -- with the floor of Saline Valley, an equally fabled desert basin in which nudist squatters rule the roost and people occasionally disappear. For years I've been curious about this route, which, in only three miles as the raven dives, descends 2,000 tortuous feet through a canyon rife with hairpins and drop-offs. It's not that I'm overly inclined toward daredevil comportment in my car, but I think it might be just the thing for a bike.

I'm not dissuaded by the fact that my cycling experience in these parts is minimal. Although I've been visiting this area -- the most dramatic topographical region in the entire basin-and-range desert province of North America -- for the better part of two decades, I've usually been content to camp and hike. At home I do most of my cycling on pavement, which requires a different set of skills from those demanded by dirt. When I have taken a mountain bike to the desert, I've found it a bittersweet proposition: I've had fun on selected jeep roads, but I've also known misery on sandy tracks and rocky slopes, where it can be a challenge just to keep moving with the front wheel pointed forward.

Nonetheless, as both dedicated cyclist and desert buff, I've been unable to shake the idea of riding through this place, which became part of Death Valley National Park with the 1994 California Desert Protection Act. In search of advance intelligence, therefore, I consulted a friend who had biked in the area before.

"Unridable may be exaggerated, but not by much," he wrote me in response. "The surface is often loose gravel that is very difficult, at least going uphill. Going down isn't too great either. The problem with the Lippincott Mine Road will be roughness, I think. Many of the backcountry roads just beat the hell out of you, and the graded ones are often quite washboarded."

Under such circumstances -- i.e., questionable cycling conditions on roads that are open to four-wheel-drive vehicles -- it seems that the manner in which to attempt this mission is with motorized support. That way I'll be assured of water, and if the going gets too rough, I can simply get out of the saddle and behind the wheel.

If the route turns out to be worse on four wheels than it is on two -- well, I figure I'll just cross that washout when I come to it.

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