I was still in my “I-have-to-bicycle-10,000-miles-a-year” phase.

I was behind the wheel of a 1992 Chevy S10 Blazer SUV I had purchased six months earlier from Treadway Chevrolet.

In the passenger seat was Kevin Andrews, a doctor and fellow cycling enthusiast who has since moved to Oregon.

The rear seat was occupied by Billie and two other women who were members of the now defunct Manteca Bicycling Club.

In the rear cargo area was a Brock Elliott School 8th grader by the name of Mike who had talked his mother into letting him miss several days of school to join us. He got wind of the trip while working at the Manteca Bicycle Shop that was once next door to the Hong Kong Restaurant on North Main Street.

The “trip” was my eighth excursion to Death Valley to bicycle.

You cannot off-road cycle in Death Valley, which suits me just fine.

I can honestly say I’ve never been on a mountain bike, and never want to.

I’ve been a roadie since I was 30.

That means my forte is road bicycles with drop bars, rock-hard leather seats for comfort, and 700cc tires

I relished long distances, extended climbs, and incredible descents where you could hit 60 mph downhill.

Death Valley — as such — was my cycling nirvana.

It had rained the third night of our six-day trip.

The skies the next morning were still threatening.

Given the long distances in the middle of nowhere and possible slick road conditions if it rained again, we opted to do some “sightseeing.”

We decided to drive thru the Titus Canyon narrows, a place I had never been before.

There was a sign just after we turned off the Beatty Road and turned back toward the Grapevine Mountains onto a graded, primitive road.

There were two warnings. The first indicated it eventually would narrow to one lane with close quarters. The other was after any measurable rain, passage could be dangerous.

We  monetarily debated whether to keep going. I was leaning against it.

This was before 20 years later when I learned firsthand hiking in the Funeral Mountains that there is soil in Death Valley that becomes really sketchy even after a slight sprinkle.

That time I ended up slipping part way down a canyon wall and had to find a safe path to the bottom after stabilizing my slide by grabbing onto a creosote bush that tends to have deep, secure roots.

I never bicycled anywhere — just like with hiking — without thoroughly researching the route as much as possible for potential pitfalls. I did the same thing when driving to new places especially if it involved going off pavement for a prolonged period.

Kevin reminded me I had 4-wheel drive.

I allowed that tidbit to weaken my fears even though I had yet to drive in 4-wheel mode.

That would change 30 minutes later.

There is a section of the road that redefines gnarly prior to reaching Leadville — a once booming mining outpost.

It has segments where you will bottom out even in a high clearance vehicle if you don’t go slow — as in less than 5 mph — and gingerly navigate it.

It also comes with the road — barely wide enough for a standard pickup truck’s width — being flush against a mountainside rising at about a 70 degree angle on the left and a nice 100 foot or so drop  on the right.

When the Blazer started moving sideways, my heart rate skyrocketed.

I was driving like a running back trying to stiff-arm a pursuer.

Kevin told me I was doing fine as the wet soil shifted toward the road’s edge.

He told me to shift into 4-wheel drive and keep going slow..

Mike had fallen asleep in the cargo area.

The passengers in the back seat didn’t utter a word.

Let’s just say having your first experience using 4-wheel drive in a situation where the only other person in the SUV with experience can’t change places with you is not a pleasant experience.

It took us probably less than 10 minutes to navigate the sketchy section of road..

To me, it felt like a couple of hours.

A few days after we got back from Manteca, another doctor shared with me how Kevin was telling him about a trip to Death Valley he just took and how he said he was scared crapless not from the descent but because of a side trip he took in an SUV.

That reenforced two things.

Never panic, even if you are not the one who has everyone else’s well-being in your hand.

It also made me double down on researching — and weighing the pros and cons — of whether to take specific roads, trails, or head out on cross-county hikes as I often do in Death Valley where there are less than a half dozen maintained trails in 5,270 square miles.

I’ve since been on some sketchy roads in the Eastern Sierra in a Ford Escape with 4-wheel drive that had high clearance as well as remote roads in Death Valley to reach places like the jump off point  to a cross-country hike to the Panamint Sand Dunes.

I’ve never done so without making someone aware of my destination and arrange to check in with them as well as finding out everything I could which doesn’t mean just Googling a particular hike or trek up a mountain.

And I certainly don’t rely on a GPS or a smartphone in the middle of nowhere.

I use topography maps, a compass, and a where the sun rises and sets — something a surprising number of people don’t have working knowledge of.

This trip down memory lane was triggered by a July 4 incident in Death Valley involving two tourists in  a clearly low-clearance sedan.

I’ve been to Death Valley for week-long trips more than 30 times.

Only once did I venture there in the summer. And that was for hiking in the higher elevation where the trailheads start at 6,800 feet of starting out at midnight when the temperatures cooled down to 97 degrees to reach the Panamint Valley Sand Dunes and get back to the car by 8 a.m.

Hiking in Death Valley proper on a summer day is sheer madness.

And turning down the cut-above-primitive West Side Road that redefines the phrase “road to nowhere” and was once used by Charlie Manson to reach a place where he holed up in the southwestern portion of Death Valley for months is sheer stupidity unless you are a desert rat and aim to do some serious cross-country hiking into the Panamint Range.

The two men were relying on GPS when they made the wrong turn onto West Side Road.

It should be noted the road is clearly marked. It has signs warning you it isn’t going  to be a Sunday drive.

They drove back and forth on the road for three hours after getting lost.

Around midnight, they decided to drive across the fragile 200-square-mile salt flat.

The car got stuck less than a mile away.

They set out on foot walking 13 miles before someone picked them up.

A towing company used a skid steer machine to remove the car three weeks later.

I have no idea what it cost, but back in 1992 an acquaintance had a vehicle sustain a broken axle on a primitive road in the Eureka Valley portion of Death Valley National Park 10 miles from the nearest pavement.

The standard AAA road service doesn’t cover such non-paved roads. He ended up forking out $1,200 for the tow 31 years ago.

Unfortunately, the two Fourth of July tourists aren’t the first — nor will they be the last — who venture out into what is basically a wilderness lulled into a sense of safety by modern technology and believing if you Google something everything will end up being OK.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com