If the formatting of this post seems odd – it may be because I’m making this post from my laptop since the iPad seems to have a problem with more than 4-5 pictures when editing.
Dar had a nice day just hangin' out at the camper with our dog CoCoa while I spent the entire day riding in the desert with my friend Jerry. With our Engine Coolant Temp sensor issue put behind us, we put in almost 80 miles on the Arctic Cat Wildcat Trail SxS (Side-by-Side ATV)... I have disconnected our front sway bar and found that the SxS has much better articulation in the front suspension – this is a huge help in the boulder strewn washes..
The trail conditions range from smooth and dusty sand to jagged rocks and boulders. You must have a very well prepared vehicle and in good condition before you venture out. One of our group of eight SxS’s ended up turning back an hour into the ride with a broken axle. A friend of his followed to ensure he made it safely. The pictures in this post are from our ride and show some of the conditions we encountered
The picture below is a typical boulder & rock wash in the trail. What the picture can't convey is the length and the incline. The distance from the bottom of the picture to the tree in the center-top of the pic is about 100 yards. The climb is a good 60-70' or more in altitude gain. The boulders in the wash are not necessarily slick, but they don't have sharp edges on them that give you traction either. You can see the rubber on the boulders from the numerous jeeps and SxS rigs like ours.. You'd not want to try these trails with your SUV unless it is 4 wheel drive and has full skid plates in case you bottom out on the rocks.. I could not climb this incline unless I had really good boots, a rope from the top and probably 30 minutes time.
These next two pictures are representative of many of the mountain trails. They ranged from relatively smooth (but very dusty) sand and rock to pretty rough rock trails with a number of washouts that were pretty tricky to negotiate - being mindful that a slip could get you a really quick ride down the side of the mountain.
Rest / Water Break – It’s really important to stay hydrated out here. The humidity is so low that your body may be sweating and you’d never even know it. We stop at least every two hours to stretch and drink our water. We had two other SxS break their Sway-Bar links on the rough trails.
The first leg of the ride took us up into the mountains by Superior AZ to a place the locals called "White Mine". This is where they mine minerals that are used in a number of areas - most notably Sheet-Rock (for the walls of your house) and Antacids like Tums and Rolaids.. I actually believe that this is an active Perlite Mine. This is the only picture I could get as my camera was packed away while I was negotiating the climb down from the ridge of the mountain.
Our lunch break was here in the valley alongside the White Mine. I hiked up the trail just 50 yards or so after my sandwich. Loose rocks are easy to negotiate with the SxS, but on foot, it was a bit more challenging.
BEEP-BEEP signals the group leader and we are back on our way.
This is an abandoned Jail that was cut right into the rock in the side of a mountain foot-hill.. The bars are gone and so are the prisoners... This jail is supposedly about 200 years old. I don't doubt it - Arizona and most western states were just territories then and yes, it was the Wild West... Unlike many other visitors to this ruins – we did our best to not disturb them.
From the JailHouse ruins, we moved through the hills to a really neat little area on the north-east side of a foothill and found this abandoned house with working windmill / well.. The house has been abused by numerous visitors which is truly unfortunate. Check out the stone and adobe-cement water holding tank. This house was probably still being lived in during the seventies.
Still at the abandoned Rock House – there is a working windmill water pump.. This pump fills a tank up on top of the hill by the rock house and the overflow comes down the hill to these tanks for the horses (presumably)
Montana Mountain -- From the Old Stone house we doubled back and took another leg of our journey to the top of Montana Mountain. While the temps on the desert floor was close to 80 degrees, It was a bit chilly at the top of Montana Mountain about 3500 feet up. The view was incredible.. Again I find that there is just no way to capture the beauty and expanse of the desert in these pictures.
On the way here we negotiated a number of narrow trails, ridges and switch-backs as pressed on in our SxS to climb to the summit. Some of the trails were very narrow, barely wide enough to accommodate a Jeep – with drop offs looking down hundreds of feet and in some cases roughly a thousand feet. Not a place to be if you are afraid of heights or squeamish.
Now it’s time to start the final leg of our journey and head back to the RV Resort. We were to take the trail on the other side of the mountain. The ride down the mountain was exciting, extremely dusty and very fast. Sometimes too fast. As we were going down rock and boulder washes along, the SxS would start picking up too much speed. Riding the brakes only as much as I had to, I became aware that they (brakes) were starting to get hot and fading slightly. The SxS does have dynamic engine braking, but it was not very effective on the steep trails. I would try to let the brakes cool as much as I could between application.
The picture below is what much of our ride home across the desert was like. I had to lift the windscreen up and just take the dust in our faces as the low humidity and fast moving air created a really bad static charge on the windscreen – it was caked with dust to the point where we could not see through it. Just a few minutes after taking this picture, we had a steer (big-mutha COW) come from no where and run right in front of our SxS. Moving at 20 MPH was far faster than I was really comfortable with given the conditions. I was less comfortable in trying to figure out where I was and how to get home via GPS – so I opted to keep up and bear with the dust.
We arrived back at the park at about 4:45 or so. This is a picture of myself (on left) and my friend Jerry. Shortly after this picture – Dar had me strip down in the garage section of our camper and hit the shower. I think I had to use 8 Q-Tips to get all the crud out of my ears. more than 24 hours later – I am still digging stuff out of my eyes…
All in all – it was a FABULOUS time (yes even with all the dirt)…
The pictures below are screen shots of an app that I installed on my iPhone called myTracks. This myTracks application was set to record mode and it tracked our trek through the desert and mountains. I am learning more about the App and hope to be using it more. It does eat up the battery however... So, a charging cord in the SxS is in the near future..
Adding (I hope) a short video of part of our trail ride to Montana Mountain::
This is just a short segment of one of our rides to Montana Mountain. While most of the trails were very wide, there were some that had very steep drop offs on one or sometimes both sides. Hundreds of feet or more and in at least one case, probably close to a thousand feet to the bottom. Be that as it may, it's not really dangerous unless you're driving well over your head (too fast) or in poor conditions.
