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| 4x4 Trip | 32.93 Miles |
4,951 AEG |
| | 4x4 Trip | 32.93 Miles | 5 Hrs 59 Mns | | 8.06 mph |
| 4,951 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Arrived at the beginning of the road around 7:30. There's a geocache loop called the Pinal Loop that takes you around these mountains. With lots of geocaches to find and many miles to cover, I was hoping for a lot of finds. This was not the case, as I ended up with more DNF's than I did smiley faces.
The road down to Simpson Lake was pretty smooth, didn't need 4wd. Passes a lot of useless cattle guards. Turning down Simpson Lake road was when the area became pretty rough. Once you enter the river/wash, there was not much of a road. We needed 4wd from this point on. The road was mostly in the creek, with many boulders and mine garbage to navigate around. Along the way, we found an old adit in the side of the mountain. After looking at some topo maps after the trip I saw there were some others nearby, along with an old ranch somewhere north of the mine.
[ youtube video ]
About a mile past the mine, we reached a fork in the road. This fork didn't go anywhere, and the roads reconnected after 500 feet. The left fork went up to a narrow and eroded section of road, while the right path entered the creek. We originally thought the bottom path went nowhere, so we went on the top path. This was a mistake. We drove the jeep on the top path, I was hesitant and thought we wouldn't fit, my dad however, thought it was fine. I drove up and the path became very narrow, dad watched out the passenger side to make sure I didn't fall off. All was good till we hit a very narrow section. Dad hopped out of the Jeep (and nearly fell off the cliff) and carefully directed me past this spot. It was slow going, but we made it past. I do not recommend taking the high section in a normal car, leave it for the utvs and dirtbikes. This was by far the most stressful portion of the trip.
We finally made it out of the creek and joined FR 2 heading south. We saw lots of great views of the surrounding area. We soon made it to a junction and continued on FR 2. Few switch backs here, but nothing I couldn't handle. Once we joined FR 349A/635 it was a bit slower going, as we had to constantly check our maps to make sure we were going the right way. There's a lot of old mining and ranch roads out here. We passed two tanks, which has water in them. We also saw a lot of cows here. We had to open and close one gate along the way.
Around mile 12, my Dad's maps showed FR 2545, which looked like it could take us to the Sulphide del Rey campground. Turns out this road does not exist, so we were forced to continue on to FR899. After navigating more switchbacks and one technical spot, we eventually made it to the more maintained FR899. At this point it was an easy 5ish miles east to the campground.
At mile 18, we reached a junction with four other nearby roads. We thought there was a shortcut to Miami via FR 580. This was not the case as there was a locked gate near the radio tower. On a side note, we found a exhumed casket on the ground. It was sealed but was leaking a weird fluid and smelled like death. We found a hole in the ground a bit higher up. Not sure why the casket wasn't there, but we assumed the rain unburied it, then someone found it thinking it was treasure.
We turned back and headed down FR651 for an easy descent to Kellner Canyon Road. We then turned left, assuming it would take us back to Globe. Turns out the road was barricaded a mile down the road, not sure why the don't have any signs of the closer near the junction. Went the other way and eventually made it back to Globe and the US 60 to head home. |
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