Last shake down on First Day of Spring

We took SuziQ out for a short shake down this morning.  We left home and drove The Well Road (FR 119) to FR 618 and then over past Sacred Mountain to the Deadwood Road.  That's just before (west of) Walker Creek.  We headed up Deadwood until we got to a series of volcanic ledges that were just slightly beyond a stock Zuk's capabilities.  We would want at least 2 inches of lift, skidplates and rock rails to attempt those ledges.  Anyway, we got in some nice maneuvering in a lot of SOB rocks (SOB = Same Old Basalt rocks).
The road leading up to the rocky parts was heavily eroded and rutted and stretched out our stock articulation.  Nothing shook loose aside from some body panel clips.  The newly installed hardtop didn't flex and was dust free on the very dusty FR 618.  We are running 10 pounds in the General Grabbers and they handled the washboards real nicely.  The tires did a fine job on the SOB rocks, too.  Susun drove it back down the hill and home and she's as happy as I am with this rig.  We'd like to get some skidplates soon but, if we don't, we're good to go wheelin' on some classic Arizona and Utah back roads and trails on our way up north to Idaho in mid-April.  Life is good!  Cheers, jp

Sycamore Pass & Robber's Roost

It's been exactly 30 years since I was out at Sycamore Pass & Robber's Roost.  Back then you could drive right to the pass.  It's blocked off now and you have to hike out there on what's called the Dogie Trail.  The Forest Road out to the Pass is well maintained and any old sedan can make it easily.  The road out to the pass now serves as a kind of feeder route to an extensive network of various roads rated Moderate, Difficult and Extreme.  See the blog post below this one for more information.

On the way back from Sycamore Pass, we turned north on Route 9530 to go to Robber's Roost.  The Forest Service rates 9530 as Difficult but it wasn't difficult at all.  We did use our 4WD but only to go a little slower over the rough cobbled surface.  Anyway, we got out close to Robber's Roost and decided to hike to the top of it.  Here is a photo of the Coconino Nat'l Forest map that shows Robber's Roost in relation to Sycamore Pass.

Luckily, when the gubmint made that big Wilderness area, they somehow squeezed  #9530 into a little neck of non-wilderness.  That's a good thing because they don't let vehicles into Wilderness areas.  We really enjoyed our 90 minute scrambled up and back on Robber's Roost.  As Susun like to say, "It's a comeback spot."  The sweeping view of Red Rock Country is real nice.  Door-to-door, our run was 66 miles.  Most of that was on pavement getting over to Forest Road 525 between Sedona and Cottonwood.  The map below shows the portion of the run from Highway 89A out to the Pass and the Roost. The second map shows the area of the Pass and the Roost in a little finer detail.  We parked at the red "X" so the rest of that GPS track is on foot, not in the Zuk.

 We thought about checking out Road 9530B but came to a small hill that definitely required skid plate protection.  We sure want to get some skid plates soon!  Road 9530 proceeds past Robber's Roost on up a steep hill to some old mining roads.  Those stretches appears to be beyond the limits of a stock rig.  Below are a few more photos of our hike up onto Robber's Roost.

We were out for six hours but moving for only four of those hours.  The way the GPS works, "moving" includes the time we were hiking.  So, the actual driving time would have been about 2.5 hours.  Our gas mileage dropped down a little bit on this trip to 26.6.  Trip cost was $8.46 with gas at $3.40 here.

 Our original goal for this run was the road that goes up on top of Sugarloaf.  In the photo above, Sugarloaf is marked with the "A."  You can barely make out the Zuk parked at "B."  That's Black Mtn. behind Sugarloaf and Mingus Mtn. way in the back far horizon with snow on it. We hope to get back out there again soon to do the Sugarloaf run.  There's a lot of really intriguing roads in that vicinity.  I suspect we're are going to be regular visitors there.  You can click here for the interactive Google map.

Cheers, jp

Verde Valley Wheelin' Roads?

Saturday, Susun and I drove out to Sycamore Pass and Robber's Roost. That run is described in the blog post above this one. This was our first experience with the OHV road and trail system the Coconino Nat'l Forest put in place in 2005.  They have put up at least one cool new sign (so far it's not shot up) showing the roads in this vicinity.

There's a couple of maintained roads that provide access to the maze of all the other routes. Smoky has classified the roads from easy to extreme and they are all color coded on a signboard map. They sell a six dollar map that I plan to buy either today or tomorrow. This large area appears to have the potential to be a real playground for Zuks.

This is one area where camping is allowed on the Forest.  There's a huge chunk of land around Sedona where all camping is prohibited unless you go into a developed campground.  I picked up the camping map and OHV map ($6) today in Sedona.

This might be a great place for a ZOA annual spring camp trip. The photos below are pretty self explanatory.  We will post up more here when we learn more.  (You can click on any image below to see a larger version.)
We definitely plan on spending more time in this area.

Blue Grade & Stoneman

After being gone 19 days, one of the first things Susun wanted to do was a road trip in SuziQ. We arrived home late Wednesday and were packed and ready to run by 11:30 Thursday morning. We headed back up the Blue Grade on the same route as our first run in Suzi Q on January 27th. This time, though, we pulled out at the cinder pit alongside Rarick Canyon. We spotted the elusive distant waterfall alongside Table Mtn. in Mullican Canyon and decided to attempt to get over there to see it.

When the Blue Grade ended at the paved Stoneman Road, we were somewhat surprised to see a "Road Closed" sign. The Blue Grade had been bone dry for us, even dusty in places. We figured the Forest Service put up the closure sign when the road was still a pig sty of mud.

When we reached the "T" in the Stoneman Road, there was another "Road Closed" sign for the route to Watershed Camp and Apache Maid Mtn. Since the previous Road Closed sign hadn't been necessary, we figured maybe the same thing was true for this closure sign. Wrong. Barely a couple of miles out on the Watershed Camp Road, it turned to total sticky, greasy, deep slop. We could easily see that the shoulders where black holes waiting to swallow a Zuk alive. We carefully and gingerly turned around and slip and slid out way back out to a firmer surface. At one point, our tires were basically as smooth as bowling balls with all the volcanic mud stuck to them. We enjoyed a nice snack break at one of the tributaries of Rarick Canyon.

We next figured that the main Stoneman Road would be passable since it gets a lot of traffic and serves a place where people actually live year-round: Stoneman Lake.
Sure enough, the Stoneman Road had been expertly plowed and was in great shape, even dusty in a few places. A normal sedan could have traveled the road except for one really sloppy part. We stopped briefly to peer into Stoneman Lake. It's not a lake anymore. It should be called Stoneman Marsh.

As we topped 7,000 feet and kept climbing the snow became much deeper. We topped out at 7500 feet and then drove out to the end of the Stoneman Road at Forest Highway 3 and turned around. We picked out a medium-dry pull out and slapped on our snowshoes. We enjoyed a fine snowshoe out into a sunny meadow. Well, it's not a meadow now, of course, but it would be when the snow's gone. There's an impressive amount of snow up there in there in the high country.

We then retraced our route back home. The run was 58 miles from door-to-door. The "new" General Grabber tires really performed well, except in the mud. They made the ride a lot smoother and we both made numerous comments about how the tires tamed the rocks and washboards.

After returning home, we stripped out the inside of the Zuk and ripped out the OEM carpet. Carpet is impossible to keep clean when you're messing around in snow and mud. We also made a more secure mount for the 2nd spare tire. Our personal rig is beginning to come together and we are pleased.

We don't think the Watershed Camp Road will dry out anytime soon--it's that wet. Hopefully, we can get up there while the Mullican waterfall is still cranking. We've hiked to it once before and we guess it was about 60-80 feet tall.

You can click here for all 72 photos we took. We'll eventually put captions on them.  The screen shot of the track map is below.  Click here for the interactive Google Map.

The trip took 3.5 hours.  The GPS shows we were moving for 2.5 hours and stopped for an hour.  Our average speed including stops as 17 mph.  Our actual moving speed average was 24 mph. Our mpg was 28.6 and the trip cost (@ $3.40 gal.) was $7.12 for 2.1 gallons.