Bloody Basin Ruins & Pictographs plus exploring 01-06-07
Another excellent adventure for the record books. This time we had a few new outlaws along for the adventure and even a couple of rookies. Along for the ride was Roy, Jeff Hoonsen, Ball Bearing (Bob), his friend Terrance, Walkerazranger (Larry), Redman (Mac), 2 Rookies (Roy's friends I don't remember their names) Oldracer, and me Azquadrider.
Our plan was to stage right off I 17 on the Bloody Basin road. There are some Indian ruins and Pictographs that I was going to take the group to see. We unloaded at 8:00 AM and got ready to ride. It was 31 degrees at ride time. Brrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!! The first 11.4 miles is very good graded road so you can cook along at 35 to 40 but it was so cold I thought my fingers were going to fall off. I had good warm layers except I could not find my warm gloves. Not a good move. We stopped at the turn to warm up then headed to one of the ruins. There is one large ruin but the walls have pretty much fallen down. If you look on the ground there is lots of pottery shards everywhere. Remember it is against the law to take pottery shards or anything from and Indian ruin.
After a look around we headed to the cliff wall that is loaded with pictographs. If you don't know where they are you will miss them which is probably a good thing since we saw some knuckleheads carved their initials in amongst the pictographs. Someone also carved a plane on the rocks. I think anyone that does this should be shot or at least tied to an ant hill and covered in honey. Enough of that. We all enjoyed climbing along the cliff rocks. Some even wore their helmets. I'm not sure if they were afraid of falling or they were trying to keep their ears warm, but it was a funny site. There are literally hundreds of pictographs in this area. It is amazing to walk on the same rocks that were inhabited by Indians some 700 years ago. Lots of history to be seen and appreciated in our beautiful state.
Next we went to explore some old mining houses. There was one place that had only a chimney that was left standing. There were a couple of other buildings and mines in the area to explore.
This is where the adventure part of the trip started because we didn't really have a plan from here. (except for Roy) We could see a road that switch backed up to the top of the large mountains to the east. We tried a couple of roads that dead ended. On one of the roads Roy was helping his Rookies on a 2 up quad up a wash and he fell right under the front wheels. I thought they were going to run over him for sure. But luckily the driver hit the brakes just in time. As we came out of the wash Hoonsen found the road to the top. After about a mile or so we came to an area where the road was washed out. It wasn’t to bad to Jeff went through and up the other side. Just as I was about to go through he yells that there was another wash out with a 4' plus straight drop. We surveyed the situation and found a way around by dropping into the wash out and going over an off camber spot or 2 with some boulders. That was a blast. Just the kind of trail I love. There were a couple of other washouts to negotiate getting to the top. This trail went over the top of the mountains and dropped over the saddle where we had a couple of miles of off camber narrow trails with some spectacular views. Azgolfer would have loved the narrow off camber trail with a couple hundred foot drop off almost straight down. The trail ended up looking at the trail head where we started from but there was no road to get down. It was probably only 2 miles but we had to back track instead of making a loop. Oh well it was a fun trail and great scenery.
Roy won a couple of contests hands down. He was first in the contest for the dumbest move for nearly getting run over by his own quad. His 2nd first place finish was a close call but he won the side English contest. It was a close race and everyone participated but Roy won on style points and for keeping his toes pointed. Even the Rookies got in the act by the end of the day. A great time was had by everyone.
Read MoreOur plan was to stage right off I 17 on the Bloody Basin road. There are some Indian ruins and Pictographs that I was going to take the group to see. We unloaded at 8:00 AM and got ready to ride. It was 31 degrees at ride time. Brrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!! The first 11.4 miles is very good graded road so you can cook along at 35 to 40 but it was so cold I thought my fingers were going to fall off. I had good warm layers except I could not find my warm gloves. Not a good move. We stopped at the turn to warm up then headed to one of the ruins. There is one large ruin but the walls have pretty much fallen down. If you look on the ground there is lots of pottery shards everywhere. Remember it is against the law to take pottery shards or anything from and Indian ruin.
After a look around we headed to the cliff wall that is loaded with pictographs. If you don't know where they are you will miss them which is probably a good thing since we saw some knuckleheads carved their initials in amongst the pictographs. Someone also carved a plane on the rocks. I think anyone that does this should be shot or at least tied to an ant hill and covered in honey. Enough of that. We all enjoyed climbing along the cliff rocks. Some even wore their helmets. I'm not sure if they were afraid of falling or they were trying to keep their ears warm, but it was a funny site. There are literally hundreds of pictographs in this area. It is amazing to walk on the same rocks that were inhabited by Indians some 700 years ago. Lots of history to be seen and appreciated in our beautiful state.
Next we went to explore some old mining houses. There was one place that had only a chimney that was left standing. There were a couple of other buildings and mines in the area to explore.
This is where the adventure part of the trip started because we didn't really have a plan from here. (except for Roy) We could see a road that switch backed up to the top of the large mountains to the east. We tried a couple of roads that dead ended. On one of the roads Roy was helping his Rookies on a 2 up quad up a wash and he fell right under the front wheels. I thought they were going to run over him for sure. But luckily the driver hit the brakes just in time. As we came out of the wash Hoonsen found the road to the top. After about a mile or so we came to an area where the road was washed out. It wasn’t to bad to Jeff went through and up the other side. Just as I was about to go through he yells that there was another wash out with a 4' plus straight drop. We surveyed the situation and found a way around by dropping into the wash out and going over an off camber spot or 2 with some boulders. That was a blast. Just the kind of trail I love. There were a couple of other washouts to negotiate getting to the top. This trail went over the top of the mountains and dropped over the saddle where we had a couple of miles of off camber narrow trails with some spectacular views. Azgolfer would have loved the narrow off camber trail with a couple hundred foot drop off almost straight down. The trail ended up looking at the trail head where we started from but there was no road to get down. It was probably only 2 miles but we had to back track instead of making a loop. Oh well it was a fun trail and great scenery.
Roy won a couple of contests hands down. He was first in the contest for the dumbest move for nearly getting run over by his own quad. His 2nd first place finish was a close call but he won the side English contest. It was a close race and everyone participated but Roy won on style points and for keeping his toes pointed. Even the Rookies got in the act by the end of the day. A great time was had by everyone.
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