Hard Driving
Monday, July 28th, 2025: 2025 Trips, Gila, Regions, Road Trips.
Rain and mild temperatures were forecast for next week, but this weekend was due to be hot. There was one last high-elevation refuge from the heat that I hadn’t tried this summer – partly because the drive is so hard I’d sworn never to do it again.
It starts by fording the river – usually flooded after a season of good precipitation – at an elevation of 6,300 feet, and ends at an old cabin used by the Forest Service on the crest of the range at just over 9,500 feet. The cabin sits among pines, Douglas-firs, and aspens above a grassy meadow, so I imagined stringing my hammock and enjoying a cool breeze as monsoon clouds sailed above.
Previously, I’d parked further down and walked the last 3 miles of the road. The trail to the 10,165 foot peak begins near the cabin, and I’d wanted a longer hike to the peak. Not happening with this knee immobilizer.
I’ve been so preoccupied, I forgot that this year’s wildfire had reached and crossed the highway near the turnoff. As I approached, I began seeing isolated pines with brown needles and wondered if it was fire or drought. At the turnoff, the forest on one side of the highway had been killed by hot surface fire but not burned.
Part of me regretted not being able to explore this changed habitat I knew so well before. But I was on a different mission.
The river was dry, but there was flash flood debris on the highway and all around. It will take a lot more than sporadic cloudbursts to keep the river flowing. On the dirt road, past the cabins in the foothills, I pulled over to deflate my tires. The first time I drove this road I hadn’t thought of that and nearly had a nervous breakdown from the hammering suspension.
And now I had my fancy new lifted suspension, so I came with no fear of banging and scraping the undercarriage, and wouldn’t have to slow and stress over finding the best line over the bedrock.
But that part starts eight miles in and 1,300 feet higher. For now, I could enjoy the gravel surface winding up to the mesa, and the long straights on top, and the lower tire pressure made even the rocky grades relatively comfortable.
I always tell people our habitat turns to Ireland in a good monsoon, and I was surprised to find it had already done that in these foothills. I was also surprised to see a smoke column indicating active burning in a wildfire that started almost three weeks ago in roadless and virtually inaccessible mountains northwest of town – despite sporadic rains ever since.
Eight miles back, the road crosses a saddle, changes from gravel to bedrock, and begins traversing down into a canyon. The bedrock is rough and sharp and the edge of the road drops off hundreds of feet into the canyon bottom. Partway down is a little sign memorializing two guys who drove off.
That stretch, which you only survive by driving at walking speed, descends less than a mile and a couple hundred vertical feet. And beyond is where the main trial begins: the eight-mile ascent of 2,100 vertical feet, much of it on bedrock.
Apparently my memory is incapable of storing and accurately reproducing just how difficult this road is. Because despite driving most of it twice before, I couldn’t believe how bad it was – walking pace only, less than 5 mph, climbing over ledges and rocking back and forth over long series of boulders. I spent much of the drive stopping, getting out, and trying to capture how bad it was in photos. The air outside was definitely cooling with elevation, but the high roofline and big windows make my vehicle like a greenhouse. I had to run the A/C, and every time I got out, I felt like I was being grilled alive by the heat coming off the engine compartment.
The Sidekick did great – as far as I can tell. It’s finally fulfilling its potential as an off-road vehicle. Unlike before, I wasn’t worried or stressed at all. But with all those stops, the clock was ticking and I realized that if I made it to the end, I would just have to turn around and drive back down. No hammock, no gentle breeze, no admiring the cloud formations. And that little engine, laboring to keep the A/C going, would ironically have me drenched with sweat by the time I got there.
You climb through and above a spectacular landscape, with seemingly impossible slopes and rock outcrops jutting among the tall pines, like something out of a classical Chinese painting. Pinyon pine coexist with Gambel oak and ponderosa pine almost up to the 9,000 foot level, where the spruce-fir-aspen forest begins.
Above 9,000 feet, you skirt the edge of the burn scar from the massive 2013 Silver Fire – resulting in spectacular views of a different kind. And here, the bloom began, with some flowers I can’t remember seeing anywhere else.
The road mostly levels out and leaves the solid bedrock surface behind, becoming a seldom-used, overgrown two-track on a rock-and-gravel mix which allowed me to speed up to 15 mph, in short stretches, for the first time in over an hour – although still with a lot of bouncing. And then I would reach a fallen tree, or boulder, and have to skirt around it.
I drove past the farthest point I’d reached before, and traversed the divide of the range from west to east, getting spectacular views over the eastern watershed, with its rock fins, vast bowls lined with virulent, impassable post-fire locust regrowth, and undulating cloud shadows. And more roadside flowers, so more stops and more engine roasting.
The last stretch is a rollercoaster along the fire-stripped and regrown crest to the small old-growth forest around the cabin, saved from the wildfire.
Having recently begun learning our mountain trees, I was pleased to recognize an old high-elevation pine twinned with an apparently same-age doug fir next to the cabin, offering a shady spot for my vehicle. This Southwestern white pine is individually cited in the field guide to trees of our region, by a former friend, sadly deceased.
Over 90 in town at 6,000 feet, it was in the high 70s here. Perfect campsite if I’d been prepared for bears and didn’t have work tomorrow.
It was already an hour later than I’d hoped to turn back. Yes, I could drive faster downhill, but although I made fewer stops, with a different view now I couldn’t resist taking more pics.
The steep descent on bedrock was easier, and again, devoid of the scraping, banging, and stress me and the vehicle had suffered previously. I’d hoped for rain, and had snagged a few drops on the windshield, but I had to settle for cloud formations.
When I reached the mesa, the emerald green of the grassy slopes again waylaid me, and turning back toward the crest, I saw hallucinatory rain clouds. How lucky we are to live here!
By the time I got home, I’d spent five and a half hours, mostly driving – 104 miles out-and-back. I was glad I did it while hoping never to do it again. But how could you go wrong in a place and at a time like this?
