02-11-13

Yesterday we tried the toughest trail we have been on to date.
The trail is called Presidents Choice. In our off road book it is rated “difficult”  That, I think, is an understatement.

 

To get there we met at Cheryl and Dennis’s house. There were 5 jeeps in the group.
From there we drove to Parker and fueled up.
We left Parker driving east on SR 95 where we turned onto the road to the Desert Bar. A couple miles up that road we came to a turn out on the right which is where the trail starts.
We drove up and
 

down some steep hills

and through some rugged valleys

until we came to the first major obstacle in a wash
 

I took one look at this obstacle and said “ ok that is as far as I’m going”. Almost everyone had the same reaction. Every one except Dennis. He seldom turns down a challenging rock crawl and decided to give it a try.

He made it over the first set of rocks.

But the next rocks were too much even for Dennis.

Eventually he conceded and turned around. We decided to have lunch between the two obstacles. This is the first time I have seen Dennis defeated by rocks.
You can see the second set of rocks behind Cheryl.

It was a good spot out of the wind with plenty of space for everyone to sit so we decided to have lunch here.

We headed back down the trail and found some lesser obstacles on side trails to try.

I made it up this one.

 
but it was pretty scary.

Going back down was interesting. It was decided to connect a strap to the rear of my jeep to keep it from tipping forward.

After this obstacle we watched the others try a few more rock crawls. From there we headed back out the trail.

When we got back to the trail head it was decided to try going up a wash that was the outlet to the Presidents Choice trail. The wash was rough in one spot.

A short distance passed this spot we came to a vertical section that is called the “wall” and that is exactly what it is. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of it. There was an escape route to the right so we took it and circled back to the parking area.

It was about 3:30 by that time and we decided that we had had about all the excitement we wanted for one day and headed for home.
On the way down SR 95 to Quartzsite we came across this semi stuck across the road.

It looked like the driver tried to turn around here but got the tractor stuck in the sand. Oops!

This morning it is raining. We are planning to go to Blythe today but will wait until later when the rain is supposed to stop.