My wife's cousin is in from the Philippines and what better way to show her something completely different than to take her up into the mountains crawling through the Sonoran landscape? I've been looking for an excuse to find the Sunflower Mine for quite awhile and this was it.
The first third of the trail is just washboard. I think my wife's Corolla could've made it (think Apache Trail). Things get very bumpy very quickly however. There's a split in the 25A trail: to the right is a surprisingly difficult ledge to get over ( I had to back up and go at it twice) and to the left is a standard set of small steps. The left path winds back around to where the right path comes out and 25A continues up a very narrow and very bumpy section. A few ups and downs, a (dry) creek crossing and a tiny bridge brings you to a rock garden that is all first gear lo and hanging on to the steering wheel. Nothing dangerous or too difficult, just very slow going. I did manage to get a bit stuck in this section. My front dropped into a rut in front of a ledge maybe 24" tall and one of my rear tires was right in front of a decent sized rock. No going forward or backwards. Well my winch was having none of that! I taught the cousin how to operate the control, strapped around the biggest tree trunk I could find, through a big blanket over the cable and got back in to steer. Thank you Warn!
We finally got to an opened up area beside the dry creek we'd been following and off to the left is the trail leading up to the actual mine. It's a bit of a trek up so we just walked back in to where we were beneath the remaining building and called it a success. Very beautiful little spot that would be perfect for a peaceful weekend.
The trail continues on but the book says the trail gets much more difficult and I didn't want to scare my co-pilot on her first run so we turned around and headed back out. What happened next is posted over on the
Wrangler page.
If anyone's up to running the full length of this trail let me know. As soon as the buggy is back from the body shop I'll be ready to go!