Recently in San Rafael Swell Category

On Saturday, 5 December, I made the super dark drive starting at 0500 to reach Green River for a 9am link-up with the At Your Leisure (AYL) TV crew and a few other participants. The end objective was to run into the White Sands Wash sand dunes area and film a clip for an upcoming show.

We gathered at the Conoco at the East side of Green River and started our ride. I believe all told, there were about 10 machines in our group. We stopped nearly every mile to capture film footage to include overhead drone. After ~2 hours or so, we arrived at the mesa overlooking the sand dunes and Chad and Ria filmed their introductions.

From there, I departed solo in my CanAm Maverick X3 Turbo R to the East and North, crossing atop I-70 to hit the Book Cliffs before it was time to check-into the Quality Inn.

Finished the Book Cliffs run and banked south and West along the old interstate 70 road (broken pavement, etc) and proceeded to check into the Quality Inn while I waited for my friend Mike to arrive from his Cowboy shoot near Price.

Used the BBQ grill at the hotel to grill up a great steak sourced from Dry Lakes Beef out of Parowan with a nice Ceasar salad.

The next morning, we walked across to Tamarisk for a fine breakfast, jumped in our individual trucks and trailered to Exit 131 at the Wickiup where Mike unloaded his Polaris RS1 and I unloaded my CanAm X3.

From that location, 0830'ish, we banked North and ran around the Wickup before catching Coal Wash to Fix-it Pass to Devil's Racetrack. Devil's Racetrack to Coal Wash to Eva Conover to Eagle Canyon over toward Swaseys Cabin and back to the trucks.

A few photos.

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In about August 2014, I started planning a fall event in the San Rafael Swell. The plan was to stage at the end of the pavement near Temple Mountain. I posted an invite link on Facebook and invited many to participate.

As the week neared, the weather was looking to be perfect. Mid-70's and full sunshine were forecast for the entire weekend. It was going to be great.

I took that Thurs & Friday off and was on the road by early afternoon on Thursday. Traffic was mild and the trek south/east was uneventful, except for what I noticed on my speedometer. I truck has just clocked 111111 miles. It was an odd sight.

 

GPS Tracks for the weekend here: TempleMountain-Area.gdb


An interesting history of the mining in the area found here: SanRafaelOralHistoryReport4-16-2012.pdf

 

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Upon arriving at the Temple Mountain area, I found my staging/camping location was already fairly full, but I did manage to carve out an area large enough for my rig and friends.

 

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That Friday, I decided to pre-ride many sections that I thought could be technical. Behind the Reef and Little Wild Horse trails had a few technical rocky sections and I determined that we'd avoid the rock craw on Little Wild Horse.

 

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100 miles ridden on Friday and only two sections that were somewhat technical. I mapped everything out with the GPS, plotted on the BLM / County map and prepared for Saturday's ride.

 

Saturday, the sky was clear and morning temps in the high 50's. Everyone donned their gear, with one heavy jacket in sight and off we went.

One of the many exciting discoveries had to be an accessible mine near Tomisch Butte. The mine seemed to cover the entire length and width of the mountain. We entered near the chute and would come out on another section of the mountain. Probably not advisable for us to have wandered through given it was a uranium mine..

A few videos:


 Where is James King?


 

Language Translation




 

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About this Archive

This page is an archive of recent entries in the San Rafael Swell category.

Richfield is the previous category.

Trip Reports is the next category.

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