Sat. Oct. 3, 2009
Well it turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day out in the desert. I couldn't have asked for better weather. I met up with two Jeep Cherokees at Dudley's Bakery in Santa Ysabel around 7am. In no time at all we were at the trailhead to Pinyon Mountain where we aired down and made sure everything was secure inside the vehicles.
As we made our way easily through The Squeeze we notice a group of bikes coming up and waited to see how they would fair at the obstacle. They all made it through ok, but the dropoff was to be another story. As I squared my rig up at the top of Pinyon Dropoff the small crowd gathered to see how the old YJ would do. It did great. After easing into the rut at the top of the hill and lifting a rear wheel, I made my way down the loose decent towards the bottom. No problem. Once the Cherokees made their way down it was the bikers turn. The first fellow skillfully motered his way down the steep dropoff without and problems. However the next two guys decided to walk their bikes down. That didn't seem like a good idea to me, with gravity pulling on a few hundred pounds of moter bike down a steep, loose hill. Of course they ate it halfway down but fortunately no one was hurt.
Soon we were blasting down Fish Creek and on up to Arroyo Seco Del Diablo Canyon. Although there were quite a few areas where the canyon walls had collapsed, the trail had already been well traveled. After a quick run through muddy Carrizo Creek and onto the old stagecoach station, we made our way out to hwy S-2 via Canyon Sin Nombre. The next stop was Painted Gorge and the Carrizo Mountain area.
As usual, the shelf road up the mountain was nice and rough. Just the way we like it! At the summit we had clear views of the Salton Sea, Superstition Mountain, Plaster City and Mexico. On the way down we took a quick detour to the base of the mountain on the Cliffhanger trail. By 5pm we were aired up and back on the pavement. It was a great long day on the trail!
Oh, but don't worry! Although we traveled down some narrow, sandy canyons nobody crashed into any walls. cough*Eric*cough
Would have loved to see a picture of your rig in the squeeze just for reference! 
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