AZ Trip Info
All right, here's some info from the Charles Wells book - it's called the Guide to AZ Backroads and 4-Wheel Drive Trails.
We had talked about the Flagstaff and Sedona areas at the August meeting. There are a lot of good possibilities for trails (see below).
The Toroweap Overlook (north rim of the Grand Canyon) was also mentioned. Toroweap sounds fantastic in the book, but it may be more driving than most of us would like for a weekend trip, even a slightly extended weekend trip (the book points out that it's only 10 miles from the south rim to the north rim, but getting to the north rim adds 215 miles of driving!). If you came in through I-40 to Flafstaff, you have to go north almost to Utah to get to the north rim.
If some folks were planning to go up as early as Thursday and stay until Monday, that could probably work, but that would also rule out folks who can only make it for the weekend. So I think Toroweap would be a good trip at some point, but maybe not the best for this one. But I'm not in charge here - those are just my thoughts. Please discuss. It could also be possible to have two groups. If some folks are set on Toroweap, they could go there and another group could look at the Flagstaff/Sedona area. I am leaning towards Flag/Sedona. Some info on Flagstaff and Sedona areas follow.
There are four trails north of Flagstaff, 3 easy and one difficult. The difficult is Cinder Hills OHC area, and that could be worth exploring. Even though it says difficult, it's a dedicated OHV area with lots of options from easy to hard. Very large - 13,500 acres, so it could be explored for quite a while. I think the "easy" options in this book are roughly equivalent to forest roads.
There are more options near Sedona. The book shows nine trails, with a good distribution of easy, moderate, and hard trails. Given that Sedona is just south of Flagstaff (not sure how far, maybe 50 - 60 miles?), maybe we could look at making Sedona a base camp, and we could always look at a day trip to the Flagstaff area if we wanted to try out the Cinder Hills area.
If we do decide to wheel in the Sedona area, we would need to buy a "Red Rocks Pass" fo access to the trails. According to the book, this costs $5 a day or $15 for a week. These prices may also have gone up since the book was published in 2001.
I'm happy to answer any specific questions that may be in the book. With that, I will close and let the discussion begin. Should be a fun trip!
. Toroweap for me is a photo and hiking trip mainly. I wouldn't consider it wheeling in any way. It's a fabulous place, on the end of 61 miles of dusty, but well maintained dirt road that can be reached by any stock SUV. I did some of it at 50 mph. A few rocks in the last few miles, but nothing we'd see as difficult in any way. The campground is all on rock and there are a couple of group spots, all are first come first serve so it can possibly be a long drive for disappointment. And your dog ain't welcome on any of it's trails. Awesome place though.
