Off-Road Tales: 20250301 Hellgate Wilderness Area

The Route

Equipment:

• Equipment: 2023 Polaris RZR XP 4 1000 Ultimate
• RZR UTV Side by Side
• Video: Anyski 3 Channel DashCam

See: photos of the day below

After a couple of weeks of no riding, and despite a possible Red Flag Warning starting at 11am, I wanted to go out on Saturday. I send a message on Friday morning if anyone was interested and got a ping back from Pat that he wanted to go to! — Quickly sent him a message to meet at 9:45a at coordinates 33.84827, -112.32251, So the stage was set! YEAH!!

This was our first ride together; he has a very nice decked-out 2-seater RZR 1000 (learned a few things!) while I am driving my 4-seater RZR XP 4 1000 (Still getting used to it, so GREAT practice!) Neither one of us had done this ride, so we are in discovery and exploration mode! — (In other words, mistakes can be made, and I made a couple)

For the past couple of years, I have been riding solo — I think one time a couple of years ago I went out with someone. One of the items he showed me was his Rugged UHF Radio with full headsets setup (nice!), which I have not equipped my machine with yet. I do have a couple of BAOFENG GM-15 Pro 8W GMRS Radios which are supposed to be compatible but I did not know how to configure (lesson learned – been searching YouTube). I gave him one, and I took the other, and we used it a couple of times, but I can definitely see that communications are essential when riding with others in a group!

This ride was about 3 hours round trip and about 29 miles! and it was a good one! — Just what I needed to decompress for the week!

After a few miles riding on the wash, we tuned randomly left and the place opened up! — WOW! we were in the middle of the desert surrounded by hills, and we were going up!

At the top – of the hills what a 360 view! — we stayed up there for a bit, and then we headed down, and did the hieroglyphic Mountain Loop ( did not see any) .

I wanted to cross over from where we were to the Boulders area. We tried several routes, but they were single track and reached a point that we had to turn around. It was fun but VERY tight. (Not sure what Pat thought at this point, but he agreed while saying – “This is the narrow road I have been in” <smiling>

Eventually we found our way and headed back to the staging area. –

Overall it was a GREAT Ride. BEATIFUL area with lots of trails to discover in the future. It was a great 4 hours! – Thanks Pat!

(side note: I am now looking at the Rugged Radio UHF setup – on my wishlist!)