This is the event that I look forward to the most each year. This year wasn’t any different.
Day 1 – Back roads around Sedona
We split up into two groups, one group ran the tougher trail, smasher, someone from that group will have to tell that story, but from what I heard it’s the toughest that trail has been in a long time. The other group that we were part of headed down dirt roads from Smasher towards Sedona. The dirt roads were in about as good of a shape as they come, we managed to complete 1/3 of our planned dirt road in about 20 minutes, to make a day out of it, we decided to head up the Powerline OHV trail. I briefly read about it, and knew there were some “tougher” parts but should be easy enough. It was a perfect mix of great views, smooth roads that could be driven two wheel drive, and some tougher 4×4 low range sections. Once we got done with that trail, we headed towards Greasy Spoon. We ran the trail from the top down, as the Jeep tours in the area do, looking back at it now, it would have been more fun to do it from the bottom up, so that you’d get to climb the steeper parts instead of sliding down them.
Day 2 – Blue Monster Trail & Cherry
We ran a trail called Blue Monster. To get to the trail head we headed out the side roads from Cottonwood, which had their fair share of smooth faster paced parts, and slower rockier sections. Once we got to the trailhead, the first half of the trail was about as smooth as you’d want a dirt road to be. Pat mentioned there was an abandoned mine up one of the side trails, the mine was called Conger Mine, when he went there 12 years ago all the mining equipment was still there. We were running ahead of schedule so we headed up there to see if the equipment was still there or not. The road to the mine was pretty rough, but it was a fun slow crawl to get up there. Unfortunately no mining equipment was left, but the mine shaft, with a running stream inside was interesting to check out. After the mine we continued down Blue Monster, the last third of the trail was fairly rough, but it was a fun slower crawl through the mountains. After we got done with Blue Monster we headed up towards Cherry to eat lunch at Powell Springs campground.
All the pictures from Day 2 can be found for sale here – https://www.turndriver.com/Off-Roading/Zukapalooza-2019/Day-2
Day 3 – Broken Arrow Trail in Sedona
For the last day of Zukapalooza we headed into Sedona to run Broken Arrow. This is one trail you can be sure of a few things, coming across a lot of traffic, mainly Jeep tours, and consistent trail conditions thanks to the tours that run in the area, not mentioning the name of the company because their some of their drivers are under the impression that they own the trail. Overall the trail was fun, we went to Submarine rock, headed up to Chicken Point and took our time playing around in the area before Devil’s staircase.
All the pictures from Day 3 can be found for sale here – https://www.turndriver.com/Off-Roading/Zukapalooza-2019/Day-3
