Tucson Area Bulletin Board:

Sweet, one in...

I'm probable, barring family issues. It is currently clear.

Is the Reddington Pass road open and suitable for a stock V Strom?

You should be fine. I rode it yesterday... it's a bit rutted out from the rain, and has some water crossings (some standing, some flowing), but nothing major.

If it's the Bull Springs I'm thinking of, you go from Amado and take the Salero Rd, and it takes you to the southern edge of the Nature Conservancy south of Patagonia. It's been years since I've been through there in a Jeep; it's got some steep, rocky sections. Actually, I took a two-wheel drive Mazda pickup through there: I had to put rocks in the back for traction to get up certain sections.

It looks like I'll have Thursday off! Sean and I can finally ride together.

Anyone else down for a ride? I wanted to retry Sibley Mansion, but Sean doesn't think that would be fun on the KLR

Did you go down to Benson? Wish I could have gone with ya. Between work and the house remodel, I haven't even been on my bike since I don't know when. I'm at least going to ride it to work when I can.

Russ

It's fine for a KLR, I know this chick that did it one time, pretty impressive ride!

Well, sorta did it.

I'm in. But then you probably already guessed that much.

im down for some random exploring type deal

I've been curious where some of the small trails off the side of reddington take off to. I've been down a couple of them but there are a ton out there.

yeah i dont want to end up on anything super gnarly though

Sure did... other than getting blown around a bit on the paved stretch into Benson, it was a great ride. It would have been nice to have you along.

Here's the track from my ride with BentForks to Bull Springs Rd (and Flux Canyon, Fish Canyon and Box Canyon).

Bull Springs and Flux would challenge a beginner and/or a big bike, but a good rider could do them on anything. Fish/Box are easy.

Check out the pictures in the DS Road/Trail catalog - see link in signature below - and here's some pictures from that ride:

BullSprings-FluxCanyon-DualSportRide-Feb2010

I get your mytopia of a ton, very simalar to the land managers veiw of small trails, go ride them now before you see it posted foot travel only

This last Sunday, Keli (GF) and I decide to go for a nice easy ride two up on the 800 GS. She's never been up Willow Springs road so I thought a scenic picnic type trip up WS road to Barkerville and out on the Florence-Kelvin highway. We made it to the junction of Willow Springs and Barkerville and decided to try something different so we headed up east a little ways and then turned up north on Hayden Ranch Road. I was sort of following my GPS and sort of wingin' it. It still looked like a pretty easy ride. Haydn Ranch Road soon turns to Tecolote Ranch road. Still was a pretty easy ride with just the road being rutted out a lot from the rains. A few gates marked state land trust and such but nothing locked. My GPS started to crap out about the time we got to the middle of nowhere. The glass fuse in the 12V adaptor had cracked. Internal batteries are dead and the spares are in the bag in the other bike. No problem as I had some spare gum wrappers (the foil type!) in my bag. Except the aluminum foil gum wrappers are not known for a tight connection on a vibrating two wheeled vehicle. So we kept winging it with occasional help from the occasional GPS. Got turned around a few times but kept heading mostly north. The trail disappeared on us for a while and we followed some other tracks up a wash for about a mile. Keli got off and ran most of the wash because
(1) Riding a F800GS in the wash with a passenger sucks
(2) She just likes to run (lucky me)

Anyway we got back on a trail for a while until
(1) the track went back into the wash
(2) the wash had a steer (cow thing with big horns) 'guarding' it

We were pretty beat by then from
(1) wrestling the GS up the wash
(2) running up the wash

but found another trail heading in the right general direction so we just kept going. At about the furthest distance from anywhere we came across some guy with a full frame pack just trekking through the desert. Stopped to say hello/how are you, but he kept just moving on. We finally knew we were back to some sort of civilization when we passed a rather large group of men in a turnoff with a big pile of mattresses and lots of guns. Found our way on to the Florence-Kelvin Hwy and then a real easy and scenic ride in to Kelvin. We went up 177 a couple of miles north to the Asarco mine lookout. Then back south slabbing past Kearny, Mammoth, and into Catalina for some chow at Bub's Grub (excellent smokey brisket). Probably six hours with all the stops we took. Not quite the easy trip we thought we were going to do but it was a hell of a lot more fun. I would do this ride again on the DR650 (solo) in a heartbeat. I'll post a track up in the tracks section.

Good ride if your looking for something fairly easy with just enough technical to keep it interesting.

Bob, do you have the tracks/map for that ride between Rio Rico and Elgin (where the wineries are) that we took a few weeks back? That might be just the ticket for the newbies. Fun, not too tough.

Yeah, that would be the 'shakedown' cruise.:eek1 Paul and I rode it.

Couple of very good water crossings--the one at the beginning of the dirt on Reddington was almost big enough to put a jetski in. Then there was a crossing that was basically a flowing creek. 'Road Closed' signs on either side of it. A little squishy crossing it. Reddington is rougher than the last time I rode it. Pretty tame this time last year.

Beautiful ride, snow capped mountains, the Cottonwoods are greening up, and orange/yellow flowers (buttercups?) everywhere.

My DR650 "Alleged" did okay for most of the ride, shed some nuts and bolts (that seems to be usual on my bikes.) But died about 15 miles from home, just a couple miles from the entrance to Colossal Cave & did the last miles on the back of a nice AAA flatbed truck.

So, got more work to do. More work on the jetting, and gotta take the bike apart some and do some loctiting of fasteners.

Paul, i switched out the CDI, and it started right up! Gas tank was pretty low on gas, 5 gallons for 105 miles. :eek1

There is a mild loop and some mild dead ends that would probably be enjoyable by all.

One dead end is the Bellota Ranch Road that is to the left(north) just past the last quad staging area.

A nice loop is just past there over the cattle guard where the road makes a pretty good left turn. A two track goes south from there. Take that back to the base of the hills and take a left. Go to the T and take another left. That will bring you back out on Redington where the AZ Trail crosses the road.

If you're interested I'll put a GoogleEarth track together for you.

Or if you're interested in a long distance trek, you could head in to Jackson cabin until Sean cries "uncle".

Or, there is a nice ride through the Tumacacori mountains over to Arivaca...

Or,...