A quick one-nighter just to say we did it!
This writeup is nothing to write home about, but I want to document a few things for my own posterity. The trip spans a Friday through Saturday in April of 2021. The roster for this trip includes myself and Lucy the Dog in the Blue Yota, and Brent and Ben Barnes in the red ZJ. The details of this trip are quite fuzzy, but there are some key highlights that I remember which are worth calling out, in my own humble opinion.
One item of interest was observing a race team out doing some test driving. It was cool looking closely at the built-out side by side. The driver was Justin Lambert of Cognito Motorsports.
Early on in the trip we were going through a narrow canyon where at one point there was a relatively tricky boulder to climb up. I ended up picking the wrong line and damaged my driver-side rocker panel. The kicker about this was that I had already ordered rock sliders and they were only 1 week away from being delivered when we went on this trip…
I was a bit bummed out, but I kept telling myself that this kind of thing was bound to happen; it’s simply part of the experience. In the end, I put the rock sliders on and it’s barely noticeable. I don’t give it any thought nowadays.
This is the spot where we camped for the night. It was a hot weekend so we were grateful to find a spot with some shade. Day 2 begins below!
As stated in the Wikipedia article: “While mining gold in the El Paso Mountains, “Burro” Schmidt was faced with a dangerous ridge between his mining claims and the smelter to the south in Mojave. Schmidt said that he would “never haul his ore to the Mojave smelter down that back trail” using his two burros. Thus, he began his tunnel in 1900. The tunnel was about 6 feet (1.8 m) tall and 10 feet (3.0 m) wide. It was cut through solid granite bedrock and required little shoring. However, Schmidt was trapped many times by falling rock and injured often. He eventually installed a mining cart on rails. In 1920 a road was completed from Last Chance Canyon to Mojave, eliminating the need for the tunnel, but Schmidt claimed to be obsessed with completion and dug on.”
We walked all the way through the tunnel and confirmed that Schmidt was indeed a very determined man.
I can’t recall any details about this cabin, but it is another one of those first come, first served free-use cabins. We were still early on in our exploration so we opted not to stay. Remember to leave it better than you found it!
This is where this story ends. This trip was a great excuse to get outside, do some exploring, and camp for a night. We had a great time (especially Lucy), though we haven’t been back since.
Thank you for taking the time to read my writeup of our El Paso Mountain trip! Feel free to comment with constructive feedback or simply to share your thoughts or your own stories. Make sure you check back in the “Trips” category to see the other trips I’ve taken with my blue yota!
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