GPS TRAIL GUIDES

Guide yourself, or go with a group. If you have a Garmin Color mapping GPS, you can download our map onto your GPS!

“Open Riding” policy at Gila Monster ATV Jamboree. All activities sanctioned by the Gila Rough Riders at this year's Gila Monster ATV Jamboree will be held on Private Property at the Burro Mountain Homestead. Riding in the National Forest will be at the individual’s discretion. There will be a “ride board” where members can choose where, when and with whom they want to ride. There will be no official “Trail Guides”. Members, or groups of members may choose their own ride leader or not, as they please.

The Forest Service recently recognizing OHVs as a “legitimate use of our National Forests” as well as calling “Unmanaged OHV recreation a threat to our National Forests”, is the result of a welcome wake up call. Anything unmanaged is a mess. Proper management of OHVs on our Public Lands is long overdue. Get involved with your local public land managers because right now is a pivotal time in OHV management on Public lands. You can make a really big difference between having quality places to ride or no place at all. The environmentalists are using the opportunity of this upheaval in policy to shut us out anywhere they can. If you don’t fight for your right to ride, you will lose it.

Happy Riding, and remember, these public lands belong to all of us, sharing is what it is all about. Ride Safe and Ride Responsibly.

Alex Ocheltree, “Trail Boss” Gila Rough Riders

This is tough. The Springerville Outlaw Jamboree gave away 3 quads this year. An amazing feat. We gave away a 50cc mini in 2007, and that pales by comparison. And yet,,,something is wrong with this picture. Sure, sponsors paid for at least half of the cost of these quads, but, participants ultimately pay for the rest. And though all the participants are paying, there is only one, or in Springerville’s case, three, winners. Okay, so who doesn’t want a new, (almost) free quad? And yet, this crowd already has quads, and therein lies the dilemna.

NOW DON’T TAKE THIS THE WRONG WAY! We love the Springerville Outlaw Jamboree. It is a really big deal to us. Hank and Debbie Rogers have helped us out a bunch. We participate in a big way and appreciate being part of a truly great event. But we have a different situation down here in nearly every way, and we are looking at different solutions.

Sure, everybody likes new goggles and goodies, but there is something else that every quad owner needs sooner or later and that is tires. So, the big prizes at the Gila Monster ATV Jamboree this year will be sets of tires. We are going to spread it around. And then there is one more thing….

If you read about our friend Ron Wood getting hurt while we were scouting trails for last year’s Jamboree you read about the terrible condition many of our trails are in. So, the Gila Rough Riders is going to take any profits from this year’s Jamboree (we lost money the first year, we about broke even last year) and apply them toward the purchase of an ASV RC 60 Track loader with a 6 way Dozer blade. This makes so much more sense to us than extravagantly giving away a quad to somebody who already has one. This will improve the trails for all of us. Everybody wins!

At 60” wide, the RC60 is just slightly larger than an ATV. It weighs only 6,000 lbs and exerts only 2.8 psi, on Rubber Tracks making it extremely low impact. It has a cruising speed of 8mph, which means we can get it in and out of remote areas much faster and with much less impact than a traditional metal track mini-dozer, and at a fraction of the cost. We will be using our RC 60 for trail maintenance only, not building new trails, and will be working with the Forest Service as well as making our “all-surface loader” available for use by other user groups such as mountain bikers, hikers and horseback riders. We feel this could go a long way in uniting user groups on our Gila National Forest.

Polaris has helped us out in a big way with $10,000 from their T.R.A.I.L.S. grant program. We are the only New Mexico organization to receive such a grant.

Now we are struggling with the Forest Service to let us maintain some of our trails, which have been the most damaged by the severe rains we have had in the last two years.

Pictured below is a Forest Service ROAD, currently in their inventory, which, like so many of their roads and trails is being ignored by them. We are asking them to let us maintain some of these roads, trails to us, so as not to lose them, and to keep somebody from getting hurt. This is at no cost to the Forest Service.

There will be a special ride on Friday, March 27, 2009, as an extended version of the Gila Monster to view this area, which is at the southernmost end of our proposed trail system. Hopefully they will have allowed us to do this work. Either way, it will be an enlightening ride….Very experienced riders only. It will be about an 8 hour ride going fast. Some of the sections are extremely difficult and dangerous. Do not consider this ride if you are anything less than expert.

This is a Forest Service road….

Another section going away fast….

It could end up like this….