March 21, 2024

Arizona 4x4 trips - rug road in the Galiuro Mountains

Rug road is a 20 mile route from Klondyke to Mammoth across the Galiuro Mountains. Rug road is notorious, and I will probably never drive it. I have heard too many grim things about it.

There are plenty of online descrptions, most of them lacking and terrible. Some claim this is in the Zapata Mountains (there are no such mountains in Arizona).

The second link offers a gpx file. The photos in these (and other) pages are sobering. The give this a 3.5 rating, which is entirely at odds with their description, but there seem to be as many rating systems as there are 4x4 drivers.

This could be an interesting, but gnarly mountain bike trek. One advantage with a mountain bike is that you can hop off and walk anything that is beyond your capabilities.

If you want to go from west to east, first drive to Mammoth. Find Copper Creek Road, cross the San Pedro river, and drive 8 miles up Copper Creek then onto the Rug road (good luck, you will need more than this description).

If you want to go from east to west, you start near the east end of Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness. I am told that you cannot access any of the roads via Fourmile Canyon as the ranch up in that canyon keeps gates locked and does not look kindkly upon visitors. So what you do is to drive on up Aravaipa Canyon about 8 miles past Kondyke to where the road turns south into Turkey Creek. Then you travel up Turkey Creek for 2.6 miles. Just below the junction with Oak Grove Canyon, the Rug road leaves Turkey Creek.

You turn right and head west and up a steep hill. Expect to take about 2 hours to cover the 5 miles to Parsons Grove. Another 1.5 miles will bring you to the Table Mountain mine. From there you go to the saddle between big and little Table Mountains! Somehow from there you drive south to the road in Copper creek. Another 8 miles of driving on the Copper Creek road will bring you to Mammoth.

Cowboy Miller road

This is described in one of the confusing descriptions as "Carpet Hill Bypass 2.0". I have driven Cowboy Miller Road to the abandoned "ore loader" from where I have hiked to Table Mountain Pass and from there to the Table Mountain Mine. Once again a 2.0 rating for this road is from some system in use on another planet. Whatever the case, this entirely bypasses Carpet Hill (which sounds great to me). Carpet Hill is between Copper Creek and where the Cowboy Miller Road meets the rug road. This fellow said he was challenged by the bypass and was glad to have rock sliders.
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's hiking pages / tom@mmto.org