Mariscol Mine, Black Gap trail to Robbers Roost.

Fri, Mar 1st: While driving back on the River Road trail, we had a Customs/Border Patrol 10-Person van roll right up on our ass, we pulled over to let them pass. The van had high clearance but I wasn’t sure if it was 4-Wheel Drive. The CBP agent was bombing down the trail and I laughed at how shitty people treat Government vehicles, including myself! We wonder what was up.

We pull up to Mariscal mine, so Jon can take a look-see at it. I wasn’t into walking, so I decided to stay at the parking lot with Furi. I met two other backcountry campers, husband and wife, who were waiting for it to cool down before hiking out to the mine. They told me that there was a few undocumented immigrants that crossed over from Mexico at the Talley Ranch, The wife was visibly upset that there were some young children among the undocumented. I completely agree. Thinking back, that suspisious tinted out Raptor we saw a few days earlier might have been a scout/coyote for that crossing.

We finished at the mine and set out on Black Gap Road, it’s one of the few unmaintained roads in the National Park. We passed a tricked out jeep and asked about how the trail was. He said he pulled out a Custom/Border Patrol van out of the sand earlier. Not sure if it was the same van as before. Anyways, like I said before, people treat Government Vehicles like shit! The jeep guy gave the FJ a once over and said we’d be fine. We’d find out soon enough.

There were a lot of washouts and dips but nothing too crazy. Jon got out once before we hit the gap to spot on a minor washout.

The Black gap was no joke. We stopped checked out the rock placement, planned a route and afer our risk assessment, we went for it. Jon did an expert job of spotting! As per usual, Furi wasn’t impressed with our 4WD Skills. Sadly, there’s no picture of Lola Montez (The FJ’s name) dropping down over the gap but the crawl function she has was key. Uphill crawling is one thing, but down hill is another one. The only casualty was I hit the fake prop affixed on my trailer hitch. True Boatswainsmate shit, ran agound and threw a prop!

After traversing Black Gap, I thought it would be smooth sailing. I was wrong, dead wrong. It got pretty technical and without Jon’s help, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. There was extereme drop offs and rocks everywhere. I white knuckled the whole thing.

We finally arrived at Robbers Roost with a few hours of daylight to burn. I was dehydrated, tired and cranky but I at least I knew it and kept control of it. I threw some water down and calmed myself down. The older I get, the better I am at it. We set up camp and relaxed a bit. We had no real dinner that night.

The stars came out and we went to bed. One more night here…