Mogollon Rim 10-3 & 10-4 2025

[shellback91 2,305]

A few of us completed a 2 day Mogollon trip, those in attendance were @Liz  @Bitshuffler  @OffroadFun. It was good to meet Liz and Alan for the first time, and it's always good to see Jack. 

 

The name of the game this trip was mud.  Mud anywhere and almost everywhere we turned. Needless to say it made an unholy mess. 😂

 

Day 1:  42 Miles +/-

We started out on Stoneman Lake Road just off the I-17 Friday morning. We aired down there because there is no where else to do it closer to or at the start of the trail that I could find. From there it was about 5 miles on pavement to Apache Maid Trail.  We headed south to the turn off for the T-Bar Ranch so we could check out the cabins that are there.  After spending a little bit if time there we made our way back to Apache Maid and headed  East.  This trail is not too bad overall. There are some interesting rocky sections, some easy going sections, great scenery,  and a lot of mud holes, more than I anticipated and more than we needed.   At the end of this trail we headed South on pavement for about 5.5 miles to the Lost Eden Trail. We took Lost Eden East with the aim of getting to camp in the Rim area, we stopped for lunch along the way at a really big camp spot. Lost Eden is a pretty tame trail over all with great scenery along the way. 

 

From the end of Lost Eden we crossed over Highway 87 and snaked our way down East Clear Creek to FR 513, from there we snaked our way down to a camp spot on FR 513B. We got to camp earlier than I anticipated unfortunately. It was breezy/windy all morning and it remained that way the rest of the afternoon and overnight. No complaints here, the weather was overall was perfect that afternoon and overnight.  Falling asleep to the breeze and the Elk calls off in the distance was a good way to end the day.  I only needed my heater in the morning to knock the edge off so to speak. 

 

Day 2:  67 Miles +/-

We broke camp and hit the trail a little before 0830.  We made our way across FR 96 over to Buck Springs Ridge. We visited the historic Cabins on the Buck Springs trail.  TrailsOffroad had this listed as closed between Waypoint  4 and 5, I wanted to see if that was still the case so we made our way back to the "Y" where we turned off for the cabins to check. I can safely say that it is no longer closed. We made our way to the trails end, allegedly, and got me a little confused. I say that because where TrailsOffroad says this trail ends is not accurate based on what we saw. We continued left past Waypoint 8 on FR 137c and found it closed at the intersection of FR 9713R if I am not mistaken. Liz and Alan were using On X, I was using Gaia and it wasn't 100% clear.  At any rate, we continued on FR 9713R until it ran back in to Buck Springs.

 

From there we made our way over to the Hospital Ridge Trail then down to FR 300.(Rim Road)  We worked our way across taking in the scenery as we headed towards Battle Ground Ridge. We explored the monument and then ran the last part of the trail to the end with the thoughts of camping. When we got there we noticed smoke was in the air from what turned out to be a forest fire.  Because of the smoke we decided to skip the last night of camping and head out to end our day at the end of Rim Road and HWY 87. 

 

Overall a great run with good company and some awesome scenery as always.  I made a couple of mental notes for the next time I meander up there. Liz and or Alan may have recorded the Buck Springs side adventure.

 

 

Thanks again to the small but mighty crew that came and hung out with me, I had a good time. Feel free to post up any pictures you have. 

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2025 by shellback91

[shellback91 2,305]

Here are some pictures @Liz shared with me.  Thanks Liz!

 

Us at the T-Bar Ranch

 

 

 

Us up on the Rim.

 

 

The view from the end of Battleground Ridge.