Friday, December 6, 2019 (LaPosa South LTVA, Quartzsite, AZ)

We went out on our first quad ride of the season today...one of many to come! We headed out with Earl and Allison in the lead, at about 10:00 to do one of my favourite rides...Diablo Pass.

I'll pass this on to Steve to describe our ride from the pictures he took from his Go Pro videos...

Here we are starting the zig-zagging part of the trail to the pass...

After awhile we approached the Diablo Pass summit...

I decided to take the high road...LOL!

Here you can see the pass we came up and the pass we'll be continuing on...

Time to continue on. As this was Dianne's first ride since her knee replacement Earl offered to ride her quad through some of the rougher areas, so she got to ride in their new machine...Girl power!

Allison had noticed that something was wrong with their machine so we stopped to discover they had a flat tire. We found a leak in the sidewall of the tire which is the worst place to get one. Earl grabbed his flat repair kit...the rasp tool to roughen the hole while making it bigger (just seems wrong)...the inserting tool with a tire plug pushed into the hole then the air compressor. What...we still hear air leaking out!

This factory Polaris Extreme tire had some extreme holes in it...3 in fact!  I think Earl had to insert 6 or 7 plugs before the tire would hold air!

With the flat fixed we continued on...

Once we got through the rougher stuff Earl and Dianne switched back to their own machines. We're headed to the top of that hill...

Earl and Allison are half way to the top...

Once we made it to the top Earl checked to make sure he still had a round tire...

Great views riding the ridge top...

Then we start heading down, then up, then down...

Approaching Dome Basin Mine in the distance. The booby looking hill (Di: good description, Steve LOL!) on the right has a stone cairn on top...

Up we go!

We met a couple of other groups on the trails...

Old mine shafts...

After a short rest we headed back down...

This area gets a bit rough so Earl and Dianne switched machines again...

This next area is one of our favourite parts of the ride...a little technical in spots, lots of hills and twists and turns...

This next part becomes a little bit of a workout but fun...

We've seen Big Horn Sheep in the valley ahead on a previous ride...

The climb begins...

A ridge ride...

...before heading down...

Then up...

...then way down...this valley crossing is really cool...

It's a lot steeper than the photo indicates...

I'm at the bottom and beginning my climb...

Another ridge ride...

A final hill...

That concludes the Diablo Pass tour...

We ended our ride at Beer Bellies Adult Daycare...

 To wash down the dust down! Actually after the rain earlier in the week there really wasn't much dust today...

One of many to come awesome days on the trails!