We went on another ATV ride yesterday, this time in the Helper/Kenilworth area. I uploaded some pictures from that trip and from our trip two weeks ago to my Picasa account.
We parked the truck near Spring Glen and rode the ATVs along the old railroad grade toward Helper. I had been out there a couple of times before on my mountain bike and in my ’79 Ford truck. We rode up Helper Canyon (also known as Kenilworth Wash) on a short but really fun old mining road. We eventually came to a washed-out portion that was covered in boulders and impassible except on foot. We hiked up a couple of the switchbacks on the old road, but Traci and the kids weren’t up for such a steep hike, so we hiked back down to the ATVs and rode back to the railroad grade. I’ll have to return to the switchbacks alone someday to see what is at the top.
We rode the railroad grade all the way to Kenilworth, stopping a couple of times on the way to look at some interesting old relics, such as a wooden culvert under the grade and some old stone building foundations near Kenilworth. We crossed the pavement on Kenilworth Main Street and stopped for lunch on the north side of town. After lunch we kept going north and rode another rough old mining road in the canyon directly north of town (I believe it’s called Bull Hollow). There are three old mines in that canyon, but we only made it about a mile into the canyon before running into snow drifts that were too deep to cross. The first mine was on the hillside directly above the snow drift, but it would take a steep climb up a huge tailings pile to reach the mine entrance, so I’m saving that one for another solo trip later in the year.