Coronado Scenic Byway, aka The Devil's Highway

Dad and I are heading out first thing in the AM. I hope to be able to take some pics; I don't have one of the super-cool video cameras like you all have.
Supposed to be the twistiest road in the USA!

Looking forward to seeing an NC7 on the devil's highway. Have a good ride.

Sweet! That road is definitely on my bucket list!

I just looked it up on Scenic Byways (or Highways). It looks like a worthy destination for anyone head out west! (as I hope to be near the end of the year)

Been north to south on it in a car. 30-35 mph max. Prefer Highway 78, Boriego springs to Julian for rubbernecking.

Pics or it didn't happen !

Ain't postin no car pics. Thats a hangin' offense.

itlives: That stretch of road is all pretty much mountain road - some straight, mostly twisty. Even in Arizona, it gets COLD up there by the end of the year. I don't think I'd try it from mid-October through early spring, but I'm from Tucson myself, and cold weather (and snow, and ice, and freezing rain) and I don't get along too well together. Even late summer is hitting the rainy season in Arizona - if you tend to melt in the rain like some of us desert rats do, you may want to think twice about that time of year, too.

CaptDL: I've found I have to pay a LOT of attention to what I'm doing on that stretch of US191 (Devil's Highway, Rte 666, whatever). I can't speak for everybody that's ridden it, but having to spend so much time worrying about the next curve and a good line and the tar snakes and the gravel and the one or two highway patrol folks I've seen up there all tend to distract from the scenery, somewhat.

I'm tired just from looking at it on Google Maps...hope you enjoyed your run and kept it safe and shiny-side-up.

Be careful while riding in this area, as it is one of the top illegal alien crossing spots in the world. Also, get a picture of the alien spacecraft if you can!

Betterthanwork- thanks for the tips.

Sorry, folks, I had tried to post something earlier today, but it didn't work.

I regret that I was unable to find either suitable stopping points or suitable photographic evidence of the extreme and very-nearly treacherous southern end of the route (just out of Clifton & Morenci). It's TIGHT. It's slow and technical. It's tough watching for scenery because of this, but it was a very fun ride overall. At first I was thinking, "You know, if this wasn't paved, it might make for an outstanding World Rally Championship course..." About 2 minutes later, though, I realized it's WAY too tight and twisty for that, at least on the south end.

The town of Clifton had a surprisingly non-skittish desert bighorn sheep standing right in the middle of town, across the road from this railroad trestle:


He didn't mind at all when we rode past, but once we stopped so I could get a pic, he got a little nervous and trotted a ways away, so this is all I have:
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Looks like a young one to me. Sadly, the horns really aren't visible in this pic. Just up the creek bottom from there is the edge of the truly gigantic mine that I believe is the main economic basis underlying Clifton and Morenci:
View attachment 17859

Nearly everything in that pic is just the tailings pile. I tried for a shot looking down into it from above, but it was just a dust cloud.

Up near the top of the the mountain there's a little turnout/view point/rest stop which offers a pleasant, scenic view, as well as a couple of information boards:


That's the southeastern view. Across the road is the southwestern view:



Here's a place where you can see a bit of the road up near the top. This section is not nearly so tight and technical as the lower, southern end. It's actually kinda more fun through this part, because you're not being CONSTANTLY ambushed by the road tightening significantly around a blind corner, or suddenly switching back the other direction in a hairpin (around that same blind corner):


There's some less-green area in-between the southern, hyper-tight end and the moderately more open, predictable northern section. This has some fairly straight road for a short ways, and is the transition zone between what would be the chaparral of the lower area (would be except that it's mostly all juniper, rather than scrub oak), and the pines and oaks of the northern portion. Hopefully these couple in-motion phone-cam pics turn out:
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MZ5 said:

... I regret that I was unable to find either suitable stopping points or suitable photographic evidence of the extreme and very-nearly treacherous southern end of the route (just out of Clifton & Morenci). It's TIGHT. It's slow and technical. It's tough watching for scenery because of this, but it was a very fun ride overall. At first I was thinking, "You know, if this wasn't paved, it might make for an outstanding World Rally Championship course..." About 2 minutes later, though, I realized it's WAY too tight and twisty for that, at least on the south end....

Click to expand...

Agreed - there's a couple of those switchbacks on the Clifton/Morenci end that are more like having to make U-turns instead of curves. At least one of them is such a tight uphill right-hander that the 15 MPH speed limit seems unduly optimistic, at least to me. Overall, an excellent ride, though.

I had another post written up, but something went wrong with DNS here and the board was suddenly an overseas Yamaha board!

Anyway, I'll re-post--

Here are a couple pics of what the flora of the lower section is like:



There was quite a bit of wildlife about, which unfortunately I could not capture in motion. I was on point for most of the twisty parts of the route, so I got to see them more than Dad did. I was escorted by an unknown bird for about 100 yards at one point. Once he realized we were travelling the same direction at the same speed, and that I could nearly have reached out and grabbed him right out of the air, he flared, wheeled left in front of my head, and just BARELY went over the top of my helmet. A fox crossed the road ahead of me in the relatively dry and barren 'transition zone' I have a couple pics of above, and a squirrel made his best effort to dive under my front wheel as I was coming out of a corner in another place. His life, and quite possibly mine, were saved by mere chance as he missed his target by inches. In another spot near the top, a beautiful blue jay flew along the road for a good ways in front of me. We don't get to see quite the same sorts of creatures in the lower desert where I live, so this was all a great treat!

Here's an in-motion pic of the sort of terrain where I live. It's the Sonoran Sesert, with an example of the saguaro forest that comprises a good deal of the Tonto National Forest:


The top of the route must be 9,000 feet or so. We came down significantly before entering the pretty little valley where Alpine is, a sign near which indicated ~8,000 feet. Climbed back up over 8,500 on the way out of town, too. We came back through Eagar, Show Low, and Payson, taking AZ-260 and the Beeline Highway (AZ-87, IIRC). It was distinctly cool in Alpine and the higher country just south; I bet not above 60 - 65(F) at the top. Snow fences between there and Show Low remind me of Wyoming:


Contrast this with 108F once we got back to the lower desert floor, and you can see why we needed to stop more than once to re-wet our evaporative-cooling gear (mine's an LD Comfort turtleneck, Dad's is a very nice-looking and thick sweatshirt whose pattern is an Australian flag).

This is VERY peculiar. At least for me, the pics in my first report-post aren't showing up.

What is a snow fence?

MZ5 said:

This is VERY peculiar. At least for me, the pics in my first report-post aren't showing up.

Click to expand...

There was a technical issue about the time you posted the first pics. When I tried to log on, at that time, it either took me to a DN01 forum or gave a 404 error. I saw someone else post a similiar comment.

You might want to try an edit of the other post that had problems to reload the pics.

Sent from my GT-P5113 using Tapatalk

Okay, I shall. It'll just be tonight before I have access to the pics to re-post.

bamamate said:

What is a snow fence?

Click to expand...

It is a fence designed to induce blowing snow to drop out of the air and stay on the ground. The snow drops out on the leeward side of the fence. The idea is to put them in the windward side of a roadway (or whatever) that would normally be susceptible to significant drifting of snow. The fence disrupts the ground-level wind enough to let the snow fall down to the ground, sparing the road from being buried in a drift.

Make any sense?

Thanks for the explanation. That is what I was thinking it could be but wasn’t sure. They do something similar at the beach on the Gulf Coast to help rebuild the dunes after a hurricane.