Katherine Mine & Sleeping Princess
Story & Photos by Denis & Sandi Inman
After Sandi, Kerri and I had a great buffet breakfast, the Pahrump Valley 4 Wheelers attending the 2019 Laughlin run met at the Maverik gas station on Bullhead Parkway in Bullhead City AZ at 9:00 AM Pacific Time. Arizona is on Mountain Time, but for simplicity, all our events were scheduled using Pacific Time. Our Tuesday run participants were very similar to the Monday run Jeep occupants, with Gary & Sherrie joining us. Debi decided not to come, so Mike rode with Dan and John lead the run by himself, so there were seven Jeep Wranglers total.
Most of us stayed aired down from our previous days run, but Gary & Sherrie needed to reduce the pressure in their tires, so we stopped on Katherine Mine Road to let them take care of the process. Not far from that point, the group turned North and began our procession to Katherine Mine. We stopped at numerous locations of interest, so we didn’t pass up anything worthy of photos and exploration.
At the beginning of a new road, Mike gave the occupants of our vehicle the opportunity to pass on the trail, but how bad could a thoroughfare named Sleeping Princess be? We would soon find out. I don’t go by trail ratings much, I read some accounts that say the trail is difficult and others only said it was hard. We built our Jeep to be very capable and I’m not usually concerned about having too much difficulty negotiating most any trail.
The Sleeping Princess will get your attention and keep it throughout the entire length. Your vehicle will be tested to find any week points that you may have overlooked in your build plan. Once we made the summit at about 4520′ we decided not to drive the trail that would have exited in Golden Valley on the Kingman side of Union Pass. As the old saying goes, anything worth doing, is worth doing to excess.
John offered me the opportunity to lead the crew down and I jumped at it. Sandi and Kerri were up for anything that got them off that trail sooner. After all, we were going primarily down hill now, how bad could it be? Somehow, in our quest to complete the trail in the opposite direction, Jim’s Jeep and ours put a bit of distance between us and the rest of the club. We stopped at the bottom of a particularly difficult section and waited.
It wasn’t long before the others showed up, no worse for the wear and we continued on to the sign marking the beginning of the Sleeping Princess trail (Sandi & Kerry renamed it the Screaming Princess) where Sherrie took over the lead back to the highway. I would do the trail again on Wednesday, but Sandi and Kerri are going shopping. It doesn’t matter, because I understand John has another scenic and challenging trail ride lined up for us for today.