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Rating: 8/10 Iron Chest is the most difficult trail that I have a report of to this point. However, I have not run it in its entirety. In fact, I have only run about 200 feet of it and only about 100 feet of the rock garden section after you make the initial right-hand turn. I have walked the rest of the (roughly) half-mile boulder field section to get an idea of the trail and to check for possible lines to take, but decided I probably shouldn't run it to save my frame and whatever else that could seemingly be in constant contact with the tasty rocks. Sheer ground clearance is the name of the game on this one. I felt that my 33s and ~14" of clearance were excessively inadequate, even though other similar 4Runners have done this in the past. They have had more armor than I had when I first came up here. Now that I have full armor underneath, it's only a matter of time before I tackle it. This is partly why I put this page up—since I do have intentions of completing it one day. In actuality, in 2004, I did drive the whole trail, as that year a mining operation had bulldozed the rocks to the side of the road to allow equipment to travel through. They have since moved them back on the road and I have heard it is now even more difficult than it was. The whole trail to the Iron Chest Mine at the end is about 2.5 miles. It is not a through road so you must return the way you came. The boulder field section is the first half-mile, where passing opportunities are pretty much nonexistent. The entrance to Iron Chest is from a parking area on the left .4 miles up the Hancock Pass road out of St. Elmo. While walking back down the trail, a group of burly rigs were heading up and I snapped some pictures and videos. Most went up with relatively very little effort. The trail was certainly not rated an "8" as to what they were built for. 4-wheeling is all relative, but we're all out for the same reason: having fun on the trails and enjoying the scenery
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