This is a decent graded road, however there are a few rough areas and there can be ruts that increase the rating to a 2. Any small crossover SUV will have no issues with this road.
Location
This is just west of Delta, CO in the Uncompahgre Plateau.
Trailhead
The trail is located west of Delta. If you take 5th street to the west it will turn into Sawmill Mesa Rd Continue following this road until you see a sign that directs you to the Delta Correction Center. At this sign there is a dirt road going to the right. Sawmill Mesa Road continues to the right on the dirt road and the correction center is to the left on the pavement. GPS coordinates are 38°42'47.7"N 108°10'09.8"W (38.713245, -108.169388). There are two dirt roads going to the right at this location, the first one is Escalante Rim and the second road is Sawmill Mesa. They are about 250 ft apart and there are road signs identifying each road.
Description
This is an easy dirt road that does not require 4-wheel drive in dry conditions. Some areas could potentially be difficult in the rain as demonstrated by areas of deep ruts.
This is entry to the Uncompahgre Plateau. The scenery starts with barren scenery with little vegetation, then it develops a Juniper and scrub oak forest with occasional pinion pine, then it turns into Poderosa and Aspen forests. The Uncompahgre Plateau is used frequently during the hunting season.
This road is also great to use with Escalante Canyon or Dry Mesa Jeep Road to make a loop. Our trip today (Aug. 2015) started with Dry Mesa and we completed the loop with the Sawmill Mesa Road. For this reason, the GPS file below doesn't connect all the way to Escalante Canyon. I will update the GPS file in the future when I do the loop with Escalante Canyon.
Here are the GPX and KML files.
This was actually on the Dry Mesa Jeep Road, but it was a fun picture so I decided to include it!
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