Utah. Amazing. Definitely in the running for my favourite state of the trip so far. Admittedly, it did have a huge advantage. At the joint leaving party and Mikes birthday party before we left, Jez had given us a whole host of contact details for useful people in the US should we run into trouble, he’d also rang his long-suffering friend Rob Hardy, of Portal Tek fame ( Portal Tek, Domination Through Innovation - trust me, this is proper engineering and looks shiney too. Although he laughed at my idea of Purple Portals, lol!) at 3am in the morning to ask if he’d show us around the off-roading in Utah. We met up with Rob at Great Basin Rovers ( Great Basin Rovers run by ‘Uncle Bill’ and his daughter Shaun, lovely people with copious amounts of cool Land Rover stuff and british engineering – including a 1960’s Mini Cooper S, a very wood-rotted Morris Traveler, and a phone box… cool) on Friday afternoon along with a couple of his friends, Jim and Family, Jerrod and one very funny bloke who’s name has escaped me at the moment, how embarrassing. We were closely followed by a 1980 something Rangie that Rob had picked up for $500, lots of new bits, but lots of normal Rangie complaints like rotting sills, no footwells etc. Still, this was to be Rob’s run around for the next few months and off-road toy for the next day’s trip to Moab. Cool.
Jim and family kindly offered us a room for the night, as did Shaun, but we thought it only right we should be going to the workshop with Rob and the others to prepare the Rangie for the next day’s challenge and sort a few jobs on the other vehicles. Rob is currently living in his workshop whilst Portal Tek takes off and I’ll tell you now – it’s a dream come true! None of this working outside in the rain.
So, we spent the night helping Rob out with a few little jobs and got to bed about 2am whilst Rob stayed up to finish off some Portal Tek work so he could play at the weekend, that’s dedication for you.
We had a few jobs to do in the morning, including getting some pipe to replace the blocked sections of the Rangies exhaust and a nut to assist with the putting back on of one of the rear trailing arms as when taking the nut off it stripped the existing thread, it’s always the simple jobs that take the time. Still, those jobs completed and after an excellent breakfast at Dee’s Jim’s car trailer was loaded up (not the kind of trailer you get in the UK!) and we started the journey to Moab.
Jerred had previously told us how you could get all kinds of weather in Moab, all within a day and the journey down confirmed that for us. We went from rain in Salt Lake to snow in the mountains and dust storms as we crossed closer to Moab – wow. That was all in about 2hours!
We arrived in Moab and you could tell what sort of town you were in straight away, the main street was filled with restaurants, bike shops, café’s, juice bars, bike shops, pizza parlors and some more bike shops, all interspersed with Jeeps and a few D90’s. Cool. It’s a similar atmosphere to Whistler but in southern Utah! Jim parked the transporters and we headed in for some good pizza and to meet Rob’s friend Jeremy before hitting the trails. It took us slightly longer than normal to unload the cars as Jarrod had managed to lock the keys in.. and being 17, only had $50 for the whole trip - so no locksmith for us, opps! Jeremy managed to blag a coat hanger from a motel and after using that and several other implements they managed to spring the lock on the boot. I bet he'll never live it down!
It was already dark before we headed out at about 8pm and we were conscious Jim and family were heading back that night, but Rob stuck to the plan and we headed for Hells Revenge. Now, this is our first time on slick rock, it’s dark/cold and Charlie’s fully loaded, let me read you an extract from our trail book about Hell’s Revenge:
Numerous steep climbs and descents over sandstone domes and ledges, excellent traction enables vehicles to surmount inclines of incredible steepness, but plenty of power is necessary. Make sure your vehicle is geared properly. Several tippy spots will test the leaning ability of most vehicles, it’s important to have excellent front and rear approach angles on your vehicle and good articulation. Not recommended for stock vehicles.
Lol! It was EXCELLENT! The trail started immediately with a large fin (think Lions Back) and all we could see was darkness to either side, it was interesting! Climbing up the large domes was initially intimidating, but Charlie Camel excelled himself and chugged up them all in 1st low, awesome. I’ve always loved off-roading the Camel, there’s something reassuring about all that weight he even surprised me that night though taking everything with reassuring ease. When we got to the split in the trail we decided to head out to the Overlook. It was very dark. Here’s the view:
From left to right: Jerrad, Jim, Kerry (mm, maybe Carry, sorry :( ), Rob, Dan, Jeremy
(appologies for miss-spellings or getting names wrong, I'm rubbish with names, you would never think I used to be a teacher)
Lol! On the way back Jeremy was driving the Rangie and attempted to climb a 3ft ledge, it might have worked but after a few attempts it became apparent there was no drive to the rear axle. This may have had something to do with the odd wheels on the back or attempting to climb the ledge, but who knows?! Still, with no drive to the rear axle the Rangie started struggling, so it was hitched up to Jim’s Toyota 4runner and after Jerrods attempt at finding the trail himself failed we lead the way out. I think 6 spot lights, two headlights and a torch were ideal for this situation, don’t let anyone ever tell you roof lights are unnecessary! Even with those it was hard to follow the trail back in the dark, the tell tale black marks on the rock fade as you get close to them and the small white markers aren’t glow in the dark – and oversight I reckon.. mmm, maybe I should move into ‘traffic management’ in Moab?! So, I did my quality co-driver work and jogged/walked about 3,000 miles in the cold and dark, it was actually excellent fun as I got to watch the trucks working as they negotiated some pretty cool obstacles and made me feel less guilty about the amount of pizza I’d eaten :-) It was interesting though, I was using both legs and both arms to climb some of the inclines at several stages, Dan confirmed the steepness by telling me everything fell out of the dashboard.
We arrived safely back from the trail and had a brief inspection of the Rangies back axle– they’d done a good job! Rob had to have a look so a pair of pliers opened the hole and part of several planet gears fell onto the high street.
A quick decision was made and the Rangie was loaded up to go back to Salt Lake with Jim whilst Rob jumped in Jeremy’s Jeep Grand Cherokee to find a campsite for the night. We headed down to Hunter Canyon south of Moab to camp in possibly one of the most beautiful spots I’ve ever camped and, more importantly, all had a lie-in in the morning.
Sunday morning started late as we wandered into Moab for breakfast at the Jailhouse (thanks Jeremy!) before convincing him he really wanted to take his nice shiney vehicle out on the trails. He finally agreed, but only if it was a reasonably easy one so Rob picked out Gemini bridges as a more scenic route (although still rated ‘moderate’ in the book, hehe). With the snow on the distant mountains and the red rock this was truly stunning. Although an easy trail we had some fun at the end heading down to the bridges and we spent most of it just enjoying the view.
There was a rather worrying plaque at the top though:
Jerrod assured us he was drunk and drove of the edge – don’t try this at home kids! We had a wander around waved to some Jeep owners at the bottom of the canyon and enjoyed the view.
Spot the Jeep:
Dan and Rob decided to try and stand on the thinnest bits of rock possible ‘just for fun’, completely mad both of them :-) it snowed a bit and we headed back down, Rob suggested with both rode the bikes back down but I had my jeans on and I’ve already got a 4 inch rip in them from doing exactly that, so we unloaded Dan’s bike and I handed the keys to Rob to drive the Camel back to the bottom – it was worth it to see him try to use the gearstick left handed, lol! I think he did much better than I would have done in the same situation.
At the bottom of the trail we waved goodbye as everybody headed back home, I was sad to see them go but there was already mutterings about coming back next weekend. Finger’s crossed :-)
N.B. My hands are so cold now they’re turning purple, so I can’t cross my fingers, but the intention is there…
(P.S. we're a couple of days behind on the blog due to avoiding formal campsites, but will try to upload some more about the last couple of day's tomorrow morning or later tonight.)
1 comment:
Actually Beau was not drunk. His parking brake failed. Very sad tragedy indeed! His parents were in our 4x4 club and still go to Moab.
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