Nothing Special's Moab trip, 2019

[Nothing Special]

Last year my wife and I went to Ouray for a week of 'wheeling in my '71 Bronco.  That was actually plan B.  Plan A had been that Lesley always had wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, and Moab Utah has been on my list for decades.  We had thought we'd combine those two destinations in one trip.  But the trip was going to be in July (we had a Disney World trip scheduled for the fall), and when we looked up typical temperatures in those locations in July we decided that we had to come up with a plan B.  But that left plan A available for another year, so this year we scheduled it for September.

This was supposed to be our third vacation of the summer.  But the summer had other plans for us. We ended up having to cancel the first one entirely.  The second was with my extended family, and I ended up having to miss it while Lesley went (it's a long story that isn't suited for an internet bulletin board).  So we were REALLY ready to spend some time together on this trip, and a few weeks ago we loaded up the motorhome, hooked up the Bronco and headed west (well, south first...).  We've been back from the trip for a couple weeks now, and I'm finally getting around to posting about it here.  Like I did with my Ouray trip report last year, I'll do separate posts for each day (after getting the first 5 non-Moab days in this one post).  Hopefully I'll get about one report per day, but we'll see how it goes.

It's about a two day drive from St. Paul to the Grand Canyon.  I left work at noon on Thursday, so we got there on Saturday afternoon.  That let us get set up (we stayed in Trailer Village RV park on the South Rim) and take a walk along the rim before dinner.  Then we went back to the rim for sunset.

Sunday we hiked down Bright Angel trail.  This is the trail that goes ~8 miles and 4500 vertical feet, all the way down to the Colorado River, but we were content to hike 1.5 miles down to the first "rest stop".  We spent the rest of Sunday riding the shuttle bus and getting off at different places along the South Rim.  We hadn't even unhooked the Bronco from the motorhome, so pulling out on Monday was pretty simple.  So now we've been to the Grand Canyon.  Neither of us had been there before, and we were glad we went.  It is a very impressive hole in the ground!  But the length of time we spent there was about right for us.  If someone wanted to do a lot of hiking, especially with some back-country camping, a longer stay would be great.  But for just the sightseeing this worked out well.

OK, time for pictures!  This is at a rest stop in Colorado


... and the Grand Canyon at sunset


Here's the canyon from near the top of Bright Angel.  You can see the trail in a few places (one by the red arrow).  The river is a couple thousand feet below the black arrow.


And then this guy strolled through our camp site Sunday evening


Monday we headed back up to Moab.  We had actually drove through it on Saturday and we were looking forward to spending more time there!  We were staying in Canyonlands RV Park, right in Moab.  We usually don't aim to camp in a city, but there are no trees or shade outside of Moab, and Canyonlands is a pretty nice place.  Plus we found that being within walking distance of downtown Moab was pretty nice.  We ended up taking that walk (about 2 miles to get to the far end of town and back) most nights.  And we at least made it to the Moab Diner for ice cream every night!

For full disclosure, the sites in Canyonlands are pretty small and the roads are tight.  We were able to fit with our 28' class C motorhome, but anyone with a bigger rig might have some challenges.  But when we go back to Moab (and we will!), we'll definitely stay there again.

That brings us up to when we started hitting the trails on Tuesday.  More on that to come!

[Gary Lewis]

So THAT'S where you've been!  Have missed you.  But glad you finally got to go.  And can't wait for the trail reports.

As for the Grand Canyon, I think you missed an option for things to do there: ride the mules down & back.  What a way to spend two days and see the river where you pointed that black arrow.  Oh, and to see Bright Angel Trail as we came back that way.  Boy were we tired then.  

Yes, it is a huge hole in the ground.  But from the bottom looking up it is unbelievable.  To think that water did all of that.  And to feel the temp difference from the South Rim to the river is hard to fathom as well.

Anyway, I look forward to more pics and more of the report.  

[Nothing Special]

We'll probably go back some time, so we saved the mules for the future trip!  But yes, terrain like that is much more impressive from below.  That's partly why we hiked down at all (plus just to say we had done it).  And we got to experience cliffs from above and below in Moab.

[ArdWrknTrk]

Beautiful country!
Looking forward to pics of your Moab wheeling adventures.

That bull elk looks pretty chill.
I got to experience the national elk refuge when I was in the Tetons 30 years ago.
They can be impressively large, but certainly not as stocky as the moose here in the northeast.

Subscribed. Thank you for sharing!  

[Nothing Special]

ArdWrknTrk wrote

....That bull elk looks pretty chill.
I got to experience the national elk refuge when I was in the Tetons 30 years ago.
They can be impressively large, but certainly not as stocky as the moose here in the northeast....

Yeah, we had seen some of his wives a few times earlier, but the big guy was certainly the most impressive!

There was one campsite that had a leaky water spigot.  We had seen a few of the locals bellying up to the bar there, and right before this guy strolled through our camp site he had stopped off for a drink.  Here he is taking a break from his drink to see if he should ask Lesley to dance (or something...).  Ultimately he decided she wasn't worth bothering with and went back to his drink.


And yes, his antlers were very close to that truck.  And they got closer when he'd swing his head around!  The young German couple that had rented that truck and camper were nervously taking pictures.  It made me think of the Farmer's Insurance commercials:  "We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two!"  But he never made contact with the truck, so they didn't need to explain anything away!

I've seen moose a few times too.  Those things are monsters!  Elk are kind of funny though.  When you see the cows they just look like good-size deer.  But then if you see actual deer (we saw a mule deer buck and a handful of does in the campground as well), they look like little babies.  And I'm not sure how much bigger this bull was than the cows.  Certainly bigger, but maybe 30%?  But the rack just makes him look HUGE!

[Nothing Special]

Tuesday, Sep 17 - Hell's Revenge

I researched trails for this trip through YouTube videos as well as asking people on another forum I belong to.  They made something like 8 trips to Moab in 2018, so they were a lot of help.  One suggestion that was very helpful was to order this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Moab-Backroads-4-Wheel-Drive-Trails/dp/193483825X/ref=sr_1_2?crid=36K1RWX8UNXEY&keywords=moab+trails+book&qid=1559311439&s=gateway&sprefix=moab+trails%2Caps%2C181&sr=8-2

We were planning on 'wheeling four days on this trip, with one "tourist" day.  It's possible to fit 2 or 3 trails into one day, but we didn't want that kind of work-out.  So I had a list of 4 trails that I planned to do, with a couple of "backups" as well.

On Monday night Lesley asked me what trail we were going to start with.  I told her "Hell's Revenge" so she looked it up in the book and freaked out a little when the book listed it as a "difficult" trail.  She eventually accepted my explanation that the book was aimed at a broad audience and it wasn't going to be difficult for us (at least not in a bad way!).  So on Tuesday, with significant trepidation on Lesley's part, we headed for Hell's Revenge.

(The book lists trails as "easy", "moderate" and "difficult."  By the end of the week my assessment is that what it calls "easy" is basically a poorly maintained dirt road, nothing a stock 2WD pickup couldn't handle.  "Moderate" starts to require a little more driver attention and possibly 4WD and/or a little more ground clearance.  "Difficult" ranges from trails that any competent driver could do in a stock SUV up to trails that are very likely to damage even a very well-built rock crawler.  So we ended up focusing on the easier end of the "difficult" trails, not looking at all at any of the "easy" or "moderate" trails.  They might be good choices for people looking to get out of town and see some cool stuff, but they aren't at all what I'd consider 'wheeling trails.)

Hell's Revenge is very close to Moab (about a 5 minute drive from our campground).  And I have to agree with the "experts" I consulted with, as well as the book, if you're in Moab, Hell's Revenge is a must-do trail!  It ended up being both Lesley's and my favorite trail of the trip!  The terrain is so unlike anything we typically see.  And experiencing the traction you get on slickrock is amazing!  Throughout the week there were several places that I couldn't walk on, but the Bronco could just putt up or down easily!  It took a few of these for the butterflies to settle down to the point where it was just fun, but a few butterflies are fun too!  There were a few places that made me pick a line carefully, but nothing I would consider difficult for me or my vehicle (we took the bypasses on all of the named obstacles: Hell's Gate, the Escalator and Tipover Challenge, as well as all of the hot tubs).  Overall we spent about 5 hours on the trail, including time for lunch, watching a few others play, and taking 187 pictures!  We ran into three other groups of Jeep-sized vehicles, one solo, two groups of side-by-sides and two different solo side-by-sides.  So not at all busy, but not desolate either.

Enough of listening to me talk.  Time for some of those 187 pictures!

This fin is right near the start of the trail, giving you a quick intro to what's different about 'wheeling in Moab!


Again near the start of the trail.  This was the only place I needed to engage my front locker (the Detroit in the rear is always working of course).  I couldn't stay to the right of the center ditch (Broncos are too wide) and I don't have enough flex to keep enough tires planted to crawl this without the front locker.  By the way, a little while later we caught up with the Jeeps you see behind me here (I let them pass as soon as I got to a wide spot).  One had forgotten to unlock his front diff and broke a Dana 60 U-joint with the good traction you get on slickrock.  That made me decide I wasn't going to use my front locker except when I needed to, which ended up being pretty rarely.


Another fun section, showing the "amazing" flex of a Bronco front axle!


We got to watch some "big dogs" play on Hell's Gate.


Along with the less-than-stellar flex, a down-side to Broncos off-road is the huge flat hood.  This is all you can see out of the windshield pretty frequently on this trail!


I've been a little concerned about my front overhang since I added the receiver-mount winch.  I guess I don't need to worry so much!  I was sure I was going to stuff it at the bottom of this hill and it looks like I've got about 10" of clearance still.


Also in that picture you can see how lightly loaded my right rear tire is.  Some of these hills are STEEP!  They can be very difficult to walk up or down, and are a little spooky (although not difficult) to drive.  I find that I REALLY like the low crawl ratio (71:1) and manual trans.  I just let it idle down hills like this, never touching the brakes.

We also got to watch some of the big dogs on Escalator.  We didn't see this guy start up, but their guide was explaining that he had gone too far left in that hole and slid his right tires to the bottom.  That stuffed his right rear corner into the hole so he couldn't back up, and when he went forward his left front reached for the sky (the Jeep wave?).  We got there just as they were rigging the winch line to hold his front end down.


After his buddy stayed too far left, this guy wasn't going to make that mistake!  He stayed too far right and flopped it on its left side!  He was able to put it in reverse and back out of this, flopping back onto all fours.  He then motored up pretty easily.  But this cemented the idea that we weren't doing Escalator on this trip!



Anyway, that was Hell's Revenge!  For people thinking about taking this trail with a full-size truck, I don't think it would be a big problem.  Rear overhang on a stock pickup might be an issue on a few of the climbs, but you'll just be dragging a bumper, and with a lift it might not be an issue at all.  A long wheelbase truck might also drag its belly on some of the breakovers, so careful line selection would be more important.

Also, there are parts of this trail that are a little scary if you aren't an experienced 'wheeler.  Lesley and I have an understanding.  When I scout an obstacle I'll tell her if she can ride it, if she'll need to close her eyes, or if she should get out and take pictures (the next level beyond that is me turning around!).  As I said,we have 187 pictures from this trail!  Lesley walked a lot of it!  So if Moab is one of your (or your wife's) first 'wheeling trips you might not want to do this trail on day 1.

Thanks for reading, and there's more to come!

[Ray Cecil]

Havent been to Moab yet, but I have hiked the canyon about 15 years ago. Just about died of heat stroke. Its a long story. But several buds went with us and a couple of them were puking by the end of the day.

[Gary Lewis]

Well, if that "fin" is right at the start, Janey isn't going.  (I haven't shown her the pic, but after 50 years you kinda start understanding how the other person thinks.)  She MIGHT let me, but there's not a chance she is going to ride over it.

And several of the shots of your Bronco make things look STEEP.  I'll take your word for the traction, especially if that guy broke a D60's u-joint.  But I'd need to get more experience before I tackled much of Hell's Revenge.

But wow, those are cool pics!  My nephew had similar ones from when they took the RZR's earlier this year.  I'm looking forward to more pics and more writeups.  I do hope at least my son and I can go.  

[Nothing Special]

Unfortunately it's not very reasonable to bypass that fin by walking.  It's too steep to hike up and down very easily, and it didn't look like an easy walk around.  Lesley wasn't at all sure about it, but did ride because there wasn't much of an option.  But yes, it's things like this that led me to say perhaps it's not the day 1 trail for many.

But the traction you get there really has to be experienced to be believed!  As I noted, there were several places where I couldn't walk the trail on foot, but I could easily crawl it in the Bronco.  And this fin is actually a pretty good one to get that experience on.  It was my first experience with it and while it did raise my adrenaline level a bit, I had no concerns that I couldn't do it.  That let me gain some confidence before doing some of the steeper ones.  But I still chose to bypass a few of the steeper optional ones (including the climb up to the overlook at the far end of the Hell's Revenge loop).  And again, I'm not saying you should put Janey on this on day 1!

[Nothing Special]

Gary Lewis wrote

Well, if that "fin" is right at the start, Janey isn't going.  (I haven't shown her the pic, but after 50 years you kinda start understanding how the other person thinks.)  She MIGHT let me, but there's not a chance she is going to ride over it....

Gary, I told Lesley what you said about Janey on this trail.  Lesley said:

"It (that first fin) really isn't that bad.  For one thing it comes so early in the trail that you don't have time to think about it, you're just on it.  And it really is pretty wide once you are on it."

I'm not saying Janey would be excited to go on that fin!  And we need to keep in mind that Lesley has been doing this with me for 29 years now, so her willingness doesn't necessarily translate to a newcomer to fourwheeling.  But Lesley isn't the most daring trail rider  and that was her input.  So I thought I'd share it.

[Gary Lewis]

Bob - Perhaps if we do the Ouray trails with no problems, and then move up to Moab and make that our last day it would work.  But Janey isn't one to do daring things in a vehicle.  And without the experience Lesley has she'd have to work up to that one.

However, I think that's more in line with something I might do with our son.  It fits right in with lots of things he wants to do, so either way I may get to do it.  

[Nothing Special]

Good perspective!  Hell's Revenge isn't really a difficult trail, and I'm sure you and Big Blue can do it (possibly with a little creativity where he might drag).  But it's not really a novice trail either.  So You're thing about it in a good way.

[Gary Lewis]

I'll have a skid plate on the 38 gallon Bronco tank as Dad's truck had a skid plate and I don't see that one needing it.  So I'll put it on Big Blue, although it'll obviously have to be spaced down teeny a bit.

And if the bumper drags it won't hurt it much - assuming I get that bumper built.  

Are there hotels in town?  On some of our to-be trips we'll camp wherever we get, but might want to stay in a hotel there.

[Nothing Special]

There are hotels.  Moab is very much a tourist town.  Anything that a tourist will need is pretty readily available.

But this does bring up a topic I was thinking about, where to stay.  There are a few full-service campgrounds (and as mentioned, we'll go back to Canyonlands).  And there are hotels.  There are also a lot of more primitive campgrounds right on the Colorado River, just northeast of town (when I was younger that type of camping would have really appealed to me) as well as in the Sand Flats area (where Hell's Revenge is, I'd much prefer camping along the river though).  But I don't think the back-country camping opportunities seemed particularly inviting.  Maybe I wasn't looking in the right places, but there didn't seem to be a lot of shade, and I really didn't see any place that I would really want to just pitch a tent.

[Nothing Special]

Wednesday - Poison Spider... not so much.  So on to Fins & Things

Poison Spider was my "A" list choice for day 2.  I was a little concerned about an obstacle called "The Waterfall" about 2 miles in.  It sounds like that's a tough spot with no bypass and I promised Lesley that we'd turn around there if it was more that we should attempt on this trip.  Turns out I didn't need to worry about that...

About 1/2 mile up the third switchback turned us back.  Here's a picture of as far up as we came.  The issue was that the big rock Lesley's feet are on wouldn't let me move farther right, and my left tires would be hanging over the edge of the rocks they'd be climbing.  I'm sure I could've made it with a spotter, and really I'm even sure I could've while doing my own spotting.  But this early in the trip I didn't want to risk my marriage by pushing my luck here.


(By the way, take note of the shirt Lesley is wearing.  She made that for our 'wheeling trips.  Yes, it's a Jeep grill, not a Bronco.  But her car is a Jeep Renegade, and before the Bronco I had a CJ5.  So she definitely has some brand loyalty there.  But no, I didn't get over it.)

Our back-up trail for this day was Fins & Things, so we headed over there.  This trail is near Hell's Revenge, and is pretty similar in many ways, but different too.  Fins & Things is probably easier, but there are more just kind of rough trail sections between "Moab type" trail sections.  It was a good trail, and we're glad we did it, but if someone is there with a limited amount of time I'm not sure I'd recommend doing both of these.  But then again, if I'm glad we did them both maybe I should be recommending people do both.  Sorry, I can't make up my mind on that.

So if you are going to do only one of these, which should it be?  If you're up to it I'd say Hell's Revenge.  If you're less sure, definitely Fins & Things.  It's not that much easier, but the scariest fins are at the end instead of the beginning, and you can bypass them.  Plus there are numerous "escape routes" if you decide you don't want to do the whole thing.

We only took 35 pictures on this trail.  Part of the reduction from the 187 pictures from Hell's Revenge was likely that this was day 2 and that was day 1.  But also Lesley rode more on Fins & Things and she takes more pictures when she's out walking.  As I said above, she walks when the trail makes her nervous, so that tells you something about the two trails too (although the fact that this was day 2 I'm sure had an impact on that as well).  And I never engaged the front locker.

The entire ~9 miles of the trail took us about 3.5 hours, including a lunch stop.  We did meet up with a group of 3 Jeep TJ Wranglers from Washington state and ran with them for a while which was fun.  The only other vehicle we saw was a lone JK that had been rented by a couple guys who spoke very little English (I was surprised by what a large percentage of the tourists we saw were from outside the US, we heard that at the Grand Canyon 40% of the visitors are foreign).

Just a fun trail picture.


Sorry for the poor picture quality, this was a screen capture from a video.  This was an optional obstacle on the south loop in Campground H (if you read the description in the guide book I gave a link to earlier that will make sense).  This was one of the hills I couldn't walk on but easily drove up.  It is easy to walk around if a passenger doesn't want to ride up it (Lesley walked!).


At the top of a steep descent on the north loop.  This is undoubtedly the most difficult part of the trail.  It's steep and not smooth, and you need to make a turn at the bottom.  And there's no bypass (although you can do other parts of the trail and skip this section).  I wasn't really thinking about a line for a full-size truck while I was on this hill, but thinking back, I think it would be easier in a full-size than it was in an early Bronco.


Another steep descent on the north loop.  This was the easiest of three options at this point. It wasn't actually difficult, but it's a little spooky.  And a full-size might well drag its bumper.


This was a very funny view to us Moab newbies, seeing the "blacktop road" stretching out so far.  And yes, Lesley rode that whole way!  There were a few sections that were pretty steep, but nothing was thin.  And you could walk up next to the steep sections if you didn't want to ride.  Or you could skip most of this entire section.


Even with the false start at Poison Spider and airing down and up twice, we were still back at camp by 4:30, plenty of time for another soak in the pool before dinner and an evening of being tourists (and getting more ice cream at the Moab Diner!).

Still more to come...

edit to add in December 2021:  I finally started a YouTube channel, so here's the video from Fins N Things we shot this day;

[Gary Lewis]

Bob - I'm thinking there are two kinds of trips.  The first is to stay in a hotel, run the trails by day, and clean up by night.  The second is to take your time overlanding and stop where you are, in the middle of nowhere, to spend the night.  To me, Moab and Ouray are the former, and the north rim of the canyon is the latter.

[Gary Lewis]

Moab looks to have some challenging parts.  And on Poison Spider it didn't take long to find one.  I think your decision was wise.  

I love Lesley's shirt!  That's cool!  

On the steep descent, why would it have been easier in a longer vehicle?  Or did I misunderstand?

On the short steep descent, which bumper would drag?

Anyway, it looks like you two had a great day despite the initial "bump" in the road.  

[Nothing Special]

Gary Lewis wrote

....  On the steep descent, why would it have been easier in a longer vehicle?  Or did I misunderstand?

On the short steep descent, which bumper would drag?....

On a steep hill a short wheelbase vehicle is more likely to roll end-over-end than a long wheelbase.  And if you watch enough YouTube videos, the worst rolls seem to be when going down a steep hill and dropping one front tire off a rock before the other front tire drops.  The turn you have to make at the bottom of that hill is to get lined up straight to drop off the ledge in the very bottom of the picture.  I don't know how close I was to rolling the Bronco there (I don't think it was REAL close), but it definitely felt spooky.  A full size truck would be a lot more stable and a lot more forgiving of a bad line there.  And by the way, if you do get into trouble like that (dropping a front tire off a ledge and starting to roll), the correction is to accelerate down the hill to pull the front axle back in front of the c.g.  Kind of like accelerating to stop trailer sway, it doesn't feel like the right thing to do, and I hope I never need to do it.  But with the ledge being at the bottom of this hill, at least you wouldn't be starting a long roller-coaster ride if you had to.

And on that short descent I don't think the breakover would be a problem for a high-riding long box truck like Big Blue.  But the long rear overhang might make some noise.  But as you point out above, that likely wouldn't cause any damage.

[Gary Lewis]

Oh, I see!  End-over-end wasn't something I was thinking of.  And now that you put it in my mind I can't STOP thinking of it!  

But I understand about the trailer sway and accelerating.  Been there, done that.  Tongue weight is your friend.  Not enough and don't touch the brakes.  SCARY!

[Nothing Special]

End-over-end isn't exactly accurate.  As you can imagine, if you are going down a hill at an angle and the "leading" front tire (say it's the right front) drops off too big of a ledge the roll would start around an axis formed by the left front and right rear tires.  Once the roll starts the vehicle is probably more likely to swing its back end around so it's rolling to the side.  But the point is that rolls like this, particularly if they happen as you first start down a hill, tend to be the most dangerous because they tend to keep going until you get to the bottom of the hill.  Most "rolls" are really more "flops" as the vehicle flops onto its side (like the blue and orange Jeep in the picture above on "the Escalator" on Hell's Revenge).  They are very unlikely to cause any injuries (as long as people are belted in and "keep their hands and arms inside the ride at all times."

That said, while it's important to keep the risks in mind, it's not necessarily healthy to dwell on them.  Yes, scout hills before you go down them, and do your best to drop front tires off ledges at the same time.  And if you think you're out of your depth have the wisdom to turn around.  But Big Blue is going to be a very stable platform.  So he'll be able to do very well just about everywhere he'll fit!