Anybody taken their truck out west?

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That's one of the books I bought from Slee.....seems to be a good source.

Little Joe, take notes and pics!! If you don't want to post them here, email me (daily!!) rickysa at aol

You sound just like me :)...can't wait to hear how it goes!
 
A lot of great opinions and first hand experiences on this thread!! Nice!

Beno corrected my post, very accurately. That honestly is the hardest part for me each and every time. The minute i have to wrap my head around turning my truck and pointing it east is the hardest. I know that as soon as i do that, the suck is coming and I'm in for a 3 day haul across the country. And, not really trying to bash the east, but it will come across that way, the minute you start getting close to the mississippi, traffic gets worse, drivers get worse, everything just starts to depress you. For me i'll drive 13+ hours heading out just to get away from the east coast.

Phil is also right, lake powell is just so expansive and there is so much to see around it. It should certainly be a destination for a trip. It's also a great example of how much there is to see and do out there. So you want to see lake powell.... trying to see even some of it could take you years.

Another killer place near lake powell that has now been designated a national park is the bears ears area. That place is killer. It ties into beef basin and canyon lands park. All of which are truly amazing.

If i were to suggest a first time trip out west, i would head to either utah or nevada.
 
In 2015 we started in Charleston, SC and drove to AZ to camp on the North Rim, did the CO Backcountry Discovery Route, went to Jackson WY, then Louisville, Asheville, and back to Charleston. About 6K miles over 30 days. Had so much fun we ended up moving to Denver about 6 months later.
 
I'm still learning this area, but a Grand Canyon-ish trip is on my list. I would be down for planning a multi-weeker, maybe not this year, but a small group with no agenda (I'd like to have at least one other truck to shoot off flares or call the medevac). This year, trying to focus on family inclusive stuff, but down the road, would like to do some grownup road-whoring. If anyone is into long range planning, hit me up.
 
@rickysa due to some family and work stuff, I am pushing my trip out.

Along those lines, anyone interested in doing an unstructured trip out west this fall?
 
little_joe said:
@rickysa due to some family and work stuff, I am pushing my trip out.

Along those lines, anyone interested in doing an unstructured trip out west this fall?
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Possibly! How long?
 
Love this thread! @concretejungle do you have specific spots in Utah and Nevada?
 
lumbee1 said:
Love this thread! @concretejungle do you have specific spots in Utah and Nevada?
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Gosh there really are so many. I have not even had the chance to visit a small portion of what i'd like too.

With that said, you can use Moab as your "home base" and spend a week wandering out from there. That's actually a good first trip because you have a support town just in case. I would suggest maybe hitting moab first, spend a day running their "amusement park trails" like poison spider and several of those. Then head out and camp on the outskirts of those trails. The next day head to Arches for a day exploring that park. Then gas up and get stocked up and head over to canyon lands NP. Drive up and over elephant hill and from there you can wander back towards moab which will take you a couple of days, or wander south towards beef basin. If you still have time, come back to Moab for another stock up and then hit white rim trail or something else like that.


For Nevada, pretty much the entire north is amazing. We started in Reno and ended up finishing the trip at a place called Jarbidge, NV. Google it, really cool town. There is a trip report somewhere on it and here's the youtube video i made for it:
 
one more little tip of advice that i've found as extremely valuable... i don't know about android devices, i'm sure they work similarly, but on my iPhone and iPad i have downloaded motion x GPS app. It is really a great app. You can track your trips, download maps and it will work even if you don't have a cell signal.

What i do before i leave on a trip is pick the area i plan to be in and download the maps to my iPad. The files are larger the more detail you download and the larger the footprint you download. That way they are all on there so when i get off the highway, i shut down google maps and fire up the GPS. I can share tracks with others and they can download them into their app and have them to reference during the trip. It shows where we stopped to camp, any notes and the tracks. Its so refreshing when you are out there looking at a paper map and scratching your head if you should split to the left or right, just double check the GPS maps and go. If you see that your track is taking you off the downloaded track, back up and go the other way. It has been a true comfort while out there in areas that are completely unfamiliar to you. You might be heading down a track that someone shared with you when you get to a mountain pass and it's too snow covered so you have to rethink the route. You can look on the gps and figure out the best way around.

Another example of how that helped me was in Nevada, i was going to check out a hot spring off HWY 50. Jumped off the pavement onto the dirt road and headed towards the hot spring. Luckily the GPS was running in the background and tracked my route out. After we got out of the hot springs, we jumped in the truck to head back and i was disoriented. IN the desert you really lose track of which way is which. The sun was up at noon, so i couldn't use that, i didn't have a real compass with me and i didn't make any visual references to the mountains. I thought i was going the right way and when the GPS fired up i realized i was heading further out in the desert away from the highway. Thank goodness the GPS was there to get me back on route.
 
Hey, mtbcoach and KevinNY,

I just got my map books from Slee, and saw pics in them of the trail that overlooks Telluride (Black Bear Pass)...it's listed and one of the most difficult in all of CO. Barring the fact that I need a good bit more experience before ever taking that challenge, I'm curious if my rig itself could handle it, as I've only got a 2.5" OME and it's reported that the switchbacks are quite tight?

 
rickysa said:
Hey, mtbcoach and KevinNY,

I just got my map books from Slee, and saw pics in them of the trail that overlooks Telluride (Black Bear Pass)...it's listed and one of the most difficult in all of CO. Barring the fact that I need a good bit more experience before ever taking that challenge, I'm curious if my rig itself could handle it, as I've only got a 2.5" OME and it's reported that the switchbacks are quite tight?
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Your rig can handle black bear; plenty of pictures and reports of stock 4x4s doing the trail. It's very technical with very little margin for error. Would not do without an experienced group / spotters to help me through, but your level of risk may be different than mine.

There are a lot of great trails in that area that aren't as technical as Black Bear (i.e., Alpine Loop trails). When I was on my road trip, it was just me, my pregnant wife, and the dog so we focused on 'low-risk' trails that would be fun, but forgiving / not beat up the truck since we were on a solo trip.
 
There are plenty of trails out there that are more scenic than they are dangerous. And, there are plenty of dangerous trails too. After my last trip out west we ran some very difficult trails and to be honest, after about a week i was tired of "cliff hanging". I was ready for the scenic stuff and i was tired of constant adrenaline rushes. It sounds funny, but that was the truth.
 
Same here.
When I travel with the family we usually go for scenic and less technical. In the open deserts of California (Mohave road, parts of Death Valley) my wife was more willing to get further away from civilization. In Colorado with the mountain ledges she was def more hesitant so I adjusted accordingly.

Not sure if mentioned before or not but for me the biggest factor when going on these types of trips is the fact that we are always by ourselves ( 1 vehicle) normally if by myself or a couple of able bodied friends I would be willing to push the level of comfort (more risk) but with only one vehicle and family with me. I tend to choose more bunny trails. Not that it limits us in any way. I just don't get the personal satisfaction of saying I conquered a certain trail.

This was especially true in Moab. I really wanted to do many of the technical trails but decided not to and still had an awesome time, put plenty of dirt miles on the truck, hiked a bunch and most importantly it made my wife wish we can go and visit again. So, win, win for me.
 
SFROMAN, good post and i agree with you. I also personally don't get much satisfaction saying i conquered a hard trail other than saying i was able to see amazing places. To me, that's what it's all about, getting out there into the wilderness away from everything. Searching for zero cell signal is actually a difficult thing to do these days.

When i was in Moab last year waiting on my GF to fly in, JFZ80 was with me in his rig so we decided to run a couple of trails before she got there. We picked poison spider trail. There was one waterfall climb where i got a little off line and my back end started sliding further and further off the edge until i was hanging there! If he wasn't there with his knowledge of how to operate a winch and how to safely get the situation under control, i'm really not sure what would of happened. It could of been extremely bad. I thought about it after we finished that if it were just me and the GF, she would of freaked and not known what to do. So that pushed me further to agree that especially if you are a single vehicle, just get out and explore. Keep the super technical trails off the agenda until you have a competent group with you that can help you if you get into a pickle.
 
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