Colorado Wyoming Utah 2010
Beto and I had an amazing time this year heading out West to Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah over a two-week period. We picked the first two weeks of September thinking the weather would still be good and the crowds would be minimal after the start of school. We were right, although we did see lots of retirees in the lower campsites and we were too late to see most of the wildflowers in full bloom. Thanks go to Rick Franz who was a great source of inspiration and encouragement, and to Bill Burke for filling in many of our details and helping make the trip more enjoyable.Organization began here [Another restricted link to the FJ Bruisers forum. Removed.].
Here is my report.
Trip Highlights
- Length: 14 days
- Lowest Elevation: 3,941 feet
- Highest Elevation: 12,943 feet
- National Forests: Roosevelt , Routt, Medicine Bow, White River, Gunnison, Uncompahgre
- Bureau of Land Management: La Sal Mountains: Poison Spider, Rose Garden Hill, Onion Creek
- River Crossings: Dolores
Final Preparations
On Saturday August 21 we did a last-minute shakedown run at Rausch Creek. Beto and I both had major work done on our trucks over the summer and we needed to make sure everything was working OK. The trip revealed a few problems on my truck- an illuminated skid, VSC TRAC, and VSC off lights, which turned out to be bad wheel bearings on both front wheels, and bad hub and ABS speed sensor on the passenger front wheel. Newark Toyotaworld was able to finish repairs just in the nick of time for me to drive to New Jersey and pickup Andras’ rooftop tent before the deadline. (Thanks again for loaning it, Andras!)Upon return from NJ, I packed the FJ with all the gear we would need for two weeks, and we met the flatbed truck driver on Friday August 27 to send the FJs to Colorado. We shipped the trucks to an offroad repair shop where Beto had some work done at the last second before we arrived. Why ship? So we could spend every minute of our vacation enjoying our destination, instead of spending half of it driving across the country. When your vacation is to spend two weeks offroading from the driver’s seat, we didn’t want to spend another week driving on straight highways.
The time without our FJs was like a weeklong Christmas Eve. The waiting finally ended on Saturday September 4 when we flew from Philadelphia to Denver and picked up the trucks. They survived the first major hurdle by making to the start of the expedition ready to go.
Saturday and Sunday were reserved for cross-country travel snafus and altitude adjustment. Since the travel went fine, we took the time to explore a bit of Denver. We hit some good restaurants, including one run by a Food Network regular, Keegan Gerhard. This was our last taste of civilization before the expedition’s main course.
A Week With Bill Burke
For those who don’t know, Bill runs a company called Bill Burke’s 4-Wheel Drive America. He is a noted offroad driver, trainer, racer, and consultant. He even worked with Toyota to help make the FJ Cruiser what it is today. He is a permitted guide, offering mini-expeditions to the public. We chartered him for a week of our expedition through his backyard. We could not have hired a better guide.Monday it was time to get down to business. We drove to Ft. Collins to meet Bill Burke at Jax, a large outdoor and Army/Navy surplus store. After the introductions and some obligatory shopping, we hit the trail. True to form, I cracked my windshield on day one. It’s my signature expedition move, but was nothing serious, so we carried on.
Bill showed us some very scenic trails through Northern Colorado, with some venturing into the South of Wyoming. We stayed primarily on National Forest land and camped the entire week. The nighttime stars, satellites, and shooting stars were simply indescribable. We found the trails to be generally mild to intermediate for our FJs, except for all of the fallen trees. Over the course of the week, we found many of our trails were blocked by freshly overturned trees. Running without a chainsaw, we got to be quite proficient with winch, axe, and saw techniques to move the timber out of our way. By the end of the week, we were a well-oiled, trail clearing machine.
Despite all the warnings and the attempt to acclimate, none of us were fully prepared for the effects of high altitude on the body. All of us were in decent physical condition, but we still found ourselves winded after performing small physical tasks like gathering firewood or dragging recovery gear above 10,000 feet. Beto even suffered a bit of altitude sickness. Sufficient acclimation time and drinking lots of non-alcoholic fluids seemed to be the cure. All of us were doing noticeably better by the end of two weeks, but none of us were operating at 100% up there. Still, the clean, crisp air was worth it.
With Bill as our guide, we winded our way West. The sights on a trip like this are too numerous to mention, but if I had to pick three highlights, they would be: seeing Rabbit Ears (a large, high elevation rock formation in the shape of… you’ll never guess) from a distance _after_ we had driven to the top of it, walking through numerous abandoned buildings and an authentic ghost town, and taking in the views of vast areas of aspen trees while cresting the mountain tops around Hahn’s Peak.
Along the way, I bent and punctured a valve stem. I was carrying what seemed like a spare everything (alternator, fluids, CV, etc.), but no valve stem. Fortunately, Bill had several to choose from and we fixed it on the trail. He showed us how easy it is to reseat the bead on a tire with nothing but a high lift jack and CO2.
The week with Bill flew by, and he was kind enough to leave us with several suggestions to help refine our itinerary for next week. As we left Bill, he was camping on his own. The man spends over 200 nights each year outdoors. Amazing.
Offroad Journey from Hahn’s Peak, Colorado to Moab, Utah, via Ouray
After a week of roughing it with Bill, we were ready for some civilization, so we alternated between highway and offroad and typically planned our days so we had the option of a hotel at night. We ate fantastic high-altitude blueberry pancakes at a bed and breakfast run by some folks who had no idea how to run a bed and breakfast. We took the highway towards Aspen, rode the scenic I-70 Glenwood Canyon, ate Elk steak at Juicy Lucy’s , and stayed in a ski resort for a night. Beto claims he saw Barbara Streisand and Lady Gaga in Aspen, but everyone knows he made it up. To get back on track, we hit the dirt again in order to reach Crested Butte.The trip from Aspen to Crested Butte took the better part of a day. We used a 4x4 trail known as Pearl Pass and took some side trips along the way. Here, we got to play in the snow, experience some pucker-factor mountain switch backs, and enjoy absolutely fantastic views with exceptional visibility. Parts of the trail were filled with jagged rocks, and we all took some tire damage, especially Beto. He slashed through the Kevlar layer of his sidewall and had to switch to his spare at 12,000 feet above sea level. That was the best exercise I’ve had in a while. Having only one non-functioning spare between two trucks made us a little nervous, so we slowed down the pace and completed the trail with no further issues.
Crested Butte is an interesting little city. It feels like you’re in a fake model railroad town, surrounded by mountains, filled with fantastic gourmet restaurants and nice people. We found a Thai/Indian restaurant that was unbelievably delicious, and a hotel that served warm chocolate chip cookies. It was a good night.
The next morning, we were on a mission to find a replacement tire. Despite an hour of Googling and calling every tire shop between Crested Butte and Moab, we had nothing, so, we did what they used to do in the wagon train days- we ordered one on tirerack.com and had it shipped ahead to a hotel in Moab so it would be there waiting for us.
Leaving Crested Butte, we took some highway to get us to Lake City, Colorado. We hopped on Engineer Pass and started the trip to Ouray, home of the annual FJ Cruiser Summit. On the trail, we saw lots of abandoned buildings from the old mining boom days. We saw an absolutely impressive caldera, which had to be one of the most interesting sights of the whole trip.
Ouray was a little town whose scenery lived up to all the FJ Summit pictures I’ve ever seen. We swam in the hot springs (150 degrees naturally, artificially cooled to 98-104), and again I could not take my eyes off the mountains and the stars.
After one night in Ouray, we took Black Bear pass towards Telluride, Colorado. The switchbacks on Pearl Pass had nothing on these switchbacks. They were not difficult for the FJ, but they were difficult for any driver who made the mistake of looking down. We had a great time and didn’t soil our pants! We stopped at Floradora to eat duck and drink a sufficient volume of margaritas to calm our nerves enough to continue. We later took highway to Moab.
Moab
Moab is heaven for offroaders. I’m convinced you could spend a month there and still not see everything worth seeing. Moab was a nice change of pace for us, because it took us out of the green, wooded mountains and planted us straight in the desert. The West is vast, so it amazes me that you can go from cold and snow to heat and sand in only a few hours. It’s important to have options like this when you’re doing an expedition, so you can mix the terrain and don’t turn blind to the scenery. (“Another mountain? Great…”)We did a couple trails/obstacles that Beto and Rick had seen before, and we had a blast. Rose Garden Hill is one of those classic offroad obstacles that looks like nothing from a distance or on pictures, but up close it’s a massive hill piled with boulders. There, we had to winch Beto to me, and me to a tree, to get him un-stuck. We first tried without me winched, then with me winched to a boulder, neither of which worked. A large tree at the very far end of my winchline was what finally did the trick (again, the altitude, and now heat!) At the top, we were treated with panoramic views of the area and the chance to cross the Delores River in two locations. We made it! Granted, the water level was low, but it’s always a little nerve wracking to cross a body of water clearly labeled “River” on the map when you’ve never seen anyone else do it.
On an expedition, you’re far from mechanical help, and even further from home, so it’s no fun to break down. You have to use a different sense of offroad values so you don’t end the trip, for yourself and the rest of the group. Not to mention, these are not our normal FJs. They have two weeks of camping gear, extra fuel, and a rootftop tent, all working hard to add weight and change our truck’s suspension, braking, and acceleration behavior. But, as the trip got closer to the end, especially since we were shipping our trucks home, we could push ourselves a little harder.
On our last trail day, we did one called “Poison Spider.” It’s basically sand, slickrock, and ledges. We made our way to the top, which overlooks Moab, then started back down. We don’t have this sort of thing around here, so it was very interesting, and very challenging for us. Going up was OK. Going down got a little too interesting when I didn’t pay enough attention to my line and took a ledge where I shouldn’t have. With all the left-foot breaking skill I had, I started easing my way down this ledge. And easing. And easing. And easing. I couldn’t find the bottom, but it was too late to back up without the assistance of winch from behind, and I decided to drive through it. I was very glad I ran the rock hill on the competition course rock at Rausch Creek a few times, because without that experience I probably would have panicked or/or rolled my truck back-over-front, or so it felt. In the end, I finally found the bottom, but I had to push the FJ forward on my winch fairlead from my driver seat with a rear tire in the air. The fairlead left huge gouge lines in the rock from the weight of the FJ. It was a very tense situation that made me gun-shy the rest of the day, but I got through it and lived to tell the tale. I think it even made Beto gun-shy [Actually, I call that being "deliberate." Ed.]. And did I mention there was a cliff 1.5 FJ lengths away from me on my front and right sides? I had to put that part out of my mind in order to complete the maneuver.
Celebration
The next morning we took highway back to Denver. Speed limits there are typically 75 MPH, so we were able to cruise down the road and make good time. I got a flat tire along the way and managed to light up the dash in the process, but I had no other problems making it to the dropoff point. We ended our expedition in style at one of the best restaurants I’ve ever experienced- a Brazilian steak house. Beto was an excellent guide for the last day feast.We arrived home Saturday September 18, and now we wait for our FJs to rejoin us. Hopefully they will arrive this weekend. We put them through two weeks of torture, and they survived without any significant problems. I am in awe that these trucks handled the hell we threw at them. Mine is due for a professional detailing and some TLC as soon as it’s home.
This was a fantastic trip I will remember for a lifetime. Hopefully more Bruisers will find their way out West so you can see what I mean.
THE END
It's going to take a while to get our pictures on the web. Especially me, since my camera is still in the FJ. Here is a preview of some of Beto's pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/adalberto.castelo/2010Expedition
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