The EXPO TRON Build

Was a great trip!! So much fun, so many cool trucks at camp!

 

Sorry I never saw this man! I'll work on a PM for you

Hell yea man can't wait to see all the new upgrades!

There was! Can't wait to get back out and camp

 

Three Feathers to Chiva Falls ROUND 2! - 5/21/2017

Before the Arizona Heat Wave of Summer rolled into the Tucson area, we took advantage of a beautiful Sunday Evening to go on a quick local adventure! It was time for redemption and I wanted to claim Three Feathers once again, but with all the mods Last time I went in pretty stock, just rocking the TRD Pro front suspension on 35s with a stock front bumper and no sliders. Now I had a solid 3" lift on ADS 3.0s, SDHQ's Chromoly Front bumper and sliders, a better understanding of the trucks limits, articulation, and length through tight trails, and ALL the lumens for a night run!






Ran into this little beast on the way out! The endangered and glorious Gila Monster




Making the approach to take the same line as the first time. My wife grabbed all of this obstacle on video so I'll do my best to upload it eventually. Otherwise you guys can check the highlights on my Instagram. Follow me @st3f3ns I can tell you this obstacle was SO much easier the second time around. Although, I took a better line since TRON has much more clearance on the front end, the fact that I had sliders this time made me super comfortable going through it. I never even touched the sliders, and surprisingly managed to clear the rear bumper as well. Gotta say I'm super happy with my setup once again!




...and a fresh reminder as to what this looked like last year!




Moving Forward, we started to notice how fast we were losing daylight. I wasn't too worried thanks to all the Baja Designs Lumens, but this would be the first significant night run in TRON as well as the first time on this trail running solo at night!




















Wife's turn to drive Also more video of this to follow






When she's having just as much fun as I am!


Now I'll let 55,750 @Baja Designs Lumens do the talking!










Brighter. Bolder. Better! That rock wall otherwise known as Chiva Falls when its obviously running was easily 150-200 yards away. There was enough light to walk all the way through the wash and trees to the base of it without a flashlight! It was pretty damn dark too, no moonlight or anything, just TRON with the OnX6 Arc 50" Lightbar and A-Pillar Mounted XL80's








And this was standing at the base of the falls. Just ridiculous how much light there was haha, but this also concludes my pictures for the trip. For all you local guys reading, we are definitely planning to return after the monsoons and Chiva Falls is running full blast! Last pic is a comparison of it running from our first trip

 

Damn chiva was running compared to the last time I was there in 2013 with my prerunner...

 

Hahaha

hopefully they get that fire out there contained soon. A fall camping trip out to Chiva would be cool.

 

Nice! Definitely need to get a small group planned out there and yea fuck these damn fires burning all my spots... Really pissed about Mt Graham

 

Just stumbled across this on youtube and thought you'd get a kick out of it, lol

https://youtu.be/362qRbGzv4s

 

Who is this Epic Tron guy anyways???

 

You going to Rock Therapy again this year?

 

Holy shit why am I just seeing this? Hahaha nice thanks for the find man I've heard about the video but never seen it till now

Unfortunately not this year, been way too busy lately as much as I wanted to see Moab in October it'll have to wait till next year.

OP UPDATED! Will be updating this thread soon

 

Birthday Shenanigans - May 31st, 2017

Never posted up the little prank @JTS2014TACO @PLC721 and everyone pulled off for my bday! Definitely a good time hanging out with good friends Probably a good thing I didn't have anymore pics from that weekend We started out at Florindinos for pizza then hit the bars in downtown Chandler


While we were waiting for the rest of the guys to show up @PLC721 and @JTS2014TACO told me someone was messing with my truck outside....Behold their prank and bday present haha


Pretty funny walking out to that since I was getting ready to beat somebody, I ended up rocking it around town the next day. Nobody wants to play with me! haha not even the kids at chucky cheese next door to our hotel.....

Poor TRON

 

SwitchPros Flush Mount Bezel by Travis

Travis @SuperiorDetail gave me one of his newly designed 3D printed mounts for my bday! Gotta say it looks pretty damn good in there

 

4th of July Vacation - Greer, AZ & Shooting in Tucson, AZ

Just to catch us up for that long week and a half, we went to Greer for my In-laws family reunion. Greer is awesome and the weather was perfect up there, didn't take many pics tho


Back to Tucson to fly Old Glory for the entire week surrounding 4th of July





Then of course we needed some Pew Pew time!








If you follow on me IG @st3f3ns you would have seen this haha am I doing it right?? #Quickfists

 

Night Run 96 Ranch to Oracle Junction - July 21, 2017



@Kyouto42




@PLC721 @Kyouto42 @SuperiorDetail @JTS2014TACO

@PLC721


Hanging out with the night squad is always fun and we know this trail pretty well now! Ran across this dude, thanks to all the Lumens!




Not bad for output. Still lacking on loading videos to the thread... Guess having a 10 year old laptop doesn't help haha. Go check out my IG: st3f3ns for the video from this trip

 

Oracle Control Road to Mount Lemmon Sunday Adventure - July 23, 2017

Some of the best adventures are spontaneous! On our way back home from Phoenix on a Sunday my Wife and I were driving toward Mt. Lemmon and noticed the huge rain clouds starting to build up. With a few nods back and fourth it was an easy to decision to take the scenic detour back to Tucson!


As soon as we made our way up the Control Road we noticed the clouds were moving pretty quick and started to lose faith in hitting a monsoon...yes we love the rain!






From there we stopped a couple times to let our little buddy Johnny Cash out to stretch his legs. Even if it didn't rain it was an overcast nice and cool afternoon








Sure enough the higher we got the more mud we hit but also noticed a rain cell on approach with a light drizzle!








Once we hit pavement up top we drove to Mt. Bigelow and then... RAIN!!














It was awesome! Full blown Monsoon dumped on us for a good 45 minutes! So much water it made all the little creeks run and we basically had the whole mountain to ourselves. Before we headed back we stopped at our favorite camp spot up there, Camp Four Hatchet








The famous Johnny Cash!

 

​

 

North Rim, Grand Canyon / Labor Day Weekend Trip - September 1st-4th, 2017

Our good friend Mike @mh.meier of @Pelfreybilt was turning 29 this year so we made sure to start the beginning of the last year of his 20s in a big way! (that was hard to type out ) With that said, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was the destination and was also my first time ever being there! Needless to say I was pretty stoked to try something new and also see the Grand Canyon for the first time in about 14 years. It was a long trek making our way up, but every epic adventure starts right here...



We met up with Mike at his house in Flagstaff that first night and would convoy out early the next morning with the rest of the crew. While packing up it was apparent Canyon Coolers were popular amongst the group and in a couple different sizes. I actually just picked up the new Canyon Scout 22QT for this trip to go with my Outfitter 55QT #whatsayeti #canyoncoolersgetitdone


Yet another trip to the pumps... haha met up with our convoy and last prep before heading North!






Made a small pit stop at Jacob's Lake. Had to wait for @JTS2014TACO slow ass! Cool little place to stretch the legs after a pretty boring drive in the flats. Now we were headed South toward the North Rim. Yes I was a solo Tundra in our group. #WNABXPO @StOrMyThEtAcO haha when you see it



@mh.meier



Mike's Husky, Kuma giving a big smile


My gorgeous Wife and little pup Johnny Cash hanging out




Finally DIRT! Getting off the main road and headed toward our camping spot near Locust Point


Birthday boy striking a pose in front of "Truck Norris"


Success! Our view from Locust Point




Back at Camp I finally got to use my new annex (thanks to @Box Rocket ) since the first one didn't come with a zipped floor, and also the first time with the BAMF bedrack! @JLee










Later the next day we finally rolled out of camp for the best adventure of the trip! We were headed to Sublime Point on the North Rim! This originally was the place we wanted to camp, but with the size of our group and need for a campfire we had to camp outside of the North Rim Park boundary. Little did we know Point Sublime was about a 3 hour trek away with all our stopping and such. It was worth every minute as we made our way through the trail taking in the scenery








We were like little kids making our way to Disneyland! The closer we got to the point it was becoming clear why it was names point SUBLIME!




















Point Sublime is definitely on the list for a return camp trip! It was pretty breathtaking and I wish we spent more time up there. Moving on, I quickly realized how important it is to download maps for navigation before any adventuring! I broke one of my own rules assuming we'd have service the whole time, which was a mistake haha Point Sublime would be the first time since leaving Jacobs Lake we got any sort of signal. I was able to download our route back to camp, a much quicker trail than the route we took to get there, using my LeadNav app. With evening approaching it was another awesome drive back to camp especially through the really dense forest using our @Baja Designs Lumens to light the way








Pulled off one more time to regroup...we had a straggler in the group...




TRON was properly decorated with the trail by the time we returned to camp


Heading out to check out the actual North Rim Park. We said our goodbyes to most of the group but Mike and Dakota @dakotasyota in the black LT Taco stuck around. Dakota actually visited us all the way from Washington!!









North Rim Lodge

 

Chiva Falls PreRun - October 8th, 2017

With the big trip planned to Chiva Falls on the 21st, I wanted to make sure the trail didn't drastically change since we had seen it back in May. If I'm hosting any sort of event a PreRun is a must, as well as locating a big enough area to camp for the size group we're expecting. Travis @SuperiorDetail in his 2wd Sunset Bronze, Ryan @Help in his Blue Ribbon Metallic, & Kris @boardude in his Inferno Pro all tagged along for the ride! It was a full size Tundra Sunday Funday



Except for this guy

All the RZR guys were looking at us like we were crazy when I mentioned doing Chiva Falls haha

Airing down










We took the "2wd/Easy" route into Chiva, didn't wanna get hung up on the 3 Feathers Obstacle on the "4x4/Hard" route. I figured we'd save that for the camping trip out there so for those coming out be prepared!
















The Schnauzer Sacrifice!


Kris @boardude used his sliders a couple times This was back on the main trail past our chosen camping spot. We had Travis jump in with us and took the 4x4's back to Chiva.












Made it! Chiva isn't currently running but there's a small trickle. Still an awesome place to check out, and I guarantee once you see the trail yourself, you'll wanna come back for more!




This time I took TRON all the way back into the falls, making sure I was finally capable of doing the whole trail We skipped this section in May since it was dark and we were solo. Should make for an awesome challenge for newcomers! *cough* @KevinK












My Wife showing off her new hat #SchmidtyAdventures






So we've decided to camp in this wash since it provides the most shade and biggest area for a large group of trucks. Exact location in the wash will be based on how many trucks actually show up Saturday morning of the 21st






This was an awesome Run, I can't wait to host a bigger group! Hope to see some of you guys out there! All Yotas are welcome

 

this is definitely my favorite tundra ever. Awesome build man.

 

Thanks man! There's some cool builds out there but I think TRON is finally starting to become one of a kind