Where Have You Off-Roaded Today? 3rd Gen

Yea Bear gave me lots of helpful tips and big thanks to Cameron for the spotting

 

Hungry Valley is fun at the moment. The rains have done a number. And the place is so large, it’s been a few days and was able to find this gem to play and conquer. Took me side ways once the two wheels were on top. I didn’t expect that, but stuck with it and rode the stocker out like an outlaw

Tacomas cause adrenaline, REAL GOOD STUFF.

 

Somewhere in jersey

 

Got out for another nice day today, but did get stuck. Took 30 minutes to shovel out.

Good snow track to drive up, but stuck trying to turn in 2 foot snow with solid ice below. No go. Warmed up above freezing and the snow wet slick on top of the ice.

Tried 4-lo with crawl control and multi terrain but did not budge even an inch. More shovelling and finally got out in 4 high after a lot of rocking back and forth. Just slamming into reverse and drive over and over. Crawl control just hopped up and down in one spot with all 4 tires spinning. No good for deep wet snow.

Tons of just fresh moose tracks again. One set was a cow moose with the tracks of 2 calves on either side. Got in a nice walk again. The trail I drove up last Friday was impassable. Today I made it 1 mile up the trail, but the last trip I made it 15 miles up that same trail. We had a lot of fresh snow 2 days ago. So beautiful up there that I hate to leave at end of day. No other trucks or people around. Perfect.

 

Out today, but it might be the last offroad trip for several weeks. It has warmed up too much at high elevation. The snow has melted making it impassable on most offroad trails. Trails that I was driving in January are impassable now.

Central Okanagan Search and Rescue have already performed 18 rescues so far in 2024. Most are 4x4s, snow mobiles, or ATVs getting stuck in deep wet snow. No traction in the wet stuff now.

Just a day ago, 2 ATVs carrying 6 riders needed rescue.

Guys are getting in over their heads and without the right gear. If all else fails, there are a lot of trees. Cut down as many small ones and branches as you need and lay them on your path out after shovelling. I have done that with even a 2wd pickup. Took 6 hours, but built an 80 foot long path of branches and trees to get out. It works well for snow recovery, but you need to carry the tools. If I don’t have my chain saw, I always carry 2 bucksaws and 2 wood chopping axes of different sizes, and other related tools, hammers, rope, ratchet puller, etc. That gear comes in handy.

 

Spent the long weekend in Painted desert and Sedona.

 

The red coating. Is that all dust spray up from after a rain, or is it always that color on those trails?

 

Arizona is covered in "moondust". Fine powered rock that makes cool dust devils on windy days. There is almost no "clay soil", at least below the Mogollon Rim that Flagstaff sits on top of. Sedona is below, as is Phoenix.

 

Very cool, I sure wish I could get the chance to do those desert drives. Hang out in some desert cave doing peyote.

In 2011, we drove from Vancouver to Phoenix, and hit Flagstaff on the return trip, but in my wifes then 2009 Mazda 3. My wife has family there.

Needless to say no desert driving on that trip. Except on the drive south, when our mobile phone GPS kept telling us “in 100 meters turn at the next right” but we were in the middle of the desert with nothing in sight. Last turn was about 50 miles behind us.

So we back tracked miles to the last highway fork, and before it found a solitary home in that middle of nowhere.

Me being the genius I am, decided to go knock on their door. My wife is like “no, no, you’ll get shot”.

Me, I did not care if I got shot. I was super hopped up on prescription pain killers and muscle relaxants as my back had severely gone out the day we left Vancouver. Meaning 10/10 pain and spasm, but it was too late to cancel. Three years work disability for my back, so I was used to dealing with it.

So my wife pulls me out of the car, and I manage to hobble over to the house and 2 older guys that looked like they stepped out of the Deliverance movie came out with 2 pitbulls. Turns out they were great guys. Had a really nice long chat with them. I worked with rough crews for years on heavy duty construction and high seas commercial fishing, so they were the kind of guys I hung with all the time.

They told us that a lot of people make the same mistake and told us to go back north the way we came before that fork, and when we see a big faded sign at that spot take the right instead of the left. Worked like a charm. At that time my wife had been doing the navigating with a printed map as the GPS was crapping out. No more….

Moral of that story? Carry stronger prescription muscle relaxants. . I never go out on my trips without them.

 

On top of what was said, I’m a simple man. I see puddle, I hit gas.

 

That's a requirement. I think I saw it in the owners manual.

 

Epic pics! Looks like a fun trip!

 

Sick still!

 

Thx. Grabbed it from the dash cam. Here's the after affect. Was still finding it in the nooks and crannies the following spring.

 

Mud puddles are fun.

This crap I hate. Like yesterday, I drove 7 miles up and back on an active logging truck forest service road to get to the higher elevation and snow. The logging trucks chewing up the melted road.

This photo from a few years ago. An early spring snow trip at high elevation.

I blew my entire front brakes in one day. The calipers and pads seized up so bad and the mud chewed the rotors beyond machine repair. Needed new rotors, pads and calipers from one day. It took me 2 hours of highway driving to get to a gas station with a high pressure wash. The truck shaking so bad I could not go over 30mph on the 60mph limit.

That was only 5 miles up, and 5 miles back but on a 6 inch deep mud logging road. No clear spots, just 6 inches of thick mud covering every inch of the FSR. Had a fantastic day up higher in the snow, but a pretty expensive one.

Not doing that again.

 

Yesterday we took a snow day in the Sequoia NF. Kept going up until the drifts were too big -- we made it to 6800'.

 

it great you’re ready for fallen trees on the trail, I used to have a still 036 with a 3 foot long bar, but I got tired of all that. Now that I’m not cutting firewood every fall for heat, I just carry a HF electric chainsaw when we go forest camping and there on trails and was hoping I could plug it into the bed outlet but that doesn’t work - it needs more than 400w, so I have a battery that’ll handle it though with a 2000W inverter. The electric saw is great, especially when we have red flag days and can’t run engines in the forest.

 

Nice pictures. What trails are those pictures from? I was up there this weekend with my wife and kids. We did outlaw and devils bridge trails in her 4Runner on Sunday.