Yet Another White Rim Trail report (plus Arches)

My wife, my 16 year old daughter and myself made our first off road trip to Moab Utah last week from Ohio, and I figured I’d share some of the fun. Our goal was to get to Moab and check into the hotel, spend a day or two in Arches National Park, hit Canyonlands National Park and drive the White Rim Road over 4 days and camping 3 nights, then hit Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon.

A few summary notes for those that don’t want to read the whole thing:

• Make your reservations for campsites on the White Rim Trail early. If you want a specific site, I found you literally have to get up at midnight mountain time exactly 5 months before your date (the first day you can reserve it) to get the site. After that, it’s a crapshoot as to whether you’ll get the site you want.
• All the Moab hotels are expensive - probably 1.5x to 2.5x what you’d pay for the same chain in a “normal” city, and they’re generally booked up.
• The trails are hot and dusty (in the desert - who knew?). You’ll be washing red sand and dust out of places on you and your vehicle you might not expect for quite some time.
• The scenery is amazing everywhere you look, day and night, all the time. Even the view out of a Fairfield Inn is stunning.
• The people are almost without exception great, both locals and tourists
• If you’re camping, make your camp as easy to setup and break down as you can. It’s hot by 10am and doesn’t get cool until near sunset and no one wants to deal with a complicated tent in that.
• Verizon cell service was spotty on the east side of the White Rim trail and parts of Arches. It was non-existent on the west side of Canyonlands. I’m a ham operator, and I did have access to the 146.76 MHz repeater through most of the trail, and found APRS position reporting worked very reliably throughout the park. If you have or get your license, it might be a way to call for rescue should you need it.
• The White Rim Trail and the trail we hit in Arches is probably 50% fairly smooth dirt road (2WD is fine), 25% dirt road with lots of slick rock bumps (2WD , maybe with AutoLSD or maybe 4WD Hi), 15% somewhat challenging hills and terrain (Low Range makes it more controllable, especially downhill), and 10% one lane on the side of a steep hill/canyon wall (low range is close to a requirement for smooth control if nothing else).
• There were times we encountered another vehicle, mountain bike group or person every 15 minutes, and other times we didn’t see anyone for 6 or 8 hours. Mostly the latter. We saw vehicles ranging from hikers on foot, mountain bikes, dual-sport motorcycles, a fully stock Honda Pilot, full size pickups, Tacomas, Jeep Cherokees & Wranglers, both stock and fully decked out for climbing all out on the White Rim trail.
• We found we had the windows up and AC on probably 75% of the time except when at a place we needed to listen or when we wanted to get a full experience. Otherwise, it was nice to keep the heat and dust at bay. The inside of the truck still had a thick layer of dust on everything after the trail.
• We saw a small amount of wildlife, including a treat of a long horn sheep on a cliff, many little lizards, several huge crows, a few other small birds, one scorpion, a few rabbits, and many little chipmunk/squirrel looking critters. There were a few no-see-um bugs and flies, but they weren’t bad enough to break out the bug spray.
• Auto repair places in Moab are generally open only 8am-5pm Monday-Friday, and there’s a line on Monday at 8am (more on this later), so if you need a shop on Friday at 5PM, find a hotel through at least Monday.

Our gear:

• A stock 2015 Tacoma Limited double-cab short bed with an ARE topper cap. The only real mod is the rear differential breather and yellow wire mods. It’s my daily driver.
• Hi-Lift jack & board, one pair of Maxtrax, shovel, tow straps, shackles, battery jumper box, off road tire repair kit, full size spare, etc. I only needed the Maxtrax once, but was glad I was prepared.
• A Cabelas 60qt Polar Cap Extreme cooler packed with 3 nights worth of frozen meat, a small bag of ice, and a 50 pound block of dry ice. The meat needed to stay frozen for at least 6 days until we hit the White Rim trail in our itinerary, and it did with probably a week to spare. This cooler is big, heavy, and bulky but works as advertised
• Four 5 gallon water jugs topped with water and a case of water bottles
• Tent, camp chairs, bungees, a mesh and solid white tarp for shade/rain shelter when camping, and two air mattresses
• Coleman camp stove with 4 propane bottles (I ended up needed one), stainless camp coffee percolator, coffee, small frying and sauce pans, utensils, paper plates, trash bags, zip locks
• A good complement of tools to fix basic problems, and of course Gorilla Tape, big-ass zip ties, and so on.
• A “Luggable Loo” portable toilet and the “Double Doody” bags for it, along with a popup shower tent. I didn’t end up needing these at all, don’t bother. We found there was a campsite and vault toilet often enough on the trail. We brought our own toilet paper and needed it (many of the vault toilets did not have paper). By the way - the vault toilets were all pretty decent.
• Misc stuff like bug spray, sun screen, ShowerPill wipes (highly recommend) https://showerpill.com/ , and a 5 gallon solar camping shower bag
• Three new, empty 2 gallon gas cans for spare gas - I didn’t want the gas smell in the truck bed, so we filled them right before the trail and strapped them on the roof.
• luggage, computers, maps, hiking guide books, compass, etc.

Businesses / Restaurants / Recommendations

• The Blue Pig in Moab - great BBQ
• Pizza Hut in Moab - if you don’t want to leave your room, it’s consistent pizza and they deliver
• The LaQuinta hotel in Moab, overpriced but fairly new, very clean and decent
• The Fairfield Inn on the north side of Moab, even more overpriced, but very new and nice and convenient to Arches park
• Moab Under Canvas is a pretty cool glamping setup
• Nations Towing, if you need them, they do good work and do AAA, Our driver Jim was awesome:
• Arches Repair Center, a nice local honest repair place, also AAA certified
• Grand Tire Pros, another nice local, honest tire/alignment/repair place in Moab: http://grandtirepros.com/
• Off Road Consulting, a 4x4 training place in eastern Pennsylvania with the Rauch Creek offload park. I took a one day 101 course from them in September of 2015, and it was great. That and a stock truck was plenty to make it through the trail.

The Trip in more detail:
We left northeast Ohio on Friday morning May 26th. We stayed in Des Moines Iowa that night and ate at Tacopacolypse (featured on the Food Networks’s Diner’s Drive-Ins and Dives). It was fantastic and very reasonable. From there we took off and made it to Denver the following night, and at at Stubens (also featured on the Food Networks’s Diner’s Drive-Ins and Dives). It was also fantastic, fun and reasonable.

We arrived in Moab and checked into the Fairfield Inn on Sunday May 28th 2017 (Memorial Day Weekend). It’s a nice place and very close to Arches, but it’s about $250/night. We stayed there for 2 nights. I’d recommend it if you can swallow the price. They seem to get a lot of tour busses, so you may be fighting for a breakfast table between 6am and 7:30am until all the senior tourists clear out.

We drove through Arches park, and did all the usual things like hike to Delicate Arch and Balanced Rock. It’s all pretty fantastic. On Memorial day weekend, the paved roads were as busy as you’d expect but still manageable. We also got off the pavement onto a dirt road that runs through Salt Valley and then turns into a trail to Tower Arch. The dirt road is doable with a car. The trail that turns off that dirt road near Tower Arch starts off just sandy, and gets progressively more difficult with lots of slickrocks sticking out. We went into the trail about a mile until the rock heights got higher than my clearance on the stock Tacoma and no alternative paths were found. I bent up the nerf bar on the passenger side slowly sliding off into one and ended up using the Maxtrax to bridge over a hole I couldn’t get past, so we finally turned around and went back through the Salt Valley dirt road. To keep going on the trail to Tower Arch, I’d say you’ll need a 3 inch or higher lift, bigger tires than stock, and a higher tolerance for risk than I have. The next day we entered the trail from the other side across from the Balanced Rock parking lot. It was a lot more friendly on that side of the trail, but still had some fun challenges. We went in about 6 miles and turned around as we ran out of daytime. I’d highly recommend at least going into the trail a bit to see some good views. I think we saw 4 other vehicles while off the pavement even on Memorial Day weekend - so it’s a nice escape from the crowd. Here’s a map that shows the park and the trails we were on: https://www.nps.gov/arch/planyourvisit/upload/archmap.pdf

Here's a couple shots from the trail inside Arches park



After Arches, we headed just north of town to Moab Under Canvas for one night just to see what it’s like. It’s a pretty cool tent “glamping” business, where they provided some nice safari-style tents and real beds with real sheets. It’s also a little pricey for what it is, but it was a fun experience and the staff did everything they could to make it enjoyable. Just a heads up, there’s no air conditioning, but they do have mister nozzles all over the place. After sunset it cools off nicely but other than that it’s a canvas tent in 100 degree heat. They don’t have a restaurant there, but you can grill your own food. We also ordered breakfast the night before, and they go into town and get made-to-order breakfasts delivered at 7am. Overall it was a nice side-trip.


On Wednesday morning we hit the “City Market” grocery store in Moab which is really just a disguised Kroger’s and got food for the White Rim part of the trip. We bought a cheap styrofoam cooler there and moved the meat and the remaining 30# of dry ice that was left to it along with a quart of ice cream we bought at the market. We converted the big 60 quart cooler to regular ice with drinks and other food, filled up with gas, filled the spare gas cans, and headed to Canyonlands to enter the White Rim trail. We checked in with the rangers at the visitors center and were on the Shafer Switchbacks by 11am.


I’m no fan of heights - so there was some pucker factor on the Shafer Switchbacks. I was fine by focusing on the road ahead and taking my time here and on the many other high, narrow roads that are feet or inches from a canyon of death. We did encounter a couple people heading up the hill on Shafer, but there’s plenty of places to pull off and allow them to pass if you’re paying attention. We made it to the Airport C campsite before 3pm that day and setup the tent. Note that on the east side of the White Rim Trail, you won’t be able to drive tent stakes into the rock. We used the cooler and water jugs to hold the tent down. It’s often windy, so you’ll need something. We had moved some steaks into the regular ice cooler that morning, and they were still hard enough to drive nails from their 6 day dry ice trip even at 3pm, so we left them out in a ziplock on top of the cooler.


After setting up the tent we headed for Lathrop Canyon road for a side trip. We ran into the most bad-ass and friendly ranger I’ve ever met. A young lady probably in her 20’s who was patrolling on a mountain bike in near 100 degree heat hours from civilization and stopped to chat with us for a bit. She was as relaxed on her ride as we were driving in an air conditioned truck. She asked if we were heading down Lathrop road if we could water a couple of new trees they were trying to start down by the river, which we did.


Lathrop Canyon was pretty cool and worth the trip. The first 1/4 mile is steep downhill with nowhere to pass. We encountered someone coming up and had to back up the hill a bit for them. Once you’re about 100’ into the hill you can see most of the trail to the bottom so you’ll see/hear if someone is coming uphill in time to get our of their way. It was all manageable in low range to control the speed. After that it’s a sandy road with still more great scenery and access to the Colorado river. You can wade out and cool off if you don’t mind a muddy beach. There’s even a vault toilet at the end of Lathrop by the river.

The next day we headed to our next campsite, Murphy’s Hogback C. Other than Murphy’s Hogback hill that you’ve probably seen video of already, it’s a fairly easy and non-technical drive. Before heading up or down Murphy’s or any other blind, steep, one lane trail, even the ranger at the Visitors Center recommended you stop, turn off the engine, get out and listen for someone coming the other way. We did that at the bottom of Murphy’s and again at a pull off before it really gets steep. About 2/3 of the way up, we saw several mountain bikes coming downhill. We pulled off as much as possible to let them pass, and asked if there were others behind them. The answer was “yeah 4 more bikes”. None of the bikers mentioned the 2 full size pickups and another Tacoma that was also behind them as support vehicles. None of the bikes (some of which appeared to have walkie-talkies) bothered to radio uphill to warn the trucks either, so when we came around the bend there was a full sized Dodge 1500 heading down the hill with a Ford F250 very close behind him. They were down the initial really steep part of Murphy’s and claimed they couldn’t back up, so we found a place to pull my Tacoma onto the hillside enough to get their trucks by. The Taco was on about a 40 degree tilt and there was literally less than an inch between getting the trucks by and them slipping down the edge, but we made the pass.

The lesson for me: I don’t know if it’s acceptable or not - but I blew the horn a few times on the way up and down long, narrow, blind hills that followed like Hardscrabble. I don’t like to break the awesome quiet of the area, but I also don’t want to relive my Murphy’s Hogback experience any time soon. I’m fairly new to off-roading, but it seems like there needs to be a protocol like blow the horn 3 times, or call on CB channel 6, yell “FORE!”, or something like that. I Googled for hours on the subject and never found a “standard”. Maybe some of you can chime in on a better way or what I’m missing.

We had a quiet night at Murphy’s C that included a nice grilled dinner and a serving of ice cream from the cheap styrofoam cooler that still had just a little bit of dry ice in it. It’s hard to beat ice cream in the desert after a day like that.


The next morning we headed clockwise toward Hardscrabble. Hardscrabble hill had more narrow one lane blind places, and I occasionally blew the horn this time and stopped and listened often. We didn’t encounter anyone coming the other way this time. It was a challenge, but again nothing the stock Tacoma with a fairly novice off-road driver can’t handle if you’re careful and take your time.



We had a threat of rain at one point, but only got a drizzle where we were.


Lunch at the Gooseberry campsite

We had Hardscrabble B reserved for the night but when we arrived we were all hot, tired, and covered in dust. The idea of setting up a tent in that or going for a hike didn’t appeal to us, so we saw we could finish the trail after about another 3 hours of driving so we headed out. After about 10 minutes of easy trail we encountered our first water crossing on a fairly wide wash that goes across the road about 10 minutes north of the Hardscrabble campsites. I walked through it first, and found it was about 2 feet in most places so we just plowed through it with no issues.

There are some places on Hardscrabble hill and throughout the White Rim Trail where there are fairly blind drop-offs. The classic is a 30 degree uphill where the driver is looking at the sky, peak the hill, slowly start down, and discover there is a 15” rock drop-off right under you. WHAM! In many of these cases my wife got out and spotted, but there’s some places that’s a little harder to get out of the truck because of the terrain. In hindsight, we should have always spotted those situations, especially in a fully stock truck. The reason I mention all this, is once we got near the park boundary and the road smoothed and my speed picked up the traction control light came on the dashboard. Then I noticed my steering wheel wasn’t straight any more. In spite of driving like an old man there were probably 3 of those WHAM! events where my front suspension probably fully extended and/or the lower control arm hit rock. It’s hard to say exactly which one did it, but one or more of them knocked the front alignment hard. We made it up the switchbacks at Mineral Bottom road and onto BLM129. I took off the front wheels one at a time and examined and compared all the suspension components, but didn’t notice anything obvious, loose, or bent. To be safe, I called AAA when we got to the main road 313 (which was the first place in 3 days that the cell service was fairly reliable again) and had the truck flat bedded back to Arches Repair Service in Moab. By the time we got there, it was nearly 7pm on Friday. They were closed of course, and wouldn’t open until Monday morning. We got lucky and found a room at the LaQuinta in Moab for a very unreasonable $220/night and stayed until Monday.

Arches Repair Center in Moab opens at 8AM on Monday, and I was there at 7:45. There were already two guys in line in front of me. They looked over my truck, and didn’t see anything broken or bent either, other than being horribly out of alignment. Arches Repair doesn’t have an alignment rig, so they referred me to Grand Tire, also in Moab. Grand Tire was completely booked for the day, so I got an appointment at 9AM the next day. Another $220 night at LaQuinta. Tuesday morning at Grand Tire, an awesome tech named Shawn checked out the Tacoma. He found both the toe and caster/camber were way out of alignment, and he wasn’t able to get them within specs. He noticed a very small bend in the knuckle at the top on the passenger side part #1 in this diagram).


He took me down under the truck, explained everything he tried and what he found, and didn’t over-sell or over-promise anything.

After about an hour, Shawn was able to get the alignment just to the outside edge of spec by adjusting the cams and tie-rod to the limits of their travel. Their work was $82, roughly 1/4th of what a hotel night cost to wait for the work. I drove home to Ohio via Yellowstone/Mount Rushmore/Badlands (nearly 1300 miles) on that repair and didn’t even have any unusual tire wear. I’ll get the knuckle replaced back at home to get things proper again.

Counting my blessings: We were lucky that the truck was drivable to a public road where towing fees are more sane, that we found a room available, that we had cell service where we needed it to call AAA, that the damage wasn’t bad enough to need parts shipped in, and probably 100 other things. And even while waiting for the tow truck we commented about how amazing the scenery is in this place.

I would do this trip again in a heartbeat. I’d pack a little less, either be a little more careful on some of the trail’s rocky areas and/or add a lift and bigger tires, and might consider doing it in the fall when things aren’t quite so hot. But even without these things it was amazing. We have so many pictures we don’t know what to do with all of them.

Here's a video with some of the highlights - it's mostly sped up to 4x speed:
https://youtu.be/0QisTWnFtK8

 

Great report, also a good reminder for me to not be broke (90% of the time), if I ever do a trip like this.

 

hah! i watched the video and the 4x video speed threw me off for that first shot! thought you were going to go flying off the cliff!

 

Ha! Yeah I debated about speeding that up, maybe I overdid it a little. It kind of freaks me out a little when I watch it too

 

Great write up!

 

Sounds like you had a great time. I love Moab!

 

Great report and pictures. Makes me want to go back. If and when you do go back try to reserve Taylor campsite. It is an offshoot from the White Rim but you get it all to yourself. It too has a pit toilet. I don't remember any of those "Wham" spots. I would suggest different tires in the future but it seems you did well with what look like street tires.

Here's the view at Taylor campsite: