BigDaveZJ
Adventurer
We had been wanting to make it out to Moab for an "overlanding" style trip for a while now, and having done Colorado the last 2 years we figured this was the year to do it. We had hoped to include White Rim, but part of the road north of Potato Bottom was washed out and is still impassable, so we substituted some other trails instead.
We drove in to Moab on Saturday October 1st and unloaded everything from the tow rig and headed out Kane Creek Rd. We had already driven 350ish miles to Moab that day, so we didn't plan on going in too far, and it was a bit hot. Pushing 90 in October, a little warmer than we had hoped for, but that would all change soon enough.
We found a nice spot at the base of Hurrah Pass where Kane Creek heads south and settled in for the night.
Shortly after we started setting up camp, it got a bit windy and Justin's tent tried to run away.
He packed it in and slept in his XJ that night, and we would all get quite acquainted with the wind as the trip went on.
Random camp site shot
Justin also found the need to fix his Jeep ALREADY, even though we hadn't even been in 4Lo yet.
We were greeted the next morning by an excellent sunrise and packed up to head on over Hurrah Pass and into Lockhart.
It felt a little weird calling it a "Pass" at 4,780 feet considering we had pulled the trailer over Imogene Pass at 13,110 ft the year before, and our house is somewhere around 5,400, but we'll go with it.
Heading through Chicken Corners
Making the turn into Lockhart
One of the trickier spots on Lockhart. There were definitely a few sections that took some extra thought and caution with the trailer, but nothing too bad.
Another small pass on our way through Lockhart
We tooled along Lockhart for a ways until we stopped for some reason, none of us really remember at this point, we're thinking bathroom break. Anyways, after getting out of the Jeeps we noticed a bike helmet, small pack, and one glove in a wash about 50ft from the road. We were pretty remote at this point, and had already set the over/under on how many people we would see for the rest of the day at 3, so if someone was indeed out there they were in a world of hurt. We had the SPOT and some first aid training, so we searched around for a bit but could not find anyone or more evidence of someone being out there. We ended up sticking around that area for a while too, as I noticed an issue on my Jeep as I was walking back to it.
A few years back when I had installed my Clayton's long arms, I ran the brake lines for the rear axle on the rear facing edge of the truss. This had worked fine for 5+ years, until now. Apparently my gas tank skid had been grabbing at the brake lines and bent the line going to the rear driver wheel pretty substantially. I tugged at the lines a bit to get them out of the way and then the line started leaking badly. The hard line itself ended up cracking a little bit inside the fitting, so we pulled it apart and tried to come up with a solution. Justin and I both own double flare tools, but they had been left at home, so that wasn't going to work. We could just clamp off the rear lines altogether and call it a day, but with pulling the trailer I wanted to at least make an effort to keep some of my rear brakes. We didn't have any bolts that matched the fitting to plug it, so I tried to weld it shut, and that failed miserably, so we just clamped it off anyways and I was very happy I had decided to go with a trailer axle that had electric brakes. We figured we'd get to camp and figure out something more permanent from there.
We stopped and checked out the wreckage from the plane crash a bit further south.
We drove in to Moab on Saturday October 1st and unloaded everything from the tow rig and headed out Kane Creek Rd. We had already driven 350ish miles to Moab that day, so we didn't plan on going in too far, and it was a bit hot. Pushing 90 in October, a little warmer than we had hoped for, but that would all change soon enough.
We found a nice spot at the base of Hurrah Pass where Kane Creek heads south and settled in for the night.
Shortly after we started setting up camp, it got a bit windy and Justin's tent tried to run away.
He packed it in and slept in his XJ that night, and we would all get quite acquainted with the wind as the trip went on.
Random camp site shot
Justin also found the need to fix his Jeep ALREADY, even though we hadn't even been in 4Lo yet.
We were greeted the next morning by an excellent sunrise and packed up to head on over Hurrah Pass and into Lockhart.
It felt a little weird calling it a "Pass" at 4,780 feet considering we had pulled the trailer over Imogene Pass at 13,110 ft the year before, and our house is somewhere around 5,400, but we'll go with it.
Heading through Chicken Corners
Making the turn into Lockhart
One of the trickier spots on Lockhart. There were definitely a few sections that took some extra thought and caution with the trailer, but nothing too bad.
Another small pass on our way through Lockhart
We tooled along Lockhart for a ways until we stopped for some reason, none of us really remember at this point, we're thinking bathroom break. Anyways, after getting out of the Jeeps we noticed a bike helmet, small pack, and one glove in a wash about 50ft from the road. We were pretty remote at this point, and had already set the over/under on how many people we would see for the rest of the day at 3, so if someone was indeed out there they were in a world of hurt. We had the SPOT and some first aid training, so we searched around for a bit but could not find anyone or more evidence of someone being out there. We ended up sticking around that area for a while too, as I noticed an issue on my Jeep as I was walking back to it.
A few years back when I had installed my Clayton's long arms, I ran the brake lines for the rear axle on the rear facing edge of the truss. This had worked fine for 5+ years, until now. Apparently my gas tank skid had been grabbing at the brake lines and bent the line going to the rear driver wheel pretty substantially. I tugged at the lines a bit to get them out of the way and then the line started leaking badly. The hard line itself ended up cracking a little bit inside the fitting, so we pulled it apart and tried to come up with a solution. Justin and I both own double flare tools, but they had been left at home, so that wasn't going to work. We could just clamp off the rear lines altogether and call it a day, but with pulling the trailer I wanted to at least make an effort to keep some of my rear brakes. We didn't have any bolts that matched the fitting to plug it, so I tried to weld it shut, and that failed miserably, so we just clamped it off anyways and I was very happy I had decided to go with a trailer axle that had electric brakes. We figured we'd get to camp and figure out something more permanent from there.
We stopped and checked out the wreckage from the plane crash a bit further south.