Desert Trip V: Canyonlands Maze District

[DirtyLarry]

Well, the annual Desert trip is all but a memory now. With having a baby under a year old at home nowadays it’s taken me longer than usual to post up the trip report. This year we piggy backed the desert trip onto the backside of the Overland Expo whereas, year’s past we made two different long distance trips. Our plan was to hit the Overland Expo then tootle up to the Utah Canyonlands for the rest of the week. We left home on May 15th and rolled back in 10 days later on the 24th. A pretty short 1,717 miles driven this year compared to last year’s 2,500+ mile trip to Death Valley.

The 10 day 1,717 mile loop


Thursday, May 15th: Drive 700 miles from Pueblo, CO to Mormon Lake, AZ

The first destination on the list was to hit up the Overland Expo at Mormon Lake, AZ (South of Flagstaff) for a few days of hanging out with friends and drooling over some ridiculously drool worthy adventure travel gear and rigs. It was a great time as usual! We hung out here Thursday night through Sunday. Funny story as we got lost on the way to Mormon Lake Thursday evening as we rolled into the area. Okay, we weren’t really LOST per se….but we were indeed temporarily without orientation. This is my story and I’m sticking to it but, the GPS told us to get off at Exit 211 off I-40 just East of Flagstaff for a shortcut down to Mormon Lake. We followed this dirt road that turned into a two track that turned into a goat trail for 10 to 15 miles where we missed a trail marker in the darkness. Next thing you know we are way the heck up in the pine trees and loosing daylight fast. The trees where so thick and it became so dark I couldn’t even see to turn around so we ended up camping right in the middle of the trail that night. I couldn’t get enough signal to get internet to see the SPOT in order to see exactly where we were but I was able to text my wife at home. She said we were an inch away from Mormon Lake Rd. Gee thanks honey! That really helped! Early Friday morning we packed up the truck and continued up this very overgrown trail while Mormon Lake Rd got closer and closer on screen only to lose the trail completely at an old abandon deer camp at the top of this hill. That really sucked as we had to back down at least 80 yards in thick trees with the typical steep drop off on the blind side of the truck. Anyway, we finally got turned around and back tracked about a mile then found the spot where I missed the right hand turn the night before in the darkness. 38 minutes later and we rolled into the Expo with a dusty truck full of fresh tree scratches and even a few broken tree branches stuffed into roof rack and backside of the hood. Can’t say that for most of the other shinny trucks at the Overland Expo!

We camped with the usual suspects at the Expo. Mosesburb, 1leglance, oilbrnr, my buddy Bill and a few other usual’s. You know, we’re the outsider guys that don’t have Range Rovers, pimped out Jeeps, few hundred thousand dollar EarthRoamers nor do we wear the Indiana Jones hats that seem to be standard issue with the expo crowd. We all drive old American iron....and Waymon who drives a Ford Sportsmobile


My buddy Bill doing up is famous fried chicken Saturday night. Expo is to the back country adventurers as Sturgis is to the biker crowd.





Sunday around midday a small army of us headed up to Flagstaff to check into the hotel to cleanup, regroup and restock for the rest of the week. Basically hit up the showers, laundry, Big 5 and Walmart. This hotel was the meeting place for the group of 5 of us to round up the wagons for the rest of the journey up to Canyonlands first thing Monday morning. Once we leave Flag, there isn’t any place to shop for groceries for the next 5 days. My buddy Bill from Pueblo, my buddy Ty and his wife from San Diego, and I all reserved rooms at the Hampton Inn then two other friends met us here at o’dark 30 Monday morning.

A room with a view….


My buddy Ty’s 2005 Ram 2500 Cummins/NV5600/Phoenix camper rig from San Diego. We did the Mohave Rd and Death Valley together last year. We’re old buddy’s from High School (he is a CO boy too).


Ah, yes…there we are! At the hotel! Checking nav systems before the wagon round up


The plan was to roll out of Flag at 8 AM as we had a 280 mile drive up to Utah to meet my buddy Ty’s sister who was meeting us at the Hite Marina at 3 PM then hit the lead-in trail head to the Maze District, which is basically right across the Colorado River from the Hite Marina. Everybody got up early and those driving up from Phoenix arrived early too so we got a good start ahead of schedule. The long drive with a parade of 5 of us up to Hite was uneventful. Very beautiful country out there!

A few weeks prior to us arriving here at Hite I phoned the ARAMARK general store at Hite to ask if we could park my buddy’s sister’s car there for a few days. The nice gal on the phone said no problem and she could even do better than that. We could take it to her house to leave for the week! Keep mind, the Hite is remote as hell so the workers at the marina actually live on site too. So does the local Sheriff, Park Rangers, etc. Around the corner from the general store up in the canyon is a small trailer park with about 20 trailers for all of the local workers. Perfect place to park the Prius for the week.

And here we sit. And sit and sit some more….until Ty’s sister arrived. Yeah, she was driving a Prius over from Colorado Springs. Remind me of the Prius story later in the week

Ty’s Ram, My K10, Don’s Land Cruiser (okay, it’s really a Lexus ), and my buddy Tony’s green Ruby. Not pictured is my other buddy Bill’s white Ram. He’s hidden on the other side of my truck here.


Next up…. 3 days of trail riding in the Maze

[Zoomad75]

Itching for the details along with the pics! That's even though I got the full rundown already!

[DirtyLarry]

Man, I am on my work laptop this week. It is sloowwww to get pictures from Flickr. This is going to take forever!

Monday, May 19th:

So finally my buddy Ty’s sister arrives in her cute little Toyota Prius at the Hite marina and we run her car up to the general store girl’s trailer and head out. We also fueled up all of our rigs at the Hite Marina at the super middle of nowhere fuel price of $4.56 a gallon while we waited for her. The two Dodge diesels paid more! At least water for the camper tanks was free. The Maze District trail head is basically right across Colorado River from the Hite Marina but it takes about 20 minutes or so to drive there due to the lay of the land. By this point it is already pushing 4:30ish so I figured we’d set up camp a few miles down the trail in BLM land before getting in to the Canyonlands National Park. Once you get into the National Park you must camp in designated areas and follow a complete different book of rules (no fires, no digging holes to bury dung, etc.). Well, my buddy Bill in the 2001 white Dodge Ram IS the trail boss always. I mean ALWAYS! He is always the guy to run at least 10 minutes ahead of everybody without ever looking back. All you see is his dust and diesel smoke trail. This guy has every topo map in the US pasted on his inner eyelids so it is best just to let him led the way and try to follow the smoke….even when he is wrong or like when he doesn’t use a spotter and ends up in a mess. Hehe, more on that later.

What I thought would be a few mile trip down the trail from Hwy 95 turned out to be a 20 mile ride well into the area and almost all the way to the National Park Entrance. At least the first 20 miles was a simple dirt road where we were still able to cruise along at 20 MPH even with the tires at 18 PSI and we found a great place to camp. This place would have been very easy to miss. In fact, we did part of this trail in 2010 and totally missed this spot or we would have stayed there then.


A few pics along the way in…

10+ miles of high speed dirt road




Ty’s San Diego 2005 RAM in the mirror




Flip the Bird Rock…


Then we found this outstanding spot to camp for the night. A nice spot for everybody!




Cool water feature nearby. Several Bluejay’s were hanging out here


This little water puddle was quite big




Perfect picture window while cooking dinner


Getting our party on after dinner A perfect 77 degrees with zero wind


Hehe, of course I had to drag out the fake rubber snake and wrap it around Don’s rooftop tent ladder If you all remember my trip report from last year’s Death Valley trip I slid this same snake in my buddy’s sleeping bag. So here we are this year all sitting around having fun getting drunked up around the campfire and we see Don all drunked up over in the distance staggering towards us with his ladder fully extended balancing this rubber snake on the end. Here he is walking straight towards us! We’re like DUDE! WTF are you doing!? And he’s like “there is something on my ladder!!!!” while screaking like a 3 year old girl and we are like “WTF, are you bringing it towards us for!!???” Ah, that was so funny but I don’t think he thought it was very funny when he figured out the snake was fake. Wish we would have had a picture of him in stress. Guess he didn’t read the trip report from last year or he would have recognized the snake was a joke. The FNG always gets the snake. I guess the joke backfired because some a-hole stole my SPOT GPS messenger that night when I wasn’t looking so for the entire next day I thought I lost the SPOT somewhere on the trail and nobody at home knew where we were! I was SO PISSED that I lost the SPOT only to later find it in my Trasharoo the next night. Yeah, not sure I will continue with the snake joke anymore. I was pretty pissed off and ready to throw a full-on temper tantrum. I guess that is what I get….Paybacks are a ***** I guess! Maybe, we’ll do a spider next time and just keep a better eye on my junk.



This is funny too. So after the whole snake incident Don started having major buyer’s remorse on his parking spot choice for fear the Toy would roll off the little cliff. Us drunkards had at least a 2 hour conversation about his parking spot and how parking pawls never fail, the bus load of of church ladies that died when the park pawl failed at the Grand Canyon, etc.... then ended up pulling out spot lights to help him relocate his truck somewhere where he felt safer sleeping in the rooftop tent without the Toy rolling away. This picture was taken long before we moved his truck so he could sleep better. LOL


This is packing up Tuesday morning and where we moved his rig the night before. I happen to notice he never left the keys in the ignition during the week or we would have moved it back to the cliff….or stole his ladder. I think he sleeps with the ladder in his tent cuz we couldn’t find it that night.


That’s pretty much it for Monday, May 19th. The next morning we finally lock the hubs, use lockers and even get to use winches! Hope I can figure out how to post Youtubers!

[Greenlee]

Sweet! I love when you post these trip reports. I need to go on a trip like this!

[DirtyLarry]

Tuesday, May 20th… on our way to the Doll House

Well, the sun sure comes up early in the western side of the mountain timezone so we all get packed up pretty early Tuesday morning. From here we have an 8 hour drive to our next destination and that is only 38 miles away. Our destination is the Doll House, which we will spend the next two nights and one full day hiking around. From here on until Thursday it is full-on 4x4 city! Lockers and winches not required but sure make things easier. Time to start breaking stuff!

My buddy’s wife snapped this as we bailed out of camp Tuesday morning


A few miles down the trail we run across the sign… 20 miles to the Doll House, no biggie! Yeah, right…..this is why we came back 4 years later so we could see more of it. Those 20 miles will take 20,000 miles off your rig.




Another wall. In fact, this one is call “The Wall”. With a window to the other side too




Cool panoramic along the way. Kinda sux because it was taken with a Droid phone


The trail starts getting more interesting


This begins the first of many obstacles that get your blood pumping. Nothing but a speed bump for the Rubicon but for the 8,000 and 9,000 lb rigs it is more interesting. This one is a steep climb with a sharp right turn at the top.


Pictures never serve justice to the actual lay of the land


Okay, lets try a Youtube so I can figure out how to post the more exciting ones...

First

It worked! I'll post more tomorrow

[dieseldawg142]

looks like you had a great trip Larry!, beautiful weather, awesome scenery, no truck issues, what could be better
waiting for the 2nd week of july myself....

[Zoomad75]

No problem helping with the hood. Let me know when you need me to swing by!

[fun in dirt]

Thanks for taking the time to post all this info about your trips; love seeing the pics. I'm kind of trippin right now cause we were at that same hotel, on a family road trip to the Grand Canyon, & parked in the exact spot Ty's Dodge was in just 2 days after yall were there. Hate we missed yall...I would have flipped out seeing your truck "in real life" after following your builds on here.
Anyway, guess I better go home & look for & grind driveshaft nubs this weekend...thanks for the tip!

[argonaut]

Awesome trip! I want to join you guys for one of these.

[DirtyLarry]

Originally Posted by fun in dirt

Thanks for taking the time to post all this info about your trips; love seeing the pics. I'm kind of trippin right now cause we were at that same hotel, on a family road trip to the Grand Canyon, & parked in the exact spot Ty's Dodge was in just 2 days after yall were there. Hate we missed yall...I would have flipped out seeing your truck "in real life" after following your builds on here.
Anyway, guess I better go home & look for & grind driveshaft nubs this weekend...thanks for the tip!

WOW! It is a small world! Did you eat at the Sizzler and Del Taco next door too? It would have been fun to run across a board member there.

[MTCK]

Great trip report as always. I got a good chuckle out of the rental Ram far from home. I hope they got the walk away insurance!

[DirtyLarry]

Originally Posted by MTCK

Great trip report as always. I got a good chuckle out of the rental Ram far from home. I hope they got the walk away insurance!

Thanks Marcus! I need to get busy and finish up this trip report one of these nights. Yeah, that German guy said he got the insurance on the rental. Good thing, as it was really trashed! I would have loved to see the underside of that low riding 1500 series RAM

[Dieselwrencher]

Larry, thanks for taking the time to post and share your journey. Definitely a cool deal. Now, I'm no western geographical buff, but why exactly do they call that the Doll House? Just due to the nature of the rocks and height and some one thought it looked like a doll house? Also, thanks for posting the info on the hood hinges. I was actually putting new hinges on the list for my 76. I'm glad I saw this. Now I won't buy junk repops!

[DirtyLarry]

Finally a little bit of time to continue on with this trip report. I left off at Wednesday, May 21st.

As I mentioned above Wednesday my buddy Ty, his wife and sister took an all day hike down to the Colorado River. After the shaft repair the rest of us decided to stay behind and do 12 oz arm curls instead. Here are a few pictures Ty got from the hike down to the River.





A few dugouts rafters have created to gain access to the shore









Long walk back to the top of those mesas where we are camped


Wednesday night we had a great dinner and sat around shooting the breeze then headed off to bed pretty early for an early morning wagon round up. From the Doll House to the next waypoint where we plan to camp at Hans Flat is a full day’s drive in 4 low most of the way. From Hans Flat to the highway would be another 40 miles of dirt after that.


Thursday morning heading out. Don (Oilburnr) leading the way








More shortly….

[DirtyLarry]

More of Thursday morning headed to Hans Flat from the Doll House.

It is always interesting how much different the trail becomes when you run it backwards. Returning back on the same trail was a completely different venture. This was one of the first interesting spots after leaving the Doll House.

Video never really captures the actual lay of the land. This spot looked much more interesting in person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRTTtuRezF8&index=1...

GoPro view of above.

GOPR0145 - YouTube

Neat flexy picture from that spot


As we continue on through the hairy corner. The two little rigs (Jeep and Land Cruiser) bounce right through these sections without batting an eye while the 3 large trucks had to use more finesse.




This is one of my favorite pictures from the entire trip



Listen! No more front shaft bang bang!

008 2 - YouTube

GoPro of that one

GOPR0159 - YouTube

Well this is embarrassing. I couldn’t get the damn twin stick out of 4 high so I ran with it. Yeah, that didn’t work out very well. I killed it! Then the hot beast didn’t fire on the first crank, which was odd.

011 2 - YouTube

GoPro of the same

GOPR0167 - YouTube

One of the main things to replace before the next big trip are the SHOCKS! Wow! After about an hour on the trail the shocks get so hot they basically don’t work at all. You can see the truck swing an sway like crazy. Makes me sea sick! More work to that stinking twin stick needs to be done too. Once that 205 gets warm, it doesn't want to shift. Probably just the nature of the beast 205 exaggerated by the twin stick.

More to come….

[DirtyLarry]

Thursday continued: Doll House to Hans Flat

So a couple hours after we got past the slow moving technical part of the trail the landscape opens up to a wide open sandy savanna where you can really move along for a while. It was nice to actually move faster than 3 MPH for a change

GOPR0171 - YouTube

At the end of the sandy road is the cross road to either take the trail out to Hite just how we came in or go Right and head out through Hans Flat. Since none of us have done the Hans Flat route before we figured we should do it and see what it is all about. 17 more miles to Hans Flat, which will take a few hours. While the trail from here on out is not really technical there are some washouts in the crook of the switchbacks that are a bit hairy, many random boulders that rolled into the trail and the trail gets steeper, and Steeper and STEEPER until your sphincter starts pinching holes in the seat as you approach the top. This route basically brings you straight up a huge cliff wall.


Views along the way up


View from the driver’s seat. Doesn’t look bad in the picture but was pretty interesting at the moment.


Stopped for pictures several times on the climb up and out


This was my copilot for the week. She is actually my mother in-law! My wife is not into the outdoors nor is my father in-law but she loves to go wheeling and camping. She is also pretty easy to have around for a mother in-law….even cooks and cleans!


At this point the Doll House is now about 6 hours behind us. It is wayyy down there a couple tiers down and out of sight.




This is just one of at least 80 to 100 switchbacks to get to the top. This was well before the trail got so crazy steep.


On to the videos of the climb… These are long videos. Probably longer than most of our attention spans so I’ll give you some hints at what times to speed the videos up to.

The beginning of the climb starts off innocent enough. It is just steep as hell which the GoPro doesn’t serve justice as to the angle. Pretty long boring video actually

GOPR0176 - YouTube

Tight hairpin at 2:15, 4:45 and another at 8:15. The one at 4:45 my bumper got pretty friendly with the wall.

GOPR0177 - YouTube

This one is the last one as we climbed out. We finally crest the top of the climb at the 4:45 mark

GOPR0178 - YouTube

My buddy Ty snapped this picture as we crested the top. You can actually see him in the GoPro above taking the picture.


Views from the top. Some of the trail we came out on


Man, am I glad we didn’t try to pull our little off-road trailer up this route back in 2010 when we did the Doll House and Ekker. This is just a glimpse of a few of the switchbacks. There are tons of them!


More later….

[MTCK]

Awesome. Watching the next to last vid I understand why you had Phoenix make your popup with no overhang on the sides!

[MTCK]

That is an absolute head scratcher... I can't imagine that much expansion of the fluid from temp change so it must be presssuring up some how. I'm about to tear into my 14FF for some maint and will stare at it a bit and see if I have any revelations.

[Greenlee]

Found a thread where someone was having the same problem.

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/chevy...-out-vent.html

[Greenlee]

Out of curiosity I've been reading up on this.

Here is another thread.

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/gener...breathers.html

[DirtyLarry]

Thanks Greenlee!

That is great info. I’ll read through that and see if there is anything to come out of it. Ironically that guy talks about 4:56 thick cut gears. Well, that is exactly what I have too.

The axle having premature ejaculation started last March on the Death Valley trip. Then again in May when I ran down to Flagstaff. The summer prior to that I had converted the rear drums from the typical 70’s ¾ ton 10.5 axle 11” drums to 1 ton 13” drum but I also replaced the cheap “Genuine” brand ring and pinion to a Yukon set sometime around then but I can’t remember exactly when the new ring and pinion went in. One of these projects brought on this new problem. Now I just have to figure out which is the culprit.

The only thing I noticed that surprised me is the vent hole is right above where the carrier adjuster collar is on the left side. The adjustor collar actually covers the vent but there is still plenty of room for air to get by. Although with using thick gears I wonder if there is splash coming off of the left carrier side bearing and getting slung up into the vent hole. That still would not answer as to why it keeps blowing axles seals and why it stalled on me in Death Valley. What I mean by stall is it felt like all of a sudden the truck was pulling a freight train for a split second then let go almost like the brakes were coming on. It did that three times in a row real quick and has never done it since but the axle vent orgasms started from that point on. I really expected for find a welded bearing in there somewhere when I took it apart but nothing yet. This thing does not make any odd noises either. Quiet as any other healthy 14 bolt. Friggen mystery!

Any one piece if info on the oil level. When this started there was a thought I had overfilled the axle so I just let it keep belching oil until it stopped coming out, which it finally did stop puking on the way home from Flagstaff last year. This past winter when I had the truck apart for the NV4500 redo I checked the oil in the axle and it was way too low. It was so low the pinion bearing was sitting high and dry. I couldn’t even touch oil with my pinky finger nor see anything with a flashlight. I found it was 1.5 quarts low from there up to the fill hole. I really don’t think fluid level has anything to do with it either as it has ran just fine for the past 20 years with oil up to the fill hole. Mystery I tell ya!

Thanks for the links!

[Bowed]

Larry , thanks for the picture book type adventure . it was a treat .