Desert Trip 2010 Trip report: Beyond the middle of nowhere, 5 days in 4wd

[DirtyLarry]

A couple of buddies and I took our second annual desert trip the week of July 12th to the back country of Utah for a week of trail riding, sightseeing and camping. We actually left at 6 am Saturday the 10th and returned home on Friday the 16th. We turned around 1,600 miles in the course of 6 days with around 400 miles in the dirt. Of the 400 miles, at least 200 miles were pretty severe trails (Hole in the Rock and Canyonlands National Park Maze District). Not really, technical trails, just a lot of steep low range crawling with a never ending supply of obstacles and huge drop offs on either side. The main attractions we saw along the way were the Doll House, The Maze Overlook and Ekker Butte.

We were very fortunate not to have any breakdowns, no major trail damage, over heated engines or anything again this year. We didn’t even see any snakes or scorpions. Although, we did experience temperatures as high as 122 degrees in some of the canyons with 105 degrees being the normal daytime temperature. Nights cooled down to the 60’s and 70's (31 degree low the last night we spent in the Colorado mountains)

The vehicles were a mostly stock 2002 Dodge Ram diesel with a leveling kit and 295 BFG’s and of course, my 8.1L powered K10. Both vehicles performed great the entire week.

I’ll post pictures of the highlights as I get time but you can view the trip summary on my SPOT GPS Adventure Page that also has geotabbed photos: You can zoom in to see where each photo was taken. Be patient, as this webpage loads slowly.
http://www.spotadventures.com/trip/view/?trip_id=213659

Day 1: Getting there



9 hours after we left home, we finally get on the Hole in the Rock trail just north of Lake Powell. We started this trail last year but ran out of time so this year we started with this trail first.




Camp 1 – Saturday night


We heard some weird noises that evening as we sat around the campfire. Turns out this little guy was right behind us in a little cave. Surprisingly, my camera lite up the night darkness like daytime.