Desert Off-Road Trip 2015: White Rim Trail & Lockhart Basin

[Larry]

Well, we all made it back unscathed from yet another week bouncing around the southwestern desert backcountry. 2015 was the 7th year my buddies and I have been doing a long distance trip to some desert destination somewhere in the Southwest. The first part of this trip was somewhat of a repeat of our 2011 trip being the White Rim Trail. The reason we returned back to do WRT again was due to the Mineral Bottom side of the WRT being washed out in 2011. At that time we could only do about ¾ of the trail and return back the way we came. This time we went back to see it in its entirety and it was well worth the trip. Actually, WRT is always worth the trip no matter how many times you’ve been there.

Again this year we had friends from around the Southwest met up. 3 rigs from Phoenix; Lance’s ’70 Chevy Suburban (Lance arrived later for the second part of the trip), Don’s Landcruiser 80 series (okay, it is actually badged as a Lexus) and Tony’s 2005 Jeep Rubicon. Then one of my High School buddies from California with his Dodge Ram Cummins fitted with a Phoenix camper similar to mine….and of course, Bill in his ’02 Dodge/Cummins and I from Colorado. We had AZ, CA and CO well represented for a week in Utah.

On with the story…

My buddy Bill and I rolled out of Pueblo early on Friday, May 15th with the hoods pointed straight towards Moab, Utah to meet up with the rest of our crew for the week. The plan was for everyone to roll into Moab Friday evening, grab dinner and be ready to roll out first thing Saturday morning to head on the 35 mile jaunt to the WRT trail head near the Island In The Sky Visitors center. The Saturday morning wagon round up came early with 5 eager crews ready to escape the daily grind for the week. We were actually ahead of schedule this morning. As with most of the Southwest having an unusually wet spring, Canyonlands was no exception. We woke up to pretty soggy Saturday morning then once we arrived at the Canyonlands Visitor Center we learned the 5 mile long Shafer Trail that leads down the canyon wall from the Visitors Center to the actual White Rim Trail was closed due to greasy mud on the steep narrow canyon trail. Our choices were to wait until the sun came out and dried up the surface mud or return back to Moab and enter the Canyonlands park through the Potash Trail entrance, which the rangers said would add about 1.5hr to the trip just to meet up with the WRT. Well, since none of us have the patience to sit around and wait to see how long it takes mud to dry we took off back to Moab. That was a bummer 35 miles we didn’t count on! Actually, the detour didn’t hurt our feelings any as we haven’t seen the Potash trail portion before anyway.

Alas, the dirt road we had been looking for so we could purge air from our tires and bug out! This was at the Potash mine as we aired down.

From the Potash entrance it doesn’t take long before the desert Canyonlands eye candy starts to sweeten!

Various sites along the way…

First stop…Muscleman’s Arch. Buddy Tony walking around out on the arch

My copilot (mother in-law) and buddy Bill posing on the arch

View from the top of the arch

Another view of the arch. The arch almost becomes invisible in pictures. Oh, and at this arch we met some fellers riding bicycles that just had come down the Shafer trail. As it turned out, the park opened the trail about 1.5hr from when we were up at the time. Oh, well…

We still had another good 35 miles or so to reach our reserved campsite at Gooseberry.

 

[Larry]

We no sooner got our truck city set up and the sky opened up

Everybody quickly retreated to their rigs while Mother Nature made a muddy mess of our place for the night.

…while I hung out in the camper drinking beer and taking pictures

As with the typical Southwestern storm, it was a fast mover leaving the rest of the evening with beautiful sights

After dinner a few of us took a walk down to the canyon wall to look around

Don going for National Geographic photo of the year contest. This dingdong cracked me up. Here there are over a hundred yards of DRY canyon wall to hang over and he liess in the ONLY wet spot. It’s all about the perfect shot! LOL

Sunday morning was beautiful

Sunday morning as we mush on towards the next campsite some 30 miles away (full day’s drive)

 

[Larry]

About half way there we pass over Murphy Hogback, which is a steep narrow 5 minute low range 2 MPH climb straight up a canyon wall.

Once we reached the top of Murphy Hogback we broke for lunch then rolled on down the other side.

During lunch our bicycle friends caught up with us. They enjoyed watching and throwing Frisbees over our trucks as we rolled of the ledge on the other side of Murphy Hogback.

Sights along the way

We took the 1.4 mile side track to the White Crack overlook where the Colorado and Green River’s met. This is why this area is called Island In The Sky, because you are essentially on an island in the sky above two rivers. Awesome views no camera can capture. California……here comes your water!

Mean Green

Signs of life in the puddle behind me

Our measly camp spot at Potato Bottom. Looks like Africa

Bill, MIL and Don solving the world problems

That’s it for now………

 

[K85 Octane]

very nice pictures!

 

[Larry]

Here is a Looonggg GoPro of the first part of WRT starting around Murphy Hogback

 

[Smokinthehippies]

Love these trip reports. In it for more

 

[Larry]

Love these trip reports. In it for more

Glad somebody does ... been a lot crickets here so far

Monday morning we packed on and mushed on towards the Mineral Bottom exit of the WRT. Hardscrabble was the first interesting climb of the morning shortly followed by a steep narrow shoot between the Green River and the canyon wall.

The turn up Hardscrabble

Then the trail turns in to a fun fast sandy ride through a river bed

Then you drop off the end of the world down on to the narrow run for a while

The Dodge with the camper ran into a little clearance problem on one of the cliff wall overhangs. One of the GoPro videos captures it. Luckily nothing on the camper was harmed where the crossbar took the blunt of the hit.

Really cool old corral right in the canyon wall along the way

That is where the Canyonlands National Park ends and BLM land begins for the rest of the journey out

While there isn’t any really difficult wheeling on the WRT sign is pretty much spot on

The climb up Mineral Bottom Rd offers a long steep climb

With some old wrecks off to the side

View down from the top

Airing the tires up at the 313 intersection before we’re back on pavement for a few hours. Man, somewhere between the river bed run and the top of the canyon we sure hit a lot of mud

 

[Larry]

Video of the exit out Mineral Bottom. At 4:54 the road gets a bit narrow. At 5:26 the Dodge camper in front of me snags the wall

 

[Larry]

So after we left the park we cruised back to Moab to restock on supplies at City Market, hit up the sucktastic State run liquor store (What a joke that place is) and met up with Lance with his sweet ’70 Burb. Lance had just spent the weekend at the cold soggy Overland Expo in Flagstaff. From there we had wagon round up two at McDonald’s before taking off towards Kane Creek to meet up with Lockart Basin Rd. The goal for this night was Chicken Corners

Not far down Kane Creek Rd the canyon opened up to where you could see the other side of the Colorado where we started our WRT tour a few days before (Potash Rd)

Then we arrived at the Chicken Corners cutoff just before it starts to rain

You just got to love the lack of Monday afternoon traffic jams like back in the city slabs

From here on out I’m going to borrow a lot Lance’s great photos. His photos just came out awesome! This was on our way to Chicken Corners

Just amazing. Why can’t the other 364 days a year be like this

We ended up in a nice little corner placed up on slick rock to set up camp for the night

It may not look like it but my camper was level as it could be this night

Any my buddy Bill fried enough chicken to fill all of our bellies. Fried Chicken is Bill’s off-road specialty and what is not more appropriate on Chicken Corners than some of Billy’s fried chicken?

LOOK! Funny, a few hours later we were all looking that way as a waterfall formed right where he is pointing. Then that water flowed right through our camp like a little river. It was the coolest thing. Wish we had a video of that

A closer look at that wall that sprouted a nice water feature and small flash flood. Yep, and the little flood flowed right under my front axle. You’re welcome California!

That’s it for now but go check out Lance’s trip report that parallels mine from here on out.

 

[muddysub]

Awesome!! I really dig your trip reports, makes me want to get out more. I met lance at Expo, he's a cool guy and his suburban is awesome.

 

[Smokinthehippies]

It makes me sad we didn't get to more of this type of wheeling when I lived in California.

 

[GWeakland620]

Love it. Makes me want to build an adventure rig.

 

[skunked]

Sounds like an awesome time, I need to make my way out there someday.


and keep sending the water our way.

 

[riflerk20]

Awesome pics. Me and the wife were saying we'd rather spend the time and money on a trip like this with the kids rather than Disney. This looks like an amazing trip.

 

[y5mgisi]

Awesome fun time!

 

[Larry]

So Tuesday morning we back tracked out of Chicken Corners back to the Lockhart Basin turn off. Not very far from the beginning of the Lockhart trail head the 4x4 action heats up quickly for pretty much holds true for the entire day. I’ve always heard Lockhart Basin is the most challenging trail in Canyonlands…..I`ll say it does a good job of holding your attention for the day that is for sure.

A stolen pic from Lance. Pretty much all of the really nice photos from here on out are stolen from Lance

The trail gets pretty tight for the big trucks

Don squirming right along on his super soft General’s

Here is a chopped up video of beginning of Lockhart. Pretty funny, I killed the truck at 7:45. My excuse is my buddy sent me up a less that sterling line, and certainly not the one I picked for him just a few minutes before, when I was lugging along and not expecting to hit a wall. Then he runs me in to another rock. LOL Well, that is my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I sure do miss the 6:54 granny of my old SM465 on days like this. Ah, I and I ways forget to cycle the key after dies to reset the fuel pump relay = crank crank crank…

 

[Larry]

GoPro of the Lockhart opening. It’s a long video…the things start getting interesting at the 2:00 mark. Camera’s and video’s just don’t serve justice to the place in the flesh

 

[Larry]

So after all that excitement the trail opened up for a little bit

Stuff like this is just amazing

Plenty of opportunities to drop your rig off a cliff and fall to a certain flaming pile of smashed metal death

Helloooo people up there on the Needles Overlook!

Lance got a cool shot of my buddy Ty’s rig

Lunch break

Then out of nowhere was this trailer all waded up in the corner. I found some older trip reports from 2008 where this trailer was in decent shape and just parked in the corner. Apparently the wind caught it and blew it around or something.

More later

 

[Larry]

Tuesday continued: It wasn’t long after we passed the derelict trailer it was time to find a spot to camp for the night. Lance spotted a 7 mile or so off shot on the map that would run us straight down to the Colorado River. It was a nice smooth high speed (30 MPH…well, compared to what we were used to) sandy ride most all the way bottom. The funning thing is when you look at the SPOT GPS map of the trip this campsite we were only about 5 miles as the crow flies from where we camped the night before at Chicken Corners but it is an all day trip to get there.

Trying to resolve the world problems again

Lance snapped these early Wednesday morning.

This is nothing, but there were sections on the sandy stretch back to the main trial that were so dusty you could hardly see two feet on front of you. You almost have to have 10 minutes between each rig to keep from dusting you out.

Then out of nowhere we came across this old Chrysler that has been chopped in half, frame extended and apparently fitted with the dual wheel axle that was laying a few feet away from it. Not sure what kind of mule someone created back in the day but it sure made for some neat photographs

Lance got some great photos of it

The last photo stop before we headed our separate ways was this creek with a spectacular water fall

This is my buddy Bill. I’m sure you’ve all seen him on many of my pictures over the years. No matter how big of badass you think you are, he is a bad ass. That chair doesn’t slow him down one bit and keep in mind he pilots that big Dodge diesel of his with hand controls over every obstacle we did. The guy is a machine!

Somebody recently made a little camp spot and fire ring down in there. Not sure how good of idea that was during flash flood season

Another great photo by Lance. Looks like Mopar Accessory commercial

About an hour down the trail was the part we had all been dreading for several days. The part where we come to end and have to air up our tires and head our separate ways. Lance had to be at work early the next morning in Phoenix, Tony’s (Jeep Rubicon) had to get back to Phoenix for his daughters graduation, Bill needed to get back to Pueblo that night and Ty with the Dodge sporting a camper had to get back to Pueblo for a graduation before he headed back to California. Then Don and I decided to stick around the area one more night. After we air up a few of us pedaled back to Moab for lunch at the Moab Diner before actually spitting off.

Here is the GoPro collection of the second part of Lockhart Basin. 0 to 1:30 is a section that had me a bit worried when I saw THIS video before we left on the trip. For the life of me I don’t know why that guy in the Jeep XJ took the line he did. This spot was nothing actually, just point and shot. (That is not the only idiotic video of Lockhart on Youtube. Check THIS ONE out. Talk some driving skills that need honing but hey, at least his amateur video production skips are top notch). Then there is the huge rock step you basically fall off at the 4:00 mark. This two-step rock wall was about 20” tall and perfectly spaced to my wheel base where the front and rear axles fell off at the same time at the 4:06. That was a HARD landing! If I didn’t bend or break a leaf spring or anything there…..it just isn’t going to happen. The only casualty was a pop can in the fridge that exploded and drenched everything in there. I’m glad the GoPro didn’t pick me up shouting “WHAT THE PHUK!!!!!!” after we landed. Afterwards I noticed the other guys in front had gone around that drop off by using a chicken trail far off to the right. At the 6:20 mark I failed to make a simple climb up another little wall and the truck shot backwards a few feet when I abandon the crawl. Then I discovered I had forgotten to shift back in to 4wd after a flat section where I had been cruising in 2 hi for a while. Once I dropped it back into 4 hi it was an easy peezy climb.

Conclusion coming soon…………

 

[y5mgisi]

Dang, looks like plenty of intense pucker areas! Still all very pretty scenery!