Category Archives: Off-Road

Chiva Falls ‘Lower Loop’

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There are few trails called Chiva (also Chivo) Falls and this time out we ran the ‘lower loop’ which circles far to the south. On the USGS topo maps there is a trail that continues West and leads back to Tucson, but unfortunately it blocked with massive objects and very obvious signs.

As I am still crazy behind on updating my blog, I will again sort of barf a bunch of pictures at you with brief descriptive phrases. ;)

Flex shots…


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Uh oh, Dan… is that too deep?!?!

Not too deep for Dan the Man from Tuscon! I followed…


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1


Video credit: Sonic FJ

The next cool spot was a little rock garden…

I gave the chute at Three Feathers another throw…


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1


Image credit: Sonic FJ

…and then Jake wowed us with another middle line conquistador move.


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

The real highlight of the day was back at the gas station airing up where I displayed my prowess with the manual transmission, driving about 100 feet and even shifting into 2nd gear!!


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

AZFJ at Charouleau Gap

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My first run to The Gap! Finally! Well, not really the first… I wheeled up the ‘The Unsurvivable’ alone one night when I was totally stock. I didn’t notice the bypass and didn’t feel like flopping the FJ over by myself in the dark with no recovery gear. So, I turned around. That was about ten months ago! A lot has changed since then and I was glad to be back…

It was a great run with lots of fairly ridiculous optional obstacles to play around on. I am crazy behind on writing these blog entries (more real life than internet? wha?!?!) so I will just briefly narrate a barrage of pics.

Big granite wall of doom thing…


Image credit: Sonic FJ


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Jake dancing on JEEBUS…

In the wash…


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

Dan recreates the car wash at the 2008 FJ Summit…

This is how MEN cut sandwhiches (aka ‘this is not a sandwich for you,’ or ‘you need more SEAT TIME for this sandwich’)…

‘The Step’ optional obstacle…

Back half of the trail…


Image credit: Sonic FJ

AZFJ ‘Sauce on Sunday’

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With a few Italians joining up on AZFJ.org, it was time to have a cooking battle! The event was dubbed ‘Sauce on Sunday,’ was to be held at homedad’s house (pool!), and feature a few suspension installs.

Sauce on Sunday – AZFJ.org

Because homedad lives in Phoenix it was very hot in contrast to the perpetually perfect and beautiful weather we have here in Tucson. ;) The first order of business was to erect a gigantic shade by nailing a tarp to the house and tying it to some trucks!

Here Todd from Expeditioneers goes at it in the shade. He was the man of the hour with the suspensions, doing the bulk of the work himself.

The work went on well into the night. Dead stock suspensions were strewn everywhere….

The food was excellent, especially the gnocchi by Jag! I spent much of the day wrestling with kids in the pool. A tremendous day!

Table Mesa with homedad

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I stayed what was left of the night at hotel homedad in the special couch suite. Once up we head back to Table Mesa to do some wheeling and because we were curious had happened to the Jeep.

It was still there, as were the people. No one pic does the stupidity of this justice, but here a few to give you an idea…

After a few more failed attempts at a safe recovery… we hatched a new plan. homedad and I wheeled around to the opposite side of the high ground from the Jeep and rigged up the winch cable OVER the hill. I’ve seen this sort of thing before and was pretty confident it wouldn’t destroy the steel cable we had. This was a whooole lot of ground to drag across, so I didn’t know if we’d be able to overcome that.

The short story is, no the winch couldn’t pull cable and the Jeep across the ground like that. In fact, homedad’s truck caught fire and burned up a bunch of wire!! It was crazy!

So, with a burned up winch and much of his wiring harness destroyed but the truck magically running somehow, what did homedad want to do? Well, some wheeling of course! What a guy!

We found a wash that had some cool cracks in it we could play around on…

All in all, a very weird day.

AZFJ Table Mesa / Raw Deal Run

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A bunch of AZFJ’rs met at Table Mesa for the usual Friday night Gillette ruins campfire gig. On this night, the turnout was quite large!

Seeing our group, this guy stopped and chatted… what an amazing rig! *drool*

We broke up into two smaller groups to keep things manageable. I led a group over to the cool Indian fortress ruins where we stopped and chatted for a bit.

Back at the campfire, a good time was had by all as usual. Food, drinks, and good company were plentiful. As the group broke up, a few of us decided to check out Raw Deal as a last minute night run.

The whole affair was a little disappointing. First, the rock stacking in that picture above is ridiculous (somebody try to get a minivan through there?). Second, the trail didn’t offer much in the way of obstacles, just a bunch of ledges. But, I largely attribute this to my unfamiliarity with the wash and the fact that it was pitch black outside. I’m sure there are things to play on someplace in there! A return trip during the day is in order…

As we were airing up and about to leave, a few people in a pickup came up to us. They wanted help recovering their Jeep which they said was in bad trouble. Never wanting to pass up a challenge (and something in there about Karma, too) homedad and I followed them to where the Jeep supposedly lay in a bad spot.

Usually in this situation, the vehicle is stuck in a very easy spot and the people just don’t have anything to pull it out. A small berm or a little bit of mud is what I expected. Nothing could have prepared me for what we saw this time, though… they had driven their Jeep down what obviously wasn’t a trail and driven down an extremely steep descent and had two wheels dangling off the edge of a 20-foot cliff. How it was even stopped there I don’t really understand… dumb (drunken) luck.

There was no real way to stage a recovery either. The descent had a 90 degree turn in it and there were no large rocks or trees to sling a pulley around. Add to this the fact that the Jeep literally had zero recovery points on it. homedad tried a few different things, but none of them worked and nothing felt safe.

There wasn’t much we could do. We wished them luck and departed. It was 4am.

Chiva Falls Night Run

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Another impromptu weekday night run to Chiva falls with the Tucson gang! SonicFJ, TrAiLbUs1 and TrAiLbUsTy1, microbe and myself set out for what was guaranteed to be an evening filled with excitement and entertainment.

The first order of business was for Sonic to show us that he is a man, no a gorilla, amongst us mere boys by going DOWN the center of three feathers.

Image credit: SonicFJ

Next I hit the chute once more. It was an interesting bookend to the Continental Divide Expedition… the Thursday before and the Thursday after I left nearly this same group of us went to Chiva and did the chute.


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

At some point down the trail, the frog licking commenced. No, I didn’t actually lick the frog. But Jake, well who knows. It should be known, however, that Jeebus officially does not recommend frog licking.


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

There was not much picture taking since we’ve been on this trail a million times and it was dark. But there was plenty of fun and plenty of hardcore wheeling to be had. The trail looped back to three feathers and we happen to all park in such a way that made a cool picture.


Image credit: TrAiLbUsTy1

As we were parked there I realized I could not find my camera, it wasn’t in it’s bag. I searched the truck thoroughly and it didn’t turn up. After freaking out and getting ready to camp there for the night and look once day broke, microbe finds it… sitting in the middle of three feathers. It sat out there the whole night! I must have put it down to climb around on the obstacle or something and forgotten about… incredible find and THANKS MICROBE!!

More stories and pics from the night on FJC-Central…
JEEBUS IS A TOAD LICKER *or the alternate title (( Chiva Falls Night Run ))

Wilcox, AZ to SDHQ in Gilbert, AZ

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We drove from Wilcox back to Phoenix via a dirt route and met our friend dizzyspots along the way. There was a return party scheduled in Gilbert at SDHQ. They do all kinds of stuff from sales and basic installations to high end custom work. A few FJ’s have gone through there and their work is obviously extremely good. What’s cool is that the owner, Ryan, opened up the place on his off day (Sunday) just for our party! Woohoo!

My birthday was a few days before and I was surprised with a super awesome cake of an FJ driving over a mountain or something. Here I am treating the cake FJ in the manner I do my own…

Chiricahua Mountains, AZ to Wilcox, AZ

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Just when I thought the adventure was over, we discovered something very interesting on the way out of the campground in the morning… the only way out was completely blocked by a HUGE tree which had fallen apparently some time during the night. Fun!

I’ve moved large trees with my truck and a snatch strap before, but this was different… this was a BIG tree. I can’t estimate how much it weighs, but there is no way it was going to be pulled around by a little truck.

We’d have to hatch some kind of plan. I’m glad we were the first to discover this since no one had yet had a chance to drive off the road to get around it. If we could clear it somehow, we could ensure that none of the surrounding forest was destroyed because of this temporary obstacle! Viva TREAD LIGHTLY!

Lance thought he could pull it… that didn’t work.


Image credit: 1leglance

It seemed like if we cut through 20 or so branches, there would be a path big enough for a car to get through (there were a few cars at the campsite). Out came the tools! Lance went at it with the axe…


Image credit: 1leglance

…while I attacked with the saw.


Image credit: 1leglance

After a while this became pretty tiring and perhaps too much for our wimpiness… I suggested a new strategy that I’d used in the past to break up big trees. Basically it involves looping a strap around a branch, driving away at great speeds, and violently snapping the branches with the momentum of the truck! Plus, it’s a lot of fun…

Hooked up and ready to go…


Image credit: 1leglance

Vroooom… CRASH!! SNAP!!!!


Image credit: 1leglance

This should only be done with a stretchy ‘kinetic’ strap… Even with that the violence of the tug is extreme and the truck gets thrown around pretty wildly. I don’t recommend this technique for everyone. There is a high probability of some sort of vehicle damage with tree branches flying everywhere. People should be clear of the area for safety.

After doing this quite a few times, the way was clear. Success!

We head out to Wilcox where we may or may not have been meeting people for camping. Nobody was there so we just had some breakfast at the truckstop. In the parking lot was this… I have no idea what it is!

We spent the day in town in Wilcox and went to see a movie. While we were inside, it rained like crazy and washed the trucks of pretty well. It also deposited a huge amount of dirt on the street in Wilcox. Oops!


Image credit: 1leglance

In order to get some internet access, we checked into another ridiculous RV park for the evening. This one was run by ‘creepy murderer guy’ as I called him… While surfing the net, Nathan spotted the manbearpig. How exciting!

Image credit: 1leglance

Meason Flat, NM to Chiricahua Mountains, AZ

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The day I dreaded was drawing closer and closer – soon the trip would be over. We were to cross into Arizona today, a symbolic end to our journey. Because of problems with gated ranchlands near the border, we were on pavement for much of the day. We passed this HUGE mine… here you can see one of those dump trucks that are the size of a house.

One other interesting thing was a piece of property along the highway which had a bunch of overturned cars on it… how odd!

We went to the familiar Rustler Park Campground and set up for the night. Being back in Arizona was bittersweet…

(not quite) Grants, NM to Meason Flat, NM

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Just to change things up a big, I decided to pitch my ground tent for the night. Nathan and I found a small clearing and set things up. In the morning we awoke to find that I’d nearly slept on a cactus, and Nathan had in fact slept directly on top of a huge ant hill!! He was fine inside, but the whole thing was pretty funny.

Lance split off the group to explore one last possibility of an alternate route while I drove back to the muddy water crossing to see how it looked. In a bold and courageous sacrifice of his own body, Nathan ventured into the unknown depths to check the surface quality and depth.

The water was not very deep and the ground beneath the water generally hard packed. It was the mud that worried us. Getting down to the water would probably not be a problem because we could just hit it really fast, but getting out… likely not possible.

Lance was the first to give it a go… it went as we’d feared. He wildly slid down the slope, got across the water, and immediately sunk to the frame in mud and was severely stuck. Look at the depth he sunk even on the way down towards the water.

This episode lead to an unfortunate situation and a great learning experience. Michael had a pull-pal (basically a huge land anchor) that Lance was going to use to winch himself up with. I was happy to see another legitimate use of the winch! What wasn’t so good was the fact that Lance’s recovery gear and winch controller were in the back of the truck. Since he was already crazy muddy, Nathan was of course volunteered to go back and get everything.

My attempt to cross was nearly identical. I throttled down through the mud, crashed through the water, and then made it about a foot before sinking to the frame and becoming completely stuck. Later I found that I was in 4HI which saddened me greatly… I almost wanted to try it again the right way!

So much for mud tires…

Back on the road, there were tons of signs for a big arch so we went to check it out. It was in fact quite huge! It appeared we could hike up to it, but we were all sort of tired/lazy.

Next stop was Pie Town, New Mexico. Aptly named, of course. We’d planned to go here…

…but they were closed. Luckily there was another silly pie-themed cafe down the street that was open. The pie was insanely good and the folks working there were extremely nice and friendly. Lance told them about the trip and donated some Overland Journal copies for their magazine rack.


Image credit: 1leglance

We ran into some huge fields of flowers outside of town so I bust out my 55-200 and played with some aperture and color balance stuff on my camera. Puurty…

Ahhh!!!