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DAY-3: SPRING EPIC 2022 #SpringEpic22 • Red Line Land Cruisers Spring Epic Overland Trip 2022
SPRING EPIC 2022
Hopefully you’ve already read: Day-1 and Day-2.
Day 3: The Red Line Land Cruisers Spring Epic Overland Trip 2022
Photos & Story: Rodney Wills [Sunday – March 20, 2022] After a full-day of driving we made our way into the desert a few clicks south of St. George, Utah. I’m rather home in the desert, but it’s been quite a while since I’ve encountered the fragile rugged landscape of desert. It’s a great feeling to have this opportunity to get reacquainted with the desolate remoteness.
MORNING CAMP
I open my tent to see the early morning clouds rolling past. We will be keeping an eye on the weather today, but we will take it whichever flavor of weather the wind brings. We are here for it ALL!
Bryan’s breakfast is no joke!
I like to do a little hillside scrambling to get a perspective on the landscape and serve the surroundings.
No matter how many times I’ve been in the desert, always finding interesting formations and various elements.
These rocks had veins of iron, but I’ not a geologist. Seems like iron, sounded like iron but didn’t taste like my iron pills…
We break camp and the rigs are readied for the day. I’m super excited as we are IN THE DESERT! Rubber touching dirt is a good thing!
TURTLE HEAD WASH
Just around the other side of the mountain we camped at last night is the entrance to a wash we would drop into and run for a few miles. As we dropped in, I noticed the nice nugget hanging on the edge and deemed this wash as “Turtle Head Wash.”
The wash is nothing major at this point, just a standard high-plains desert wash. For now…
Another section of wash is quite smooth with a more prominent “water-cut” bank, so when the water does flow, it seems to flow fast through here.
And then we get to the rock garden portion of the wash.
Boulder City Wash, Utah – testing grounds for our freshly mounted Yokahama Geolandars!
We see these cows cruising the on the bank of the wash. They are not amused with our 4WD antics.
We start our exit out of the wash at the deep end as our directional change is coming up soon and like every wash, it somehow finds a way to have massive boulders and drops in its path. We would cut out at the “overland exit” not the “KOH Backdoor” exit.
Back onto higher grounds!
INCLINE – PEAK – DESCENT
Just when we thought we would be out of the wash, back into the wash we go! But not the same wash, but yet another. None provided us with an actual wash. I guess we didn’t insert enough quarters…
But as we crossed out of the wash and began our climb, the views expanded!
The boundry… Of course at the top of the pass!
Passing through from one neighborhood to the other…
And down the other side we go.
DUSTY PLAINS
Once the crew cleared the steep rocky pass, it let out into the dusty plains! The crew loved this as it reminded them of watching Baja races and the it’s dusty silt beds. That fine silty dust will never be fully extracted from the vehicles!
LUNCH / WEATHER / CABIN
Our lunch location found us in the little bowl of a valley with less that a mile view in every direction. While enjoying lunch and in about 30-minutes of time passed, clouds started rolling in and we could hear the thunder tumbling along just on the other side of the hill. One good “clap” and it was “OH SNAPS! It’s raining over there! I think lunch is over and we should start rolling on.
First we have to exit our little valley and see that we may be able to divert the rain after this short little strip towards the rain.
It becomes rather apparent that we will not be diverting or outrunning the rain as the thunder keeps rolling in and the temperature is chasing us down the thermometer!
Looks like we are catching a little break in the rain as we pass along this magnificent two track route!
First person opens the gate, last person through closes the gate. Overland Travel Rules!
And now the snow is falling!
Another gate passthrough and the snow keeps on coming down!
It’s really snowing! Things are getting bit more exciting!
These trips are simply awesome! Yet, things could go very bad quickly so a sense of heightened awareness goes to level 10!
Through all this, we come across this old cabin that is literally so far from any paved road, yet life was being lived out here on the primitive frontrange.
We spend a little bit of time checking the place out and wondering what life would have been like in such a remote location. Where is the water source. Food is the cattle on the ranch for what would have to be a daily chore of keeping them fenced in and yourself alive.
We’ve assessed the surroundings and look out upon the open range… Time to roam!
SNOW / MOUNTAINS / ARROWHEAD
From the “safety” of the cabin, we set off to chase the clouds across the plains.
Cue soundtrack: Judas Priest – Desert Plains
Making our way across the plains and we start making our way up into the trees. The area felt even more remote with very little four wheel vehicle traffic through this area. This was simply PURE EPIC! I love these moments! So remote, on two-track that had not been travel in quite some time, this is what I really get excited about!
It’s an obvious path, but a path with very little travel!
I don’t think I have ever seen it snow this hard, big and fast! I was as excited as a kid in a candy store! As we made our way up into the trees, we came to a crossroads of which way do we go. While out scouting around…
Bryan simply looked down and spotted this arrowhead! WHAT A FIND!!! With the recent heavy rain constantly barraging the ground, it had recently unearthed this arrowhead making for Bryan’s first ever arrowhead find. Can this trip get any more EPIC?!?! Finding arrowheads is such an awesome feeling! Growing up in rural Alabama I would find arrowheads while plowing fields on my uncle’s farm. But that was the south, finding an arrowhead in the west is another level!
The emagination drifted to covered waggons trekking their way through the forest…
Old trail that had not seen new tracks in quite some time! Oh what a feeling!
SUNDOWN / CAMP ON THE EDGE
From out of the wooded hills we came back into plain view on the open plains…
It was obvious we were back in some sort of “civilization” with the additional tire tracks other than our own.
But soon we would connect to another lesser traveled trail that was rather sloppy making mud clods galore!
Note the mirror or the lack thereof… Windscreen was not much better…
And another turn to another two track trail!
The sun was fighting with the clouds to show us the way.
Must have once been the “promise land.”
But the light fell fast and the clouds regained control of the sky. I felt as though I was back out west and chasing the last light to the coast, but this time we were chasing the last light to a significant edge of the earth!
According to the “group” this place was easily visited the year prior (COVID) and simply left a donation in the contribution box on the way out. This year however things are getting somewhat back to normal and is staffed with reservations required. We were prepared that might be our discourse of luck, but with our charming demeanor, they let us know that a reservation was forfeited for one night in what may be considered the more desirable location of the campground, the outermost private sector! We are only staying one night, so this totally worked! What a way to end the most EPIC of day!
As we creep our way to camp, we can make out the sheer massiveness of the gorge in front of us.
Tonight we are setting up camp under the the stars, on top of massive slabs of sandstone. We can not really make out our surroundings exactly, but we didn’t see or hear any other campers in our vicinity!
After I get my camp set up and Mountain House cooked up on the JetBoil, I drag the camera equipment out for a couple of long exposures.
What a day! I had already proclaimed this to be the EPIC day of the whole trip as I felt this was going to be one hard day to top! It is why I saved this post (Day 3) as the last post so I could spend more time sifting through all the images of such an epic day!
