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

[swamp rat]

Thanks for sharing!

[Zoomad75]

Originally Posted by DirtyLarry

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!

Having wheeled with Bill for a few years now riding and following, I can attest to Larry's statement. He's a PRO. He can tell where the ends of that big Dodge are by the feel of it. He can read the trail without getting out and place his tires exactly where they need to be. There isn't enough "O's" in "smooth" to describe his driving style. Plus as the resident camp cookie, good eats on the trail too!

[Matt Man]

Nice collection of photo's, I would like to do this sort of thing with my k10 one day.

[justcuz]

The Plymouth is a 1959 with a 3 spd stick. Looks like engine and trans were still mostly there. Even though I enjoy seeing old iron out in the desert, it just does not get left alone anymore and the folks who destroy them make me want to start an off road salvage business.

Great trip and pictures, nice variety of vehicles too. Looks like you had a couple challenges and some beautiful scenery. I don't mind the mountains either, Landers Meadow up above Lake Isabella is real pretty. Truthfully beauty is where you find it and for me anyplace outside a city is fine. Desert, mountains, woods or meadows, just get me out of town.

I hear you on the crawl ratio, that's why I like the old SM 420 Chevy truck trans. You need a set of 3-1 gears for your 205 or a 241. Hauling the weight you do crawl ratio and compression braking is very important.

[DirtyLarry]

As Paul Harvey would say…. “And now for the rest of the story”

So after airing up a few of us headed into Moab to grab a late lunch at the Moab Diner then Don, my MIL and I headed up Kane Creek to camp for the night. I am not a big fan of driving at night and it was way too late in the day to start the 8 hour journey home. The funny thing is the Kane Creek campground is right at the start of the Kane Creek/Lockhart Basin lead in trail that we took a few days before. We basically made a few big circles over the week.

The final night of camping was not as spectacular as the several nights before but it is still better than sitting at home on the couch. This night was rather cold and windy with the looks of a promising rain storm yet again. So with that, we set up camp right next to the Kane Creek campground shower house up high above the Colorado River. The hill behind us and the shower house helped kill just about all the wind that was whipping around. If you all recall, this is the same camp ground we hung our hat on the final night of our desert trip last year as well. However, we learned last year that with the looming threat of rain, it is best to camp up high rather than down in the flood plain next to the river.


The camp ground itself has some interesting features plus the people that run the place are really nice and hospitable.




Directly behind where I snapped the picture above is a large cave that you can rent for $50 a night. That probably would be a fun place to have a party during the Easter Jeep Safari.






The bigass black widow guard spider at the cave entrance comes at no extra charge


The Kane Creek Campground is also the entrance to the Prichard Canyon trail


The shower facilities at the campground remind me of a jailhouse shower but it was nice not to have to set up the shower tent this night


It seems the final camping night went by way too fast as we enjoyed beverages, relived the stories from the week and poked fun at the endless amount of cars that went past the campground up the trail then returned back down shortly after. Early Thursday morning Don was packed up and ready to roll before I even had my first cup of coffee. He was back on the road headed towards Flagstaff before 8 AM while we took our time packing up.

We decided to take a different route back home that we haven’t done before just to check out the area. We shot straight South out of Moab for about 20 miles to Hwy 46 that shoots you straight into Colorado in short time. We’re talking 45 minutes from Moab and we’re back in Colorado although we still have 7 hours to go before we actually get home. At Bedrock, CO we took this little canyon road that runs up to Uravan then caught Hwy 141 up to Gateway then on to the outskirts of Grand Junction. The plan was to stop and visit the entrepreneur of the Discovery Channel’s Automobile Museum in Gateway but by the time was pass through I really didn’t feel like stopping and losing an hour of travel time so we mushed on.

Shots from the canyon drive between Bedrock and Uravan







There were cows everywhere on this stretch of road



Pretty cool old Flume that hangs from the canyon wall for a few miles. Some historic society restored a 48 foot section of the flume. Funny, as their restored section sure doesn’t look 48 feet long from where we are standing just due to the enormity of the canyon itself






We no sooner got off the canyon road onto 141 at Uravan and ran into more cows all over the road. This one was pretty stubborn and didn’t seem one bit interested in mooooving out of the way.


The swanky resort in Gateway, CO


Hard to believe you are actually in Colorado in this area as it looks so much like Utah


But about 4 hours down the road there is no question we are back in Colorado. This was near Gunnison


We even got some snow going over Wolf Creek Pass, which isn’t unusual even in summer months


So that is it! That is what the 7 days of our Desert Trip 2015 looked like. The trip turned out to be a bit shorter than past trips mostly because we skipped the Overland Expo this year which would have added 3 days to the trip. In all, the total miles ran this year was only 1,191 miles while consuming 117.44 gallons of fuel, which comes out to a total of 10.14 MPG for a complete round trip fuel economy average. That is a little over 1 MPG less than we did 2 years ago on the Death Valley trip. I attribute the lower fuel economy of this trip due to the Lockhart Basin being 2 straight days mostly crawling in 4 low. Even at that, I am very pleased with the fuel economy in something this big and heavy powered by a big block.

Here is the summary from my mapping software and you can check out the SPOT GPS summary page, which allows you to zoom in right in our foot prints


That’s it!

[1976gmc20]

Isn't that Monarch Pass instead of Wolf Crick ???

I used to live in and around Gunnison (mostly up north in Taylor Park). I've hauled some godawful loads over Monarch, including a house trailer and a bulldozer.

[DirtyLarry]

Originally Posted by 1976gmc20

Isn't that Monarch Pass instead of Wolf Crick ???

I used to live in and around Gunnison (mostly up north in Taylor Park). I've hauled some godawful loads over Monarch, including a house trailer and a bulldozer.

Yes! Good catch, it is Monarch. My bad! I am so used to going over Wolf Creek every year I pulled that out of habit

[vancelot69]

man, seeing your pics and watching your videos makes me want to go 4-wheelin' / camping with you.

[DirtyLarry]

A few more pictures surfaced from my buddy Don (Oilbrnr here on the forums). Don has the nicely done 80 series Toyota.

Saturday morning in Moab at the hotel as we were rounding up the wagons before starting the White Rim Trail


This was one of the water storage ponds on the Potash mines property. The water was pretty sketchy looking but made for a nice picture


Muscleman Arch


And….The Muscleman Arch


Somewhere out on the WRT


Guess he ran out of color crayons for this one


Our first campsite of the trip at Gooseberry


Totally different prospective in black and white




Just waving hello to my friends on the other side of the tight switch back


It’s a loooong ways down!


Odd collection of vehicle but we all get along well


Cool pic of Bill’s Dodge


A few more pics coming....

[DirtyLarry]

The campsite at Chicken Corners before the start of Lockhart Basin


It rained like a sumbish shortly after dinner


Bill frying his famous trail fried chicken. Quite appropriate for camping at Chicken Corners


Not long after this picture was taken we had a small river flowing right through our camp under the fire in a can and table. It was crazy


The next morning at the start of Lockhart Basin. 1leglance getting after the ’70 Burb




A couple of the wrecked up camp trailer lying next to the trail




It’s ironic Don got a picture of me reaching for a beverage on the last night on Lockart Basin as I was a hurting unit later that night. I think something was wrong with that 13th beer cuz it made me awfully sick that night


That’s it unless one of the other guys pops up with some pictures

[Zoomad75]

I like the black and white shots. Very well shot. Favorite is you, Lynn and Bill on the edge. Great photo.