Recently a group of us got together and spent the weekend camping and running some of the rock crawling trails in Montrose Colorado. If you have never heard of Montrose Rock crawling, you need to check it out. These trails are pretty low key, they do not get much traffic, but they are world class. Most of the trails are grouped together for easy access, however one trail, Boilder Canyon is off on its own.

We had already run most of the trails in the Montrose a trail system on Friday, and Saturday, so a couple guys wanted to nose into Death Row to see what it’s all about. This trail is short, maybe a few hundred yards, however it is covered with boulders the size of cars!

Daren was the first to start up it in his Toyota truck Buggy. Things got real pretty fast!

Seth was next in his Toyota truck based buggy.

I was not really feeling it this day, but I figured O well, I’ll take a shot at it. I was pleasantly surprised as I started working my way through the trail, my Jeep was doing great, I suppose 42 inch sticky tires and 18 inch travel Fox coilovers helped out quite a bit.

The first real obstacle is an off camber rock, you have to straddle while going up a steep hill, it will fully flex you out

Heading up through the next sections.

Next Thad decided he could not be left behind, he started heading up the trail as well.

Things were going really well for everyone until we heard that fateful ping come from Seths Dana 60 rear end up near the top, he broke a rear chromoly shaft, which made things very interesting at this point.  We pulled the winch line and started working him up until things got tippy, at which that point his other side rear shaft broke, causing him to tip over. What a bad spot to be in, no rear axle traction, on one of the hardest trails in Colorado, this is where winching become essential!  After some careful winching we got Seth up and out of the trail.

Everyone else kept working their way up through the trail, luckily with no more breakage.

I was happy to get through this trail without pulling the winch line, that’s how Rockcrawling goes, one weekend you don’t break anything, or have to winch, the next weekend you break your rear transfer case yoke in two, on the first obstacle!  Rock crawling is more than just driving up a trail and hoping not to break anything, the best built buggies out there still break, it’s gonna happen.  What makes it fun is when everyone bands together to come up with a solution to get it fixed, all of a sudden, everyone is channeling a little Mcguyver!