Saturday, March 20, 2010
Today, Amanda and I headed to the Sand Flats Recreation Area just outside of Moab. Our goal was to run the Hells Revenge and Fins & Things trails. It has been a few years since I have run either of these trails, so it was about time to run them again.
I also wanted to give my new JK a good workout to see how it performs and get used to driving it. Overall, I was very happy with how the JK performed…..the electronic front sway-bar disconnect was nice 🙂 Approach and departure angles were pretty good as well. I only ended up scraping my rear receiver once, and I never scraped the front bumper or plastic air dam at all. The only thing I would like to improve is the belly clearance, especially under the gas tank, which seemed to be the spot I scraped the most. I also noticed that the stock gas tank skid is definitely not up to the task, as I managed to put a few good sized dents in it already. So I guess I will be adding a newer heavy duty gas tank skid to my list of future upgrades…
We got an early start on Hells Revenge and pretty much had the trail to ourselves.
Follow the tracks
When we reached the overlook above the Colorado River, we ran into the only group of three vehicles we would see on the trail. After checking out the overlook they were discussing the Hells Gate optional obstacle nearby and trying to decide if they wanted to try it. I was not planning on running Hells Gate since we were alone on this trip, but since they were around I offered to run it so they could decide if they wanted to try it. The JK had no problems climbing Hells Gate. Unfortunately, they still decided to skip this obstacle…..at least I got to run it 🙂
Headed towards the Black Hole
The snow-capped La Sal Mountains in the distance provided us with a great backdrop all day.
After finishing up Hells Revenge, we headed back into Sand Flats and made our way over to the start of Fins & Things.
We decided to stop and find a geocache along the trail….can you spot it?
View of my Jeep from the cache
Amanda filled out the log
Back to the trail
Whistling Face
I climbed up to Diving Board Rock
More tracks on the slickrock
After finishing up Fins & Things and taking Sand Flats Road back to Moab, we headed back home. It was a great day on the trails!