Type 2 Fun at Moab

I finally made it out to Moab with my buddy Jake and my brother-in-law Matt after talking about the trip for probably two years. We had three trucks between us, a pile of recovery gear, too much food, and absolutely no intention of keeping anything clean.

My truck was running upgraded shocks, a small lift, 35-inch all-terrains, rock sliders, and a full-size spare. I aired down before we hit the trail, and that made a bigger difference than I expected. The truck felt much more planted on the slickrock, especially on the slow climbs where you’re basically staring at the sky and hoping the spotter knows what he’s doing.

About halfway through the afternoon, Jake was spotting me down a ledge and told me to stay passenger. I apparently heard “ignore Jake completely,” because I dropped the right rear tire into a hole and the truck leaned over hard. Matt stopped talking mid-sentence, Jake yelled “STOP,” and for about ten seconds nobody was having fun anymore. We backed up a little, stacked a couple rocks, changed the line, and crawled out without any real damage. The passenger slider earned a fresh scar, though, so at least it has a story now.

Later that evening we were sitting outside the motel eating burgers and looking at the trucks covered in red dust. We kept talking about that one bad line and giving Jake a hard time for how fast he ran toward the truck.

Moab was a good reminder that the boring upgrades are usually the ones you appreciate most. Tires, suspension, sliders, recovery points, and brakes you trust coming down a long grade matter a lot more when you’re actually out there. I came home with a scraped slider, about ten pounds of Utah dust, and a pretty strong urge to go back.