Day 3 we are back with red Rock 4 Wheelers and doing Kane Creek Canyon. The is the most difficult trail that I was doing on this trip. Red Rock 4 Wheelers rates this trail as a “7”.
Because this trail is west of Moab, the group meet up location I the local movie theater. It’s a cool, overcast morning, and it’s great to see all the Jeep that will be on the trip today. This trail is an 11 mile drive down Kane Creek Road. Once we get of the road the trail head has a large area where we air down, disconnect sway bars, and have our driver meeting. This is a technical trail, but we have experiences spotters who know this trail very well.
The first part of the trail follows Kane Creek, we cross the creek a few times. We come to our first obstacle is a step rock we have to climb over. Its not very challenging, but once we get our front wheels up on the rock, we have no sight over the hood, so the spotters are there to make sure your not turning and going upon straight.
The second big obstacle is a sharp 90degree turn in the trail, with a step ledge on the passenger side and rock on the passenger side that you have to go around. With good spotters is an easy, you just have to trust your spotter and take it slow. Each Jeep going through the obstacle takes about 3-7 minutes, and with the large group we have it takes almost 1 hr to get through.
We have lunch on the side of the trail along Kane Creek.
The last part of the trail is the most difficult section, Hamburger Hill. There are winch points built Ito the hill so you can self-recover if needed. When we get t the trail we have a traffic jam. A group in a Land Rover is stuck. It looks like this might be a long wait, from what we hear the vehicle is having engine trouble. We are lucky and they are able to get the Land Rover up the hill. Now it’s our turn. Like Ive said before, we have experienced rail guides and spotters.
We have a very tight turn we have to make. We are not big enough to go over the rick so we have to go around it. Like I ask in Top of the World blog, these trails are getting beat up with larger tires and people using the “when I doubt, throttle out” mentality. This is doing alot of trail damage. We literally have to get the driver tire as close to edge of the trail without going over the edge. Spotter trust is very important here. We all get up and over Hanger Hill and work our way to the end of the trail.
This was one of the most difficult trails that I ahem done to date, I am glad that I did it. Hamburg Hill was hard, but we had excellent spotters, and we owe our lives to them!
Expedition Team Overland 