Steel Bender Easter Jeep Safari 2019

Day 5 of Easter jeep Safari. Today we are doing Steel Bender, this another Jeep Badge of Honor trail. Red Rock 4 Wheelers rates this trail as a “6”.

The morning starts out South of Moab at a gas station where we all meet up. Because the trail head is close to the meet up location, this is where we all air down, disconnect our sway bars and have the drivers meeting. This is a difficult trail and long, so we need to keep a good pace to get the while trail completed.

We make our way to the first obstacle, “The Wall”. It’s a fun step ledge that we have to climb, 4Low and lockers engaged, and I make it up with no problem.

The next obstacle that we have is a long downhill ledge that is broken into two parts. Between the two sections is a 180 degree turn. This is going to be challenging, and the “pucker factor” is up there. The first ledge is about 2-3 Jeep lengths long. You cant see much over the hood, so spotters are a must. Trust your spotter! Having good brakes is also a MUST! Don’t want to lost them here. I slowly make it down, brakes squealing, but they hold. The last 3 feet you just slide, brakes locked, you just slide! The 180 degree turn is fine, and the second section isn’t as bad as the first, you have some sight where your going. The whole group makes it down in about 45 minutes.

The sun burns off the morning clouds and we have a grata trail side lunch. Where were have lunch are alot of bore holes where drilling happened looking for uranium, back during the cold war.

After lunch we have one last set of step to make it over. The “MOAB BUMP” gets up up and over.

The end of the trail you have descent into a creek and then right out. The difficult part I sth rock and tires are wet, so you just need speed and some luck and you’ll make it over. It’s not hard, might need one or tow tries.