2010 Easter Jeep Safari Story by Charlene Bower Coverage brought to you by 4 Wheel Parts Wholesalers
Media Jeeps brought to you by 4WP and Poly Performance!
JKs cruised the strip, drove across slickrock and attacked the vertical climbs. Moab, UT was packed with JKs some completely tricked out beyond recognition and others strictly stock! Do JKs rule the world? Not sure, but we can say they certainly ruled the Rim!
Lance, Camo and myself headed East for the Easter Jeep Safari week. Getting there was an adventure on it’s own, but we finally reached Moab with JKs as our means of wheeling transportation. Lance was pimping the Poly Performance 2-door model and Camo was sporting a brand new Smittybilt 2-door. And when I say brand new, I mean Sean the President handed Camo the keys on Monday morning with only 90 or so miles on it! Not even a scratch!
And so our week began.
Lance hit town on Sunday with the Poly Performance JK and was fortunate enough to get a “warm up” run in on Hell’s Revenge. He met up with 4 Wheel Parts, Smittybuilt and our friends the Mustard Dog family for a great day of wheeling. Mustard Dog went ahead and gave the crowd and cameras a show when he broke his KOH racer rig in Devils Hot tub. It did him good in the longrun, when we got to see him on all the TV’s in town for the rest of the week!
Camo and I rolled into town after driving 18 hours straight to meet Lance at 7am with some video tape for the Poly Performance / JKOwners adventure through Canyonlands National Park. Although I didn’t get to go, I heard about what a great time it was and how it was probably the most scenic route that Lance had been on while visiting Moab. We laughed a lot as he explained to us the crack in the rock, and how everyone was challenged at getting through it. Sounds like you needed to be extra skinny…HitMoney almost made it, but even that was sketchy. Lance was excited and raved at the 30+ JKOwners members showed up to join the ride!
Meanwhile, Camo and I jumped into the brand spanking new Smittybilt JK and headed off to the Moab Rim trail on the 4 Wheel Parts Vendor Run. I don’t think I have ever seen Camo so nervous than this… driving a Non-Scratched vehicle up a pretty aggressive uphill climb, or maybe it was that big cliff off to the drivers side... The stair steps kept coming and before we knew it, we were at the top of the rim looking down at the entire city of Moab. We took an extra loop back to the sand hill where some of the turbo charged JKs walked right up it!
It was great to see the number of tricked out JKs that were on the run with us. The exec’s of the large offroad companies, top engineers and the main marketing people were all driving them. Which translates into knowing that quite a few new products were installed on these vehicles at a prototype stage or being introduced this week. Lets just say…there is a lot of trick stuff on the way!
Lance and I joined the WARN Red Letter Dealers on a casual run up another edge of the canyon called Cliff Hanger. Lets set something straight about Moab…most all trails end up on the edge of something, hanging over an arch, driving out on an under cut or something of the sort unless you stay on flat ground down in the canyons. The trail certainly had some tough climbs in it, but none bad enough to have to pull a winch! WARN hosted a great ride, and used the entire back seat of their JK to spread out a picnic lunch for the group! They had two four doors outfitted to the max, as well as some of their dealers.
On the other side of town, Camo was with the Rancho Suspension group running Hell’s Revenge. Nobody had the desire to repeat Mustard Dog’s Devil’s Hot Tub attack from Sunday, so they continued on until they reached the smaller Mickey's hot tub. They had a blast putting the 2-door Smittybuilt JK in the hole first, and as Camo says “testing to see if the winch worked” to get it out. Then came the 4-door JK whose wheelbase made made it walk right out the other side. There were some pretty awesome climbs and adventures around all of the corners on Hell’s Revenge.
The stars didn’t quite align the way that we wanted them to on Wednesday. It was a bit of a rougher start to the morning with a huge traffic jam in the middle of Pritchett Canyon trail. Our group of JKOwners’s and KOH racer rigs got stopped not too far in from the trail head and had to make the decision to turn around and try another trail, or wait out the groups in front of us. With a little debate, the ProComp and Smittybilt group turned around and headed back out to run Poison Spider, which Camo followed.
Lance and I stayed stuck on the trail for a while longer while we continued to debate with our group and ponder what trail we could head to next. We all finally turned around, headed to the Pizza place for lunch, and then ran out to Poison Spider to play around for the afternoon. This is where we started JK racing. Yes, it is an official sport as far as I am concerned! We were haulin! I saw one of the forum members the next day and he honestly asked “Do you guys always drive that fast?” I had to laugh, and also had to think before I said, “No, not always.” It was a little aggressive, but a lot of fun.
We all headed to the Vendor show at the Arena. With less than welcoming weather for the day, the show was still quite busy. We stopped and chatted with quite a few vendors, which again, have and will have some great new products for the JK. If you like being on the cutting edge of technology, being a JK owner should suit you just fine!
You may see that we are a little industry focused in our rides and our groups. We didn’t take the organized EJS runs, but appreciated everyones rigs in town. We were there to get the gossip on the new products coming out…and we got it! Watch in the upcoming episodes of JKOwners TV and the Industry News page for some extremely innovative items to be hitting the net!
The wheeling in Moab is always spectacular, and this was another year and set of adventures that the three of us won’t forget. The colors were still a bit dull because of all the rain from the year, but the different landscape formations around every corner still make your jaw drop in awe.
Be sure to check out all the photos in the photo gallery.
