thennen
New member
Beautiful - but where?My first real adventure in my 4Runner!
Beautiful - but where?My first real adventure in my 4Runner!
My first real adventure in my 4Runner!
Beautiful - but where?
Looks like Squamish?
Ah, never been there. Nice!Yep, squamish!![]()
Lytle Creek, CA!
Did you fish for goldens?
The black car is my 4Runner. Belmont mine, west of Phoenix.
I was out in that area back in March; great place and need to go back out at some point. Assuming you may have been using Charles Wells' book for guidance, I managed to blow a turn somewhere around the 6.5 mile mark coming in from the north and missed the damn mine and I think ended up exploring some of the "challenging side roads" instead. Got out without any damage, but had a few pucker inducing moments considering I don't have additional armor on my 4Runner yet (was not expecting to be in 4WD-Lo with wheels off the ground on my "easy" trail run).
Long story short, waiting for my RCI skids and Victory sliders to come in currently! Was amazed my Terra Grapplers made it out intact also.
Never heard of the Charles Wells book. I used the AllTrails app and Google offline maps. I took the north to south route. Most of the trail was easy, but there were some very rough areas. Any low clearance vehicle would be destroyed. You don't need any crazy mods to get through with your 4Runner. Mine (TRD Off Road) is mostly stock. I have AT tires and sliders, that's all. And, I always air down. No extra armor, no lift. I have been through worse terrain than 99% of the people on this forum who all have giant tires, 5 inch lifts, and 900 lbs of skid plates so they can look cool at the grocery store. Your stock 4Runner is very capable of driving very rough terrain. Just be careful, take it slow, and learn how to drive. Don't waste your money on junk you don't need.
I recommend you check out the Funtreks series from Charles Wells. They are good books (he has some great ones for Colorado plus the Moab area in Utah).
Don't get me wrong, nothing in there was THAT bad. It was more just entertaining since I went in expecting stuff to be down right easy (think largely graded dirt road) and it was way tougher than that. My main concern was my lack of sliders as there were a few spots where I had some pretty close moments in that regard (and that's such a nasty issue if you damage your body tub).
I agree, some spots were much more difficult than I expected, but I have sliders. The main difficulty was the huge chunks of ground missing. Looked like the road had bombs dropped on it. If you ever come across a big dip and you don't think your bumper will clear it, just throw some big rocks in there and fill up the hole. No problem.