So I’m not sure how many of you guys know this, but last week was the 2019 FJ Summit in Ouray, CO. I didn’t register us for the event but went anyway. We left Denver Tu after work, spent the night in Salida and drove to Ouray on Wed morning. Funny thing is, I had no idea where the event will be situated but it turned out that the vendors and everything else were about 100 yards down the street from our hotel. Needless to say the experience was amazing. It was our first time in Ouray and we fell in love. Also I’m beyond impressed with the 4Runner. That truck ran thru stuff that I thought was gonna be hard like nothing. It was absolutely effortless. And I mean huge boulders on trails that were rated as hard were no trouble at all. I’m running Falken Wildpeaks in stock size aired down to 20psi and the only modification is the spacer lift in the front, nothing else. Anyway let me get into the pictures because I know most people like looking at those better than reading novels.
Thursday we did Ophir Pass
Cool pic from when I stopped to air up, turned out that my rear passenger tire was on this rock absolutely unintentionally but it shows really nice how the tires “hug” stuff when they are aired down.
The next day we went out with a group from Texas. First trail we ran was Yankee Boy Basin
I was a little worried about this and was sure that I’ll scrape either the front or the rear but with careful placement of the truck it went over without issues
Yankee Boy was snowed in, like a lot of other trails, so we decided to go somewhere else. Next was Mineral Creek which is a short cut to get to the Alpine Loop but is a Hard trail and I wasn’t 100% sure if I should go. Since one of the guys from Texas was also in a stock 5th gen, same tires like mine just bigger I thought okay why not. That trail got intense pretty fast.
I took this pic from another guy but it shows the kind of stuff that was on Mineral Creek. Going over this all you see is sky.
and another spot that had me worried, again went over like it was nothing
Animas Forks on the way to California Gulch
almost on top of California Gulch
Panorama from the top
Going down Corkscrew Gulch
This is where we came across the biggest avi debris of the whole trip. Honestly I don’t think the pictures represent the scale of destruction, it was absolutely insane!
By the end of the day we had covered over 40 miles in 6 hours. Needless to say we were all exhausted.
On Saturday I wanted to do less challenging trails so we went to Red Mountain Mining Area as well as Bullion King Lake (where we almost ate shit because of snow but more about that in a little bit)
When we got back we went to look around what the vendors were offering. I didn’t have plans to buy anything but we stopped at the CBI tent and I was checking their skids. The guys seemed like they wanted to sell the set bad so I asked them to make me an offer I can’t refuse. Well they did and now I have a complete set of CBI skids that I need to install.
The one thing that I realized after those three days of wheeling is that the truck doesn’t need anything. I’m for sure not going to spend the over $2k that I was planning on Kings and some other stuff. Other than the skids I’m going to invest in RSG sliders and call it a day. I hope you guys enjoyed it and I wish you all to experience that event or at least Ouray because it really is magical. We’ll be back next year for sure.