Moab, Day 2…Trail 1, Baird 0

First, I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful the country is here in Moab.  It seemed that around EVERY turn we another incredible view!

Now with that out of the way…

Here’s was my quote of the day, and needless to say it was also the understatement of the day as well,

“So, this is an intermediate trail?”

I am an off-road novice.  This was only my second time out on terrain in our TOMCAR.  I was set up on a trail called “Cliffhanger” with one of our Business Development Managers – Chuck.  Let’s just say Chuck is more mechanically skilled than I and it turned out we would need those skills late in the day. 

We started rather well with a couple of steep downhills that the car just glided over…then approached our first hill.  I watched everyone else take it and then followed the line and in no time, I was up the hill!  Cool…we can do this…confidence brewing…

Well that confidence continued to be tested as we ran over all sorts of terrain and then I hit a wall…literally.  I didn’t follow the line right on a climb and hit hard against the rock with my shoulder taking the full force of the hit,  OUCH!  We had to switch drivers then and poor Chuck had to handle some even tougher climbs.  Through the rest of the first half of the trail we’d pop a tire and bend a tie rod end, but we got over EVERYTHING! 

When we got half way, we were told that the trail didn’t loop, but we were going on how we came in.  Oh, oh.  I took back over the driving and on our first climb, I bent another tie rod end.  It was then that everyone in our group decided that we had to take it easy just to make sure we could get home.  The car still handled very well, but we weren’t going to “cowboy” it to run up some of the steep climbs on the way out.  While it hurt my pride a bit, we tied off and were either towed or winched up the more extreme climbs.

We got on the trail at 10:45 am.  We got back to camp at 6:00 pm.  It was a LONG day.  Every muscle in my hands, my shoulders and my left elbow (every hard hit would drive my arm back into the cars frame, smashing my elbow) were throbbing.  This was a difficult trail and it took it’s toll on my body and the TOMCAR’s but both of us got showered off, fixed up and were up and ready the next morning!

Some great video and photos coming soon!

Related Stories:

• May 18, 2009 -- Moab, Day 4…Devil’s Revenge!
• May 16, 2009 -- Moab, Day 3…Whole Lot O’ Nothin’