BEDEVILED : An Off Road Adventure Through the Historic Devil’s Canyon Jeep Trail
- Thread starter wayoflife
- Start date
tobias lopez
New member
Like always great vid!!
Buster3479
Member
Another epic video! I can't imagine pushing 37's through those rocks with no power steering! I have a hard enough time with 35's and working steering in much easier terrain that I swear I'm going hydro assist when I step up to 37's.
Thanks for sharing such a well shot video and challenging run with all of us.
Thanks for sharing such a well shot video and challenging run with all of us.
Linebacker
Caught the Bug
Wow, just wow!! Learned a couple of things from this epic vid. Stock axles are way tougher than I thought and factory skids get the job done.:yup:
Yeah, only 3 miles long. It was crazy tough and we did encourage everyone to take on the hardest lines. That plus we filmed everyone with more than one camera so it was an epic day for sure. Of course, the break we had didn't help anything :crazyeyes:
Glad you enjoyed it :yup:
Hope it was worth it
Very cool! I want a do over
No kidding!! I think we're gonna have to figure out a way to make it happen again :yup:
LOL!! Well, it was a bit tougher than going to the mall. :crazyeyes:
So glad that you could experience some of the wheeling we do through our videos
Thank you, we really do appreciate the kind words and so glad you enjoyed it.
:cheesy: I was wondering if anyone would catch that
LOL!! To be fair, it is one of the hardest things to remember - to keep your hands INSIDE your Jeep as you will NOT be able to stop your Jeep from going over. I don't think Don has ever done it again since this trip.
So glad that you were able to join us for this run :thumb:
Rome
New member
Words cant say... WOW!!!! Great Job!!!!
Thank you all for the hard work put in for this. Great job.
Back in the mid-1800’s, a stage route was established across the Jacumba Mountains which are located along the Mexican border and just south of the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Its purpose was to connect the growing towns of San Diego, California and Yuma, Arizona and while improvements were made to help accommodate the very first automobiles back in the early 1900’s, the route was abandoned after the completion of U.S. Highway 80 and the subsequent Interstate 8. Thanks to a major storm in the 1970’s, a portion of the route that cut through Devil’s Canyon was washed away and for the most part, all but lost to history.
Cindy and I first heard about Devil's Canyon about 10 years ago after reading about a few guys who went looking for this old stage route and to see if it could still be run. Soon after its rediscovery, it became one of the hottest trails to run in the San Diego and Imperial County area and because of it, the BLM quickly shut it down as the area was home to endangered Big Horn Sheep. Since that time, we had all but forgotten about this trail but after getting recent word that people were running it again and legally, we knew it was something we had to look into.
After doing some research, I found that the BLM was in fact allowing LIMITED access to Devil's Canyon but ONLY WITH A PERMIT. And, what I can tell you is that unless you're planning to run this trail with Tierra del Sol or another club that has access to it, you might as well still consider this trail to be CLOSED! Not only do you have to apply for a $100 permit 180 days in advance, you are only allowed to run the trail on one of seven Saturday's between October 1st and April 30th and it cannot be on a Saturday following a previous run. In addition to that, you are limited in the amount of vehicles that can participate, you will need to fill out a 27 page application that requires you to include plans for medical emergencies and evacuation routes which, really is all fair and reasonable enough but, what will ultimately stump most people and almost stumped us as well is the proof of liability insurance the BLM requires for $500,000 per occurrence and a $1,000,000 aggregate! I should note that just about every insurance company I called with the hopes of obtaining a one day policy like this laughed at me and told me that the BLM is effectively telling people that they don't want anyone on the trail! 7 months after I had applied for our permit and with any hopes of getting an an insurance policy starting to run out, Off Road Evolution stepped up to the plate and offered to let us ride on their policy. Needless to say, a BIG THANK YOU needs to go out to them for making this run and this film possible.
Unfortunately for us, by the time we got everything in order, the only Saturday left for us to run the trail was the last one of April. Needless to say, summer was already in full force down in the Yuha Desert and daytime temps were already well within the triple digits. Also, our 2007 Jeep JK Wrangler known as Moby was out of commission and so we would have to run it in our newer 2012 JK known as Rubicat. While this wouldn't normally be a problem, it had a blown power steering pump and we wouldn't be able to get a replacement until after the run. Of course, being that this was the only chance we might ever have at running this amazing trail, Cindy and I decided we needed to just do it regardless of having to do it handicapped.
Along for the ride on this epic trek, we had Doug, his daughter Jessa, her boyfriend Jim, Moochie, Don, Et, Tony, Stephanie, Derek, Ray, his son Kevin and tagging along as a support photographer, we had our friends Dave and Laura joining us as well. In all, we had a total of 8 Jeep JK Wrangler in our group and most of which were just running 37" tires. As far as lift kits go, a few in our group were running EVO Bolt-On coil overs, a couple had EVO DTD with EVO Levers and one was running a Full-Traction long arm kit. Aside from Doug who was running Dyantrac ProRock 60's front and rear, just about everyone else was running factory axles. Essentially, we were just a group of regular people in moderate to semi-well built rigs.
The Devil's Canyon trail is approximately 3 miles long and roughly parallels the westbound lanes of Interstate 8. If you run the trail east to west like we did, it's an uphill climb to the top, over large granite boulders more bodacious than Kim Kardashian's ass and with deep soft sand in between just to kick things up a notch. While it did ultimately take us 15 hours to run and required us to do some unintended night wheeling, it should be noted that EVERYONE in our group was encouraged to take on ALL the biggest obstacles and be individually filmed doing it as well. This slowed thing down for us tremendously and we really need to thank all our friends for their patience and understanding for what we were trying to do. If this was the only time we would ever get to run this trail, we wanted to make sure we documented everything as carefully as possible and we hope that you enjoy this film we made from it.
Ladies and gentlemen... BEDEVILED!
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GOOD LUCK to all of you :thumb:
WAYALIFE EPIC TREX ADVENTURES are off-road films created by Cindy and I. We have been responsible for producing the JK-Experience (also known as the JKX) video series "KEEP IT TIGHT" which was made in 2011, the 2012 series "HEARTLAND", the 2013 series "WILD WILD WEST" and the 2014 "PACIFIC NORTHWEST". Our films are produced and paid for entirely by us and we receive absolutely NO funding from manufacturers or vendors to help subsidize our work.
Thank you all for the hard work put in for this. Great job.
Thank you. Editing is by far one of the hardest parts of making a film like this. We really appreciate you taking notice of our efforts.
Just watched it and it totally awesome!! The music the edits made it a fantastic video. Congratulations on a job well done!!
Now I have to watch it again.
LOL!! It was great to have you along for this run. Can't wait to do more runs like it with you in the near future :yup:
Thanks Russ, I think you would have enjoyed this trail for sure. :yup:
Thanks - believe me, there was a lot of legwork (in the literal sense as well) to make this film possible.
Glad to hear it, thank you.
:cheesy: Well, I hope you know that if you had joined us for this run, we would have done all that we could to help you through it :yup:
Glad to hear you and your family enjoyed it and I hope you will be able to join us on runs like this in the future. :yup:
Lando, we're truly flattered by your kind words, thank you. We're so happy to know our films could have an impact like this on someone like you. :blush:
Bust out the winch on the first rock. Yep, gonna be a long 3 miles.
Oh yeah, we right there and then it was going to be a long day :crazyeyes:
Glad to hear that it was good enough for you to want to watch again
Thanks Ty, we really do appreciate it!
It really was hell to run but almost more so just to get a permit to run it. The trail's name really does sum it all up. :crazyeyes:
Thank you, we're so glad that you enjoyed it and hope that it could compare to some of the JK-Experience videos we've done in the past.
The trails out there are no joke but this one really took the cake for sure. :crazyeyes:
Well, it wasn't easy by any means but is almost harder just to get a permit to run it.
Thank you, it really was 3 miles I will never forget :crazyeyes:
Thank you, we really try our hardest and we're glad that we were able to capture as much as we were able to.
That would be awesome if you could join us some day.
OverlanderJK
Resident Smartass
Nice video! Looks like a fun trail!
Well, I hope you're not disappointed by what you see when you can finally see it :crazyeyes:
LOL!! I think we were hearing the Gilligan's Island theme song too :crazyeyes:
The trail was tough for sure but really, I have to give a BIG THANKS to all our friends for being so patient with us. We for sure could have run the trail faster but filming, and doing it the way we wanted took a lot more time. Of course, the break and wheeling on crazy big rocks in the dark didn't help much :crazyeyes:
LOL!! Thank you, we're so glad to hear it :yup:
It's without question, one of the harder trails we've run. Glad you enjoyed the film - we miss you and Ray.
Don't even get me started, the whole thing is a joke and really, just a way for them to keep the trail closed without having it being "officially" closed. :naw:
Well, they were a bit bigger than the speed bumps at the local mall, that's for sure :crazyeyes:
You know, with the right friends to help you though, I have no doubts that your Jeep could get you through something like this.
:cheesy: Honestly, with a little time, patience and good spotting, you'd be surprised at what your Jeep could do as is. :yup:
That is so cool :thumb:
That's what I keep telling people but some still think I'm just a hater :crazyeyes:
Thank you, we're so glad you enjoyed it
Honestly, I was sore for days after this run. If it had been any other trail, I would have taken a rain check. Being that we really only had this one shot at running it - we just bit the bullet and did it in spite of our handicap. It totally sucked!
Oh yeah, stock axles and factory skids are what I ran on this trail and still run up front on Rubicat. I just don't understand why so many people are so eager to spend money on things they don't really need. :crazyeyes:
So glad to hear both you and your wife enjoyed the film :yup:
We're so glad that you could enjoy a run like this through our videos.
No, not everyone. We try to distribute the load so that everyone has a bit of everything. :yup:
We are no longer participating on the JKX and we are not making any videos for them.
It's fun for sure but it so hard to run legally, it's almost not even worth it. Maybe someday we'll go through the trouble to make it happen again and if we do, you'll have to join us. :yup: