I have been coming down to Moab for as long as I can remember. Being in Salt Lake City I’m only a few hours drive away, but admittedly I’ve never been down there in the winter, or at least not in my Jeep.
While I usually don’t start my Moab season, or really wheeling season for that matter, until after we go back on daylight savings, I got a call from a good friend who’d never been there before and I just couldn’t say no.
What made the trip even better, was that I randomly got talking to Don aka Clearskies here on the forum, and although it was incredibly short notice, within an hour he had booked his hotel and was ready to make the drive all the way out from California to come play in the promised land.
I didn’t get as many picture as I would have liked being that I was juggling our dogs and spotting, but here are some of what I did get. DISCLAIMER: I must also apologize for the quality of some of the pictures, I was unable to get them on my phone and had to take screen shots from our friend who was filming some of it.
Fueling up for the short, but dark drive down. Funny how even a short drive can seem so much longer in the dark.
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About halfway there. Our friend and fellow WAYALIFE member Cendee decided to come along as well.
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Saturday morning was a bit cloudy but soon cleared up. However it was still February so morning temps were in the teens which meant we’d hit snow at some point.
Making our way out along the Colorado River, on our way to run Top of the world
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Finally, time to air down
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Down low, it was mostly just wet and a little slushy, but as we started our climb up, we started running into more and more snow.
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After some slipping and a little extra work, we were finally up on top and enjoying the view.
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After getting some good poser shots up on the ledge, we made our way down. And thanks to the nice weather, much of the snow had melted which made things super muddy.
After heading back down, grabbing some lunch and assessing how much daylight we had left, we decided to make a quick run up hells revenge being that this was our friends first time.
Here is Don (Clearskies) making his way up an optimal ledge that is fun to play on.
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Being that we got a late start and daylight was running low, we decided to head out to the overlook and play a little bit on hells gate before taking the shortcut back out.
Here is Don making his way down the entrance to hells gate.
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And there goes our friend Caleb.
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Don getting set to make the climb out.
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And safely up and out
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And here comes Caleb
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Getting nice and twisty in there...
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After everyone had their time to play, we decided to head back to the short cut and make our way down. I knew it was going to turn into a night run and did my best to get everyone off the tough sections before dark.
Making our way down with nothing but darkness in front.
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