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May 1997 Campfire Tales

by Larry Heck of

PASS PATROL

Eagle Canyon, Lucky Ledge, and Sid's Leap

Pass Patrol’s first trip to Eagle Canyon was many years ago. At that time, we were boldly going where we had never gone before. After finding Swazy’s Cabin and the Head of Sinbad (the rock formation behind Swazy’s Cabin), we became curious as to where the road went in the canyon behind the cabin. I unfolded a USGS 1/100,000 map and noticed it showed the road ending at an arch. We decided to see what it looked like.

At that time, Eagle Canyon was much rougher than it is now. Lack of traffic and a few good gully washers (rain-storms) had washed most of the road away. We had a lot of fun getting to the arch, but the road didn’t end there. Once again, we dug out the maps.

“Looks to me like the canyon goes to I-70,” I commented.

“That’ll work,” Caveman answered. “I need to get started back to Denver.”

We followed the road, stopping several time to repair sections that were badly damaged. Finally, we reached I-70.

“Where’s the entrance ramp for I-70”, Caveman giggled.

“Maybe we could winch up to the pavement.”

“Looks like I’m gonna be getting into Denver a little late.”

The road passed under the bridges, then split in two directions. At that time, we took the left fork and eventually found our way out of the Canyon and onto an access road to I-70. Caveman was a little late getting home.

On another trip, Sundance, Wild Coyote, and I took the right fork at the intersection and found another access to I-70, but we passed the access and took a faint trail going north. It did appear on our map but was simply a dotted line with no name or description. In a few minutes we came to a screeching halt at the bottom of what we soon named, “Lucky Ledge.”

Wild Coyote went ahead to check it out and reported back on the C.B. radio that the road was too narrow to get through. I left my truck behind and walked up to the point he was looking at.

“I think we can fit through there,” I grinned.

“You’re crazy,” Sunshine replied. She looked at Sundance. “He’s crazy you know. Don’t follow him through there.”

They watched as I guided two small vehicles through the narrow ledge barely missing a huge boulder on their left. Sundance was next but his full-size Bronco would have to literally drive on the lip of the ledge.

“Give me the camcorder,” Sunshine said.

“Are you gonna take my picture,” Sundance grinned.

“No. I just don’t want you to break it when you roll the truck down th emountain.”

The Bronco fit through but was so close to the edge, it was knocking rocks over the side.

Sunshine was still not a happy camper. “You guys are so lucky you got through that
ledge.”

“I like it,” I giggled. “We’ll call it Lucky Ledge.”

Our latest trip was not nearly as exciting. Everyone knew I had been through it before so there was no doubt we could fit. It still took some very careful guidance from a spotter outside the vehicle.

Our only real excitement came later in North Fork Coal Wash. I popped up over a hill and came upon two female sunbathers. I never saw two women move so fast but they did manage to find some clothes in their truck. I suppose it never occurred to them that someone might actually come up Lucky Ledge so they weren’t watching for traffic in that direction. We made a quick stop at the ZCMI mine site and another at Slipper Arch. You can find all that in our Volume Two Guide book. Early that afternoon, we crossed Fixit Pass and found South Paw camped on the other side with plenty of room for our group. That night, we had a terrific view of the Hale-Bopp Comet.

The next day, we drove down Saddlehorse Canyon and hiked to the cabins on Sid’s Mountain. The next day, we drove to Sid’s Leap.

Sid Swazy was a wild cowboy in his time. Some claim he was an outlaw who just never got caught doing anything illegal. Other’s say he was just a rowdy fella who was liked by the outlaws because of his daring nature.

Sid and his family ranched on most all of the San Rafael Swell area and that’s why so many landmarks are named after them. One of the most interesting is the one known as Sid’s Leap. According to the legend, Sid and his brother, Charlie, stood on the edge of the narrow canyon looking straight down sixty-some feet to the San Rafael River Below. At the spot where they stood, the canyon is only about 14 feet wide. Charlie bet Sid some of his best heifers that he couldn’t jump his horse across. Sid accepted the bet and won the heifers.

When we first began visiting Sid’s Leap years ago, the road was open all the way to the canyon. Our government has since decided that such an interesting landmark should be visited only by those who are healthy enough to hike six miles in the hot desert sun. In other words, they closed a perfectly good road for no other reason than to return it to wilderness. It is closed at the boundary for the wilderness study area. So much for a wilderness being only roadless areas.

Happy Trails!

TJM bumpers - Trigger's new smile

It wasn’t easy, but Trigger now has a terrific smile. In fact, it’s hard to believe it’s the same truck. You’ll be seeing that smile a lot during the next year as Trigger and I continue to, ”Boldly go where I’ve never gone before”.

The new smile for Trigger is manufactured by TJM from Australia. Yup! I done took one step deeper into my Crocodile Dundee image. I am continually tempted to go on “drive-abouts”. Even walkabouts occasionally as you can see on the calendar. The Bumper is distributed by Hella, Inc. You can get information about TJM products and the dealer nearest to you by calling Hella at 1-800-247-5924. Call your favorite 4X4 shop for pricing and installation.

This particular bumper is the T15 Bull Bar which works great for pushing kangaroos out of the way so it should work equally well where deer & antelope roam. TJM also builds a T13 model. They may be the only company building such products for the Trooper, Rodeo, Mitsubishi, and even the Daihatsu - Rocky. Of course they also have bumpers for Ford, Chevy, Suzuki, Nissan, Toyota, Range Rover and Jeep. In every case, the bumpers are designed for the Australian models. In the case of the Trooper, it’s Australian counterpart is called a Jackaroo. In order to make it fit, drilling and cutting was required, but for a smile like that, every drop of sweat was worth it.

It is now carrying a Warn 8000 conventional winch and two Hella 100 watt lights. Now we’re ready to some more “Boldly Going”.

Trigger the happy Trooper

“Are we having fun yet?” Trigger seemed to be asking that question repeatedly during the past few weeks. I was not the only one impressed by the ease at which Trigger tackled huge rocks and near vertical climbs. Doc Holiday, a passenger in Boss’s Trooper, was grinning from ear to ear at the top Finale Hill near Cow Tank on the Immigrant Trail. “I got a Trooper just like that one at home but I never imagined it could do something like that so easily.”

Okay, so I may have been showing off a little. I took Trigger up Finale Rock at a snail’s pace, stopped half way up, and took off again without spinning a wheel. The one thing that impressed me the most about Trigger is the wheel travel. Time and again, I approached steep rocks at an angle expecting to get two wheels off the ground (not on the same side of the truck at once of course) and instead, Trigger stayed sure footed.

I even had a little fun with Caveman. He was riding with me enjoying the smooth riding, leather upholstered, electrically heated, captain Chairs, but Caveman don’t like sidehills. That’s why I took him around a wash-out where the truck was leaning so far on his side, he was looking straight down at the bottom of the wash. “You heard about Troopers on side hills?”, I asked with a cynical grin.

Delorme Tripmate GPS

One of the latest products to be offered in the GPS world is the Delorme Tripmate. In simplest of terms, it is an antennae designed to work with Delorme mapping software. We used it with Street Atlas USA which is included in the Tripmate package (now Earthmate), however, it will also work with AAA Map & Go.

In order to use Tripmate, you must have a laptop computer. Delorme does warns against trying to operate your computer while driving and recommends you have a navigator in the passenger seat.

Tripmate sits on the dash and searches the sky for satellites while continuously reporting its findings to the computer. The computer uses the software to plot that information on the screen. During our travels through Aurora, Denver, Grand Junction, and even Green River, Utah, we found it to be extremely accurate. An arrow on the screen followed the road we were on and correctly identified all intersections. Even at interstate speeds, the program kept up with our pace and plotted our position.

Once we got off the main roads, things became a little less clear. At the highest magnification, many of the roads were not on the map, We were often a moving arrow going across a blank screen. On the other hand, it kept accurate records of our travels and stored them in a file for future reference. It also displayed numerous landmarks along the way. For example, it displayed Coal Wash, even though it did not show a road going along Coal Wash. It even displayed the point where North and South Coal Wash joined.

The Tripmate proved to be accurate and very responsive. The software still needs a little work. We can only hope that some day, the software will be available for Delorme’s Atlas and Gazetteer series that most all of us 4wheelers use every day.

Warn's leveling kit for Ford Rangers

If you own a Ford Ranger, you already know how anoying that drooping front end can be. It always looks like the truck is headed for a Prairie Dog hole.

Warn has a kit that takes most of that out. Look at the distance between the fender and the top of the front tire on the first picture and compare that to the distance in the second picture. When looking at the overall level of the truck, there is a major improvement in the before and after even though some of the droop is still there. We suspect the remaining droop could be due to the weight of the winch but Dusty would not take it off just to see if that was it.

The winch on the Ranger is a Warn 8000i with roller fairlead. It was installed using the Warn Transformer Kit which retains the original bumper.

Warn has a fulll range of winching equipment and suspension products available for numerous makes and models. For a catalog or other information, call Warn at 1-800-543-9276. For pricing of kits and installation, call your favorite 4X4 shop.

Happy Trails!

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