September 25-27th, 2002
Moab, Utah

I towed my Ramcharger (with my 35" Swampers swapped on it) down to Moab with my 1999 Ram 1500 in September 2002. Unfortunatly, I didn't take many pics. I drove down with a buddy from work, and we met a couple other guys there from his 4wd club.

We arrived late on a Thursday. We checked into the campground, aired down, then headed out to check the trails. We drove past Lion's Back, the 4Runner that went off the side at Easter Safari was still there. We then drove up to Dump Bump, the gate was open so we played a while. Jeremiah hit the obstacle first. On his third attempt, the rear locker shattered and he just about rolled it. He threw in his spider gears in camp that night, and drove open the rest of the weekend.

I too tried it, but the open diffs resulted in a mostly "Swamper smoke" I tried three times, but after literally dropping the Ramcharger on the rear bumper twice, I was done.

The next day, we warmed up on Baby Lion's Back, then ran the Fins and Things trail. Sorry, no pics. It was a rated 3+ trail, and was mostly sand and large slick rock fins. We came upon a large fin with a group of about 15-20 Land Cruisers on top. Jeremiah and I took the "hard" climb up (which felt like a vertical wall, I drug my rear bumper severely getting up it), the other two members of our group took the easy way up. The Land Cruisers were were parked at the top because one of their members had blown a birfield joint climbing the hard way. The rest of the trail was a blast.

After that trail ride, we drove down to Potato Salad Hill. It looked easy, but I was the only one to try it (the other guys knew how hard it really was). That is a very deceptive obstacle. It looks easy, even in person. But there are very large holes on the left side, if you drop in them, you will roll over. I didn't make it, but I didn't roll either.

The last day, we headed out to run the Behind the Rocks Trail. It was rated a 4+ if I remember correctly and we expected it take us about 6 hours to complete the 15 miles of trail. The main obstacles on this trail are The Roller Coaster, High Dive, Up Chuck, and White Knuckle Hill. Even the warm up hill at the very beginning was a hard climb.

Bill, the guy in this Samurai, had the most trouble climbing the warm up hill. His little 29" Thornbirds were clawing at everything he could get. Here, he just about rolled it.

The rest of the trail went pretty good. My front driveshaft began making very bad sounds, so I tried to be as smooth as possible on it because I really didn't want it to fail. The 6 hour ride turned into a 10 hour day because we got seperated from half of our group for a few hours, but it all worked out.

After we all got back to camp, I just loaded the Ramcharger back onto the trailer, chained it down, and went to bed. That was a long day. But I had fun though, and I can't wait to go back next year.