Exploring 350 Miles Off Road Through South Utah | Camping Adventure

[Music] how's it going everyone welcome back to the tacoma beast channel where as you all know it's all about the taco we drove six hours all the way from calico california to meet up with the team here at kanab utah brandon drove all the way from dallas texas 20 hours we have jeremy here that you guys know from the pony express chris that came from atlanta and you guys all know ken ken what are we doing today man today we are i'm gonna i'm gonna take you to a couple of places and we're gonna go a little north to a cave then we're gonna go head out and get see lake powell we're gonna be playing out in south utah right yes we are let's do it you guys ready ready baby let's do it all right kanab utah is considered to be the central hub of america's most visited natural parks including zion the grand canyon and lake powell the crew are starting in this old west town and will be climbing 9 000 feet in elevation to hell's backbone i'm ken hoagland i'm 38 i live in salt lake city utah i'm a dad of four kids and i'm an overlander hey matteo so awesome to be back in utah with you i'm going on an adventure we're heading through kanab and honestly i haven't even explored much of southern utah so i'm super glad that we could be doing this together up ahead about five miles up the road into these little caves off the side of the road and dude you're gonna like flip out how awesome these are all right ken so i see the caves up there how did they what are they where are we they're called moki caves and honestly i know none of the history i want to be in portlove chopper you're doing great come on buddy wrong shoes for this i'll tell you that that's a gnarly you know climb up to there and but just being up there and feeling how cool the air is inside the caves was amazing [Music] who lived here like someone lived in here like i want to live in here like it's 95 degrees out here and it's like 20 degrees cooler in the cave i mean it's just amazing to think of like who was here before although nearby caves were once used by the anasazi people these sandstone erosion caves along u.s route 89 commonly believed to be an ancient dwelling are actually man-made sand mines the sand here is extremely fine with a high melting point perfect for glass production mining activity was closed in the 1970s giving us the awe striking caves we see today [Music] back on the trucks it's really hot right now we're over 100 degrees and we're on our way to see lake powell it's been in my bucket list for the longest time i'm so happy we're doing this [Music] hey matteo what are you going to air down to i'm gonna air down to 20 psi what are you airing down to yeah i went down to 22 i got a heavier back you don't even have like as much weight like yeah 20 will be a good good amount of weight for you i want it to be nice and soft and you know like in the comments sections lately a lot of people have been asking us why is it that we aired down and we're just going through a gravel road yeah you know and it's a great question so for comfort it all comes down to comfort level if we're going to go on a rocket terrain do a lot of raw crawling then you want to drop your psi to around 13 if you have bead locks even lower it all depends on the terrain that you're about to play because you're getting more more traction your tires are going to have way more grip but the reason why we're airing down right now is simply because of comfort it's so nice to ride i mean it's not a perfect paved road it has its bumps you feel the uh the road by two different things suspension and we got a great suspension both of us are running the same suspension the king 2.5 uh reservoirs but the other thing that controls the comfort of the road is the tires because that's going to absorb all the hard rocks and you know there's nothing it becomes extra suspension extra suspension extra comfort that's why we're doing it right now we're still actually on pavement right here i think it's one more mile we'll be on completely dirt but right here it's got a bunch of potholes that's gonna help save our wheel let's do it [Music] [Music] no utah's landscape just changes from top to bottom left to right i mean it's it's so amazing just to travel across this state and see everything my name is brandon haldman and i'm 34 years old from brownsboro texas traveled 22 hours to get here and i just loving every minute of it man i have to agree with you a thousand percent how it changes from looking like literally and i know it's probably the moon not right into that red like uh clichy clay color looking it's just so freaking stellar you're so right i mean it's like every corner brings a different view [Music] all right guys we are just about there and i'm excited for you guys to get your first look at this place it's just insane dude i'm excited man i mean everything from the trail to that view we just had oh my god that is wild powell is a man-made reservoir on the colorado river bordering utah and arizona being the second largest reservoir in the country it has enough water to put the entire state of indiana underwater knee-deep president eisenhower began construction of the glen canyon dam in 1956 by 1963 the dam successfully flooded glen canyon thereby creating lake powell [Music] [Applause] my mini me i heard lake powell's drying up and you can clearly see it here and how it's happening and it's it's kind of sad i mean it's awesome that we got to see it like this but i don't know if our future generations will be able to see this lake right as of october 2021 lake powell is only 30 full pool just one year ago the water level was 50 feet higher this marks the lowest water level for lake powell since it was filled in 1963. the bureau of reclamation recent reports suggest that the flow of water in the colorado river could fall 20 by 2050 and 35 by the end of the century how crazy is this view right now oh man dude it's been amazing seeing all this and i have wanted to take you here forever i've been wanting to come here was it worth driving 25 20 hours i would drive double that to get here that's wild well you will because you got to go home but before we do that we're going to go up in the mountains because it is hot it is extremely hot and as when we go up in the mountains it'll get at least 10 15. could be 20 degrees cooler i don't know but i'm i'm tired of this i'm cooking let's go let's go [Music] glen canyon although mostly submerged by lake powell consists mostly of rugged high desert terrain as lake powell water levels continue to drop the once submerged glen canyon is beginning to emerge hundreds of miles of glen canyon have been exposed for the first time in decades there's an emerging back country with over 3 000 ancient ruins waiting to be explored [Music] catch this man i'm following mateo ken's up in front of mateo and i cannot see mateo is dusting me out and he don't have any dead gum chase slots matteo is in front of me ken's in front of him and i can't see squat matteo's dust me out not only that as ken dusting me out then i have david on the radio telling me to scoot up i'm getting cracks in the windshield literally i got three of them rocks i'm like no the wife's gonna be pissed right i haven't even told her yet so i'm just gonna rock the cracked windshield for a while yeah i've always been a firm believer that whoever's in front kicking up the dust the first and has a clear view of the trail needs to like be giving the guys behind a heads up what to expect whether it's a vehicle or road conditions david however he's like speed up brandon speed up so i can get in that drone shot of course what am i going to do i'm going to speed up dude i'm going to lift life on the edge and uh so i'm i'm racing and getting it and then here it comes i see the back of ken's vehicle i'm not supposed to see the back of ken's vehicle guys chase lights are very important for that aspect because he's two cars in front of me so now i'm like i've lost matteo in the in the cloud of dust here's ken's unit and then matteo's gas cans are like in my face to be honest with you it kind of pissed me off but don't tell mateo we are now leaving glen canyon national recreation area thank you for your visit the grand staircase escalante national monument spans across nearly 2 million acres while bigger than the state of delaware the monument spans five life zones from low-lying desert to pine tree forests slow down up here guys we've got a pretty massive uh rut [Music] i start going super fast to this trail and we start hitting these rocks i start to get the truck drifting it's just having a blast and then all of a sudden i start to hear something that's not right here you can see the sway bar link is completely bent oh man so i'm not sure if i did this out in calico california or here i i was definitely driving it a lot harder out here going fast through the trail calico it was definitely way more rocky but i was taken nice and easy and it's hard to say but we got to watch that because we need to be careful it could it could break the boot it could break the boot and it can also bend like the other one did last time you know where it completely went into the disc cover yeah um and we don't want that because on bending that right now it's going to be a mission no you know so i got to take it easy no more uh bombing the trails for me no [Music] well we're getting to the end of the day we're losing uh sun pretty quickly here guys uh i don't think there's any bears up here that we need to worry about but i'm trying to find somewhere we could camp so we've been spending this whole day driving through the mountains i've studied the map and i have pinpointed where i want to go but i don't have a cam spot i i didn't look at the topography to figure out where it's going to be flat enough i figured at some point we're going to hit somewhere this can be flat enough that we can pop a tent and call it a night but we're getting we're just we just keep driving with tons of switchbacks this place is incredible but the daylight is leaving and it's not cooling down it is hot outside oh yeah dude we can do it here all right looks like we found our chem spot [Music] this region was first conceptualized as a huge staircase ascending out of the bottom of the grand canyon northward with the cliff edge of each layer forming giant steps due to its remote location and rugged landscape the grand staircase was one of the last places in the continental united states to be mapped we just made it to camp we had a long day uh believe it or not driving through these trails gets you really tired by the end of the day you're exhausted it's time to set up camp eat and then we're gonna go to sleep [Music] [Music] one of my favorite things to do on camping is cooking fish isn't something easy to to cook it'll peel right off [Music] it was hot last night man just the whole trip has been hot slightly miserable with how hot it is like i'm just always hot but do you want to tell us how hot you are it's morning of day two uh the c4 fabrication team managed to find us last night we found each other out here in the middle of the desert where a bunch of deserts and we love to be out here how's it going mtv let me show you my house honestly sucks getting inside of this i don't recommend it we got it for a moto trip that we did so as you can see i do have a mattress in here it puts me extremely high up here now in the morning when the sun started to come out i really cooked myself in here and uh yeah i missed my cvt you definitely don't need a rooftop tent to disconnect as you guys saw i have a coffin and it worked great that's all you need you don't even need a tacoma you don't need a tundra you some of these trails that we went on i mean i don't recommend the prius some of you guys in the comment section say that a prius can make it out here i would like to see that uh but you know find a platform that works for you and go explore we only slept like three hours it was hot muggy but it was definitely challenging to try to get some shut eye and i'll tell you man having another guy up there brought a lot more body heat too along with a little bit of that you know what i mean our feet were rank so my truck has gone through a couple changes since the last time we did a walk around i am rocking the the alpha equipped x commander wheels i changed up my suspension i now have the king shocks the 2.5 oem shocks and that's made a huge difference also changed on my upper control arm have the control arms from camborg and i've been impressed with those other things on my truck that i've changed out is the tent now rocking the mount fury trying that out and that's a breeze to set up one more thing that i changed is i added the decal to the side of the truck and i have to say that probably added 10 to 15 horsepowers david check this out he's got he's got a brown recluse that just like crawled up into the tent should i flick it i think so but i feel like we're all in the flick range right now look out look at look you want to just pull them out like this it's further in oh no oh my god [Laughter] [Music] we finished picking up camp and it's time to say goodbye to the c4 guys it's been great hanging out but our goal today is to gain elevation to get out of the desert and find the trees and get to much cooler temperature [Music] how did all these roads get here i want to say a lot of them are just like old roads that they would use for uh like cattle and whatnot or just established roads that they would use for mining as well these trails were originally established in the 1800s for exploration and research in order to chart utah's unexplored territory large deposits of high quality coal have been found but are not mineable since the area was established as a national monument in the 90s a group of seven men from kane county are responsible for maintaining the miles of back country road they use road graders that cover between one to eight miles per day maintenance of these roads is done solely for the purpose of allowing the public to have access to utah's awe striking back country thanks for this great country you know you have the blm and all the resources to keep them alive you know driving through these trails i always start to think about how blessed i am to be in this country um you know i come from ecuador it's you know considered a third world country and and you know when i came here when i was eight years old i saw all the resources that you know america had to offer and you don't have that you know back at home you don't have that and i feel like a lot of kids growing up now having all those resources they're going to waste they're not appreciating them and it's kind of like a spoiled brat like they they and complain when you give him too much right so when i was little when i was eight years old my dad made it very clear to me that you got to work hard no matter what and i took advantage of all the resources that this country has had and and and i use that to grow the company and to grow myself as a person and and i'm extremely thankful for being for living in this country we're heading this next section into some pretty rough terrain uh holding the rock road part of the map shows uh it's gonna be pretty rough coming up hole in the rock road a shortcut to the escalante river created by the mormon trailblazers in 1879 equipped with only pickaxes shovels and limited explosives the six-week expedition turned into a six-month project as the trailblazers carved their way to the town of bluff we are cruising on this road going down into a valley and i don't even know what to expect i've seen photos we come around this turn and there's this huge rock balancing like it almost reminds me of something i'd see in moab but the colors are completely different it's it's like sandstone and this the sheer rock walls are like dug out from like rain passing through it i'm in awe it is a beautiful area holy all right we're going 65 miles per hour enjoying the beautiful scenery just bombing this trail baby what a life we've been mobbing pretty hard we've reached the end of the trail i'm running out of gas it's telling me i'm low on fuel and distance to empty is 10 miles thankfully this is not a trail like the pony express so there are gas stations nearby and that's exactly what we're gonna go do we're gonna go fill up get some snacks and then we're gonna hit the trailhead again my miles per gallons on this trip were terrible i think my truck did like seven miles per gallon [Music] that was my worst gas mileage i've ever gotten i don't know what the difference was but in this last stretch i got 7.8 miles per gallon next up we're just gonna go through the town about a half mile and then we're gonna cut through a neighborhood and literally in a mile from where we're at right now we're going to hit dirt and we'll go up start the trail and go get some elevation go up to hell's backbone the whole trip we've been hearing noises on my truck everyone hears noises mateo your truck matteo's truck is making tons of noises needs grease on his bushings i'm hearing noises but i start hearing knocking we get out multiple times throughout the truck throughout the trip and we're shaking the drive shaft we're noticing a little bit of movement but we get off the trail we finish filling up gas and this thing starts knocking and that's something that chris had mentioned earlier in the trip that if it starts knocking that's when we got to start like being a little more serious about the problems on the drive shaft well we're hearing a noise we've been hearing it for a couple days now uh it's all the telltale signs of a universal joint going bad we've got a squeak uh we've got a slight vibration and you really only hear it the most when you give it the gap give it some gas and put it in a bind put some pressure on it and so we're going to see how loose it is sean's thinking we should pull it just go ahead and pull it instead of letting it because if it breaks i mean you can mess up a lot depending on how fast you're going when it happens yeah it can be dangerous too because if you're if you're flying down the road and the front brakes the front can fall and dig into the uh whatever road we're on and could i mean i've seen it happen before it could flip a vehicle if it digs in enough i don't know i mean it's moving enough that i can hear the universal joint the stub inside the cap moving up and down and hitting back on the cap so it's definitely wearing fast compared to yesterday [Music] [Music] now i'm gonna just engage four-wheel drive and obviously i'll i have no driveshaft it won't be driving all four-wheel drive it'll just be a front-wheel drive for the next section of the trip but i'm told that the trail shouldn't be a lot of obstacles and as long as we're not hauling but we should be just fine to camp tonight so as you all saw we're able to temporarily put a solution to ken's problem and right now we're on our way to hell's backbone we'll see it soon enough we got 21 miles to the backbone the road to hell's backbone was constructed as a connection between boulder and escalante climbing over 9 000 feet in elevation through dixie forest the primitive road reaches into mountains that were once thought to be impassable touching the edge of the box and death hollow wilderness right now we're at nine thousand feet elevation and seeing this hell's backbone just sheer drops on both sides is just mind-blowing to me hell's backbone bridge with 1500 foot drops on both sides spans this treacherous backbone of rock that separates the head of death hollow drainage to the west in sand creek to the east it was built in 1933 by the civilian conservation corps to shorten the trip between boulder and escalante boulder was the last frontier town in utah that still relied on mules to deliver the mail escalante is famous for holding the rock expedition the original bridge was built from two flattened pine logs placed across this backbone of rock and secured in place remnants of the original bridge remain but the bridge has since been reconstructed twice once in the 60s and again in 2005 this viewpoint provides beautiful views into the gorges of the box death hollow wilderness and the grand staircase escalante in the distance we just finished crossing hell's backbone bridge we had to stop the scenery is absolutely incredible it's breathtaking we stopped to take some pictures really enjoy the view and it was hard for us to leave but we have to go find our camp spot i can't wait i'm tired and i cannot wait to eat some steak [Music] in tonight of a camp spot looking for somewhere nice and shady so the lake that jeremy has found on his uh maps uh shows the lake about seven and a half miles away i'm excited yeah i don't think i'm gonna make it across that it's getting the tire slick and then coming around so the reason why you can't make it is because once again guys he's on two wheel drive front two drive yeah we'll just go back down there's that water crossing that we just passed through it's a beautiful spot we'll be listening to the creek run all night it'll be great [Music] [Music] this is the best drinking a beer and eating steak after an awesome trailer being out here camp next to the river just listening to the water run by so relaxing right now the birds are out chirping it is a beautiful camp spot like i definitely want to come back here coming on this trip and coming on every trip is really just an escape and uh an opportunity to connect with nature and just get away to break up the routine you know if i can make this my routine of going more regularly i'll be a happy guy because every time i come out here i hit that reset button i just relax it's nice to get out and just kind of be peaceful listening to the stream the birds watching the stars you know and even when the the times are bad and it's hot it's windy you know there's pros and cons to everything but i'm always coming back feeling happy like a new man [Music] it's our third day out here camping it's time for us to say goodbye everybody's gotta head home brandon's got a 22 hour drive you guys gotta go to salt lake city we gotta go to san diego it's been a great show we've seen some fantastic things lake powell we've gone through some landscapes which is just ridiculously amazing i'm going to be thinking about this trip for a long time hell's backbone oh mind blowing i actually want to come back to this campsite you know definitely dropping a pm if you guys enjoyed this video make sure to hit that like button if you haven't already subscribe make sure to do so and we will see you in the next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: TacomaBeast

Views: 883,151

Keywords: toyota tacoma, overland, overlanding, overland bound, truck camper, roof top tent, adventure travel, truck camping, truck awning, four wheel camper, weekendlander, llod, tacoma mods, 3rd gen tacoma, expedition essentials tacoma, top 5 tacoma mods, overland vehicle interior, off road adventure, vanlife, car camping, Decked System, overland ready, ExpeditionOverland, TacomaBeast, The pony express, Ronny Dahl, 4wd action, australia, adventure, camping, travel, exploring, discover, Tundra

Id: 2auU7GlZt8U

Length: 30min 5sec (1805 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 28 2021