Roadrunner

One of the first positive SUV articles I've seen in a major newspaper. A friend's email said it was "a good positive image story on people using SUVs on organized backcountry group travels."

4WHLFUN - USA Today Oct 10

10/09/2003 - Updated 03:31 PM ET
Travel/Vacation Section

4WHLFUN
By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY

COLD SPRINGS, Nev. — Rumbling along a rocky road 9,000 feet high in the Desatoya Mountains, one takes in a vista of peaks and valleys so vast that you can almost detect the curvature of the Earth.

An obvious emotional response follows.

What in the name of Manifest Destiny were the pioneers thinking?

Water is nowhere in sight. For food, the desert landscape at best coughs up a stray deer. And in the transportation department, four-hoof-drive clunky wooden wagons couldn't have been a fun way to take in the sights.

Of course, it's easy to mull over such dire circumstances while sipping a cold drink, munching on fresh grapes and reeling in these scenic miles in the comfort of an air-conditioned SUV.

Call it pioneering, new-millennium style.

"I used to think Nevada was just kitty litter from border to border," says Jerry Chappel, referring to the state's countless white salt beds. "But thanks to four-wheel-drives, my impression of the place has changed. It's spectacular."

Chappel has joined a half-dozen other California buddies, all members of the Placerville-based Flat Fenders Jeep Club, for a weekend of back-country SUV touring here in neighboring Nevada.

But this trip, with its emphasis not on clambering over near-vertical boulders, but rather on sightseeing and history, is a new direction for the club and a direct response to the growing number of SUV owners who want to see their four-wheel-drive vehicles do more than scale the heights of a mall parking deck.

Factor in vacationers' increasing desire to gambol within the USA, the affordability of a driving escape and the thousand-plus off-road clubs that pepper the land, and this trend isn't likely to run out of gas soon.

"The evidence is clear: People want to get into the outdoors with their vehicles," says Derrick Crandall of the non-profit American Recreation Coalition, representing groups ranging from campgrounds to ski areas.

The coalition's Outdoor Recreation in America survey indicates that respondents who "drive for pleasure where the destination offers an outdoor experience" has jumped from 7% in 2001 to 46% today.

"People need to take the things they play with on vacation, and SUVs fit right in there," Crandall says.

Despite a steady current of criticism over poor gas mileage and safety questions, SUVs continue to rule the auto-lot roost. They represent 24% of new-car sales, according to auto trend trackers J.D. Powers and Associates.

Traditionally, the vast majority of SUV owners don't set tire off pavement. But times could be changing. After new-owner SUV-safety clinics sold out last year, the California Association of Four Wheel Drive Clubs started to shift its focus.

Four-wheel-drive clubs now are staging excursions heavy on scenery and folklore, and light on sheet-metal-damaging terrain.

In the past months alone, the Flat Fenders gang has led SUV virgins to desolate lakes in the Sierra Nevada and along Nevada trails used by Mormon emigrants that still bear the rutted scars of those wagon trains. It's typical for clubs to stage one trip a month, come rain, shine or, yes, snow. Such adventures are piling up converts.

"I've got three kids, and this sort of trip is the only way we can all spend time together in the backcountry," says Rich Reardon of Weimer, Calif., who recently piled the family into his Ford F-150 Extra Cab to trek California's Gold Lake.

"It was quite a thrill, and we could never have made a weekend of it without the four-wheel-drive," he says. "If you tried to just hike it, forget it. The kids would start dragging."

Janine Le Sieur and her husband, Mike, of Wilton, Calif., took their 2003 Chevy Avalanche out on its first organized off-road adventure in August. Joining them were 40 other four-wheel-drive owners who shared "a great camaraderie as well as a sense that we didn't want to scrape up our cars," Janine says.

The group visited old mining camps, ate a steak lunch prepared by the Capital City Mountain Goats, their host four-wheel-drive club out of Sacramento, and even enjoyed the relative comfort of portable toilets.

"It was all fairly yuppie," she says with a laugh. "It was very hot and dusty in parts, and here we were all safe inside our SUVs with the AC on and the crisp leather seats. Not bad."

That's not to say off-roaders are oblivious to their terrain. Most SUV groups follow guidelines laid out by Tread Lightly!, a non-profit organization dedicated to responsible off-roading. As a rule of thumb, if you're in a National Park, consult park maps for suitable trails; if you're on Bureau of Land Management property, stay on any existing roads. When in doubt, bail out.

"The key is responsible usage of our lands," says Maribeth Oakes, director of the Sierra Clubs' public lands division. "Since the possibility of negatively impacting the environment is greater when you take a vehicle off-road, drivers should assume that if a road isn't clearly marked for off-road travel, it's closed."

The guys from Placerville, not far from California's Gold Country, are solidly on BLM land for this weekend's Nevada outing. Leading the way in his four-door Jeep is Oly Olson, an auto mechanic who serves as the group's resident historian.

Olson and his wife, Kate, also serve as cooks for the $150-a-head trip, providing egg-filled mornings and meat-and-potato nights at the Cold Springs Resort truck stop and campground that serves as headquarters for the group. Some folks have pitched tents for the night, others have towed their SUVs with modest motor homes.

Each day's outing lasts six to eight hours. The SUVs rarely top 15 miles an hour. Viewed one way, the trip is a whole lot of bouncing around on a rocky moonscape. But pay close attention and the landscape comes alive.

When Olson stops the group suddenly, what appears to be merely a pile of rocks turns out to be the remains of an old stagecoach stop. Farther away is another ruined station, this one a horse-swapping pit stop for Pony Express riders who raced through these mountains during the service's heyday in 1860.

"You see evidence of how people lived and it just takes you back in time," says Scott Hoyle, who has made the trip with buddy Ned Bacon. "I've seen 150-year-old holes in trees that were used to winch wagons up hills. You really appreciate what those people had to go through."

The group then heads up a series of steep grades, tires fighting for traction. At the summit, each breath of cool air is invigorating, the sky is an impossible blue and the 360-degree view leaves adjectives limp.

In the valley below sits arrow-straight Highway 50, otherwise known as "The Loneliest Road in America," so solitary that legend has it that drug dealers often landed planes on the highway without a care in the world.

Powerful binoculars are passed around. On the next ridge, five brown dots laze in the sun. "Wild horses," Olson says. No one talks. A vanishing America has returned, if only for a moment.

The thrill of such discoveries repeats itself over the weekend. During lunch, a hamburger fest fired up on a portable hibachi in a stand of quaking Aspen trees, someone points out the remains of a love note carved into a trunk.

It's not the work of local teens, but rather the sentiments of a lonely Basque shepherd who ranged in these parts more than 100 years ago.

Other livestock hands still roam these parts. During a stop at a nearby cattle ranch, foreman Pat Dempsey hands out a flier for an upcoming cattle drive. For $695, you get to run 300 head of cattle to their winter range in the Dixie Valley. Just picture City Slickers. Only this trek is BYOH — Bring Your Own Horse. Crazy? He already has a dozen takers.

A few miles of easy four-wheeling away from Dempsey's Bench Creek Ranch lie the remains of the once-thriving town of Wonder, whose residents helped pull $6 million worth of gold and silver from the nearby mine.

The town boomed between 1906 and 1919, boasting its own schools, saloon and swimming pool. Today, the Wonder Mine is a ghostly collection of crumbling concrete casements and rusted steel funnels, remains of the pulverizers and smelters that once turned rocks into riches.

Standing literally in the middle of nowhere, the mine is too far to walk to and on too rough a road to reach by car. But by SUV, it, and much of America's storied past, is a comfortable cruise away.

"There's a little saying we four-wheel-drive folks have," Chappel says, sucking in some high-country air. "Life is better in low-range."

rah1420

Great article. I particularly like the exerpt in the sidebar:

How about AWD? AWD, or all-wheel-drive, vehicles are not good for true off-roading. To be sure you don't get stuck in the great outdoors, you need a four-wheel-drive vehicle that has a low-range option, typically found in cars such as the Ford Explorer and Toyota 4Runner. Low-range will bail you out of the toughest bogs; don't leave home without it.