How difficult is Imogene Pass in comparison to Engineer Pass. I've got a bone stock 4x4 '04 Taco.

Thanks~ Scary

 

Hiya bonehead!

 

Sweet mother of Gawd, I can't friggen escape!

How was Ouray? I was tendin' to family matters in Tejas.

 

Imogene is on par with Engineer. I rate it a hard 4, easy 5.

 

I have heard that the rating is changing so what does a hard 4 or easy 5 mean?

 

Yeah, I though Engineer was pretty easy in the stocker..... No scares or anything....

 

Imogene is way tougher than Engineer if it is wet. There are a few pretty steep ups there, while Engineer has a few more rocky areas (though not really technical). The fear factor is the biggest difference. There are a few places on Imogene that are sheer drop off shelf sections. Not really tough, they just make you thankful you have a narrow Yota instead of a Full Sized Anything.

 

CO uses the 10-scale, which has been around since 33's were king. It does not take into account extreme trails where tube junk is basically required, and there have been no talks to replace it. It's not like there's an official committee that works with this anyway. I believe folks in CA use a mix of both the 5 and 10-scales. They're all subjective and can always use some tweaking in their definitions and requirements, but they still provide a general summary of what you can expect to see.

So, what do I mean by a hard 4, easy 5? Imogene Pass!

 

Dang Darren, you can be a politician. I'm dizzy!

 

trail ratings are so subjective-

Chris Villareal has done a really nice job of catagorizing ratings by vehicle size/weight. While it is heavily biased towards AZ's rock crawling trails, it still does a good job for general wheelin' too.

http://www.azrockcrawler.com/_images...ailrating.html

Based on Chris's system, and breaking it down just a little more w/ a half point in between #'s, the Colorado mountain pass roads/trails probably rate a 2.0 to 2.5 - a match w/ the Colorado system of 1 to 10 ratings of 4 to 5.

At lower elevation, we generally run 2.5 rated stuff in 2x4 w/ a rear locker only. From my limited wheeling at elevations above 10000' in AZ, and NM, I needed low range to make enough power to climb any steep grades. It will be interesting to see how the 22RE does at over 12,600' next month! We rented a 2003 Jeep TJ last year in CO, and the 4.0L was noticably sluggish when crossing the Continental Divide- and it had at least double the HP and torque I do.......

 

I might wait for a lift and tires before I hit Imogene then. It's just sooooooo close....

FWIW my '04 Taco had no noticeable loss of power at 12,000+ feet this weekend.

Thanks for all the info~