Head First into Colorado's Mountains

It’s on purpose, you see. The lure draws that draws you in. The state of Colorado is equipped for some of the best off-roading in the world, including remote high-mountain trails and deep-wood access that’s just a day’s walk from anywhere. It might be replicated in other places, but it can’t be duplicated on this grand scale. In Colorado, adventure is everywhere.

Slow Road to the 4Runner Jamboree
We headed roughly north from Southern California with one thing in mind: off-roading. The Colorado 4Runner Jamboree was about to happen in Buena Vista. With a few days’ early entry, we’d have spare time to crawl the not-so-family truckster (a mildly modified Toyota 4Runner) where we wanted before joining the weekend’s CO4RJ party with 100 other Toyota weirdos.


Short of piling up the truck deep in the somewheres, crawling into the aft crack of nowhere (or just breaking it on-trail), our plan would allow four days of dirt and rocks en route to adventuring around in mines, old rail tunnels (getting there via the rail beds themselves), high-mountain lakes and some to-die-for views unchanged since gold started piling up in the creek beds. Equipment? Check. Guidebooks? Check. History books? Check. DeLorme maps? Check. GPS? Ask Santa.


The run to Colorado itself was uneventful, and cooler than anything in the end of July had the right to be. Most of the sear shortage was thanks to making our miles in the PM, heading out of San Diego around eight in the evening for an overnight sprint. This would put us, even with a nap or two, into Utah’s high county by sun-up, and out of reach of the stupid heat boiling away in the Nevada-California high basin—120 degrees is no joke. Fortunately, the 160,000-mile 4Runner we were using didn’t flinch and ran like a champ. Used vehicles are more valuable than the Clunker program will ever understand, and a great many useful trucks and cars died because of it. (Sorry, no politics.) Check your cooling system before the drive, folks, and we did. We were in Colorado Springs by 2:00 pm the next day, including an hour of naptime and three fill-ups.


Yes, the 4Runner is a dog and 17 hours is a slow run to Colorado Springs, even going overnight. It needs an LS1 or the Lexus V8-swap. The TRD blower would probably do a great job too, if less efficiently (but much more inexpensively!). Keep in mind: A supercharger at altitude needs to have proper fuel delivery, while the V8s just loaf. On the plus side, the TRD Tundra and Bilstein-based lift was at least as stable as the OEM suspension, though the two-inch Downey springs in back didn’t like the weight of luggage and trail gear. We packed the usual tools, blocks of wood, a jack, coolers, munchies, beer (you can find interesting swill in San Diego that folks in Colorado don’t see), plus about eight gallons of water in those big kitty-litter plastic jugs (great storage for fluids) and the essential UDS Hardware off-road extraction kit. D-rings for everyone!