A driving story.
Last weekend I finally got to hit up Uwharrie for the first time this season. I hadn't been up there to wheel since Tank's transmission kicked the bucket last summer, so I was well overdue for some off-road therapy. Don't get me wrong, doing some lighter trails is fun for a more laid-back ride, but there's nothing quite like the adrenaline rush I get when I'm teetering on two wheels up in the mountains, which is exactly what happened this past weekend.
We drove up on Friday night and got to our Airbnb around 8PM, which is when we explored the house, unpacked, tried Jeppson's Malört—which wasn't as terrible as many of the reviews said it was, but it's not something that I would reach for willingly—showered, and then went to bed. It was Saturday when everything went down.
We got up, had a light breakfast and some coffee, and hit up our friends who were camping at the Arrowhead campground just off of the trails in the Uwharrie National Forest. If it was a little cooler, I would have considered camping, but it has been so hot here in the Carolinas lately that spending the weekend in a tent was out of the question. There was also talk of rain throughout the weekend, which we were desperately hoping turned out to be just that—talk. Even though a handful of the trails we hit had puddles and mud, it never rained while we were there, which was a huge plus! Wet rocks = slippery rocks = Jeeps sliding down the mountain.
We spent over eight hours crawling the trails of the Uwharrie Forest, and we had an absolute blast doing so. We crawled all of the trails that we could drive down, including the three hardest trails which our group calls the D Trails, named so because each of the trails starts with the letter “D.” Dutch John, Daniel (there’s a front and back side to this one), and Dicky Bell, which is a Jeep Badge of Honor trail.
We hit all of the easier trails first, of course—Falls Dam, Wolf Den, Lakeview, Rocky Mountain Loop, Slab Pile, Sawmill—and thoroughly enjoyed our time on each of them. Lakeview is Uwharrie’s newest trail, and the last time I was on it, I considered it to be one of the easiest trails; easy enough that I suggested to Dylan that he take his Subaru down it! This time? Lakeview was very different.
All of the trails that we rode that day had changed drastically, but especially Lakeview. Some people who are not in the off-roading community may find that hard to believe, but you have to remember that these trails are in the mountains where they are prone to the elements like rain and erosion. They’re also prone to hundreds upon thousands of vehicles driving down them, tearing them up. I don’t want to throw shade at any one particular off-roading sect, but when you have vehicles with tractor tires hauling ass down these trails, the trails take a toll.
Another fun off-roading tidbit, is the grading system for trail difficulty. Many of us use the onX Offroad app, which provides users with a numbered ranking from 1 to 10, with 1 being the easiest and 10 being the hardest. There’s also a color system which you can also see on the onX Offroad app. The color system runs like this: green, blue, red, black. Green is, of course, the easiest, and black is the hardest. I don’t think I could consider any of Uwharrie’s trails to be green trails now. I, personally, don’t find this to be an issue. I enjoy a challenge, and this past weekend was no exception!
Daniel is one of Uwharrie’s black trails. I mentioned earlier that there’s a front and back side to this trail; this is because the trail peaks at the top of one of the mountains, greeting off-roaders with a stunning view of the Uwharrie National Forest. We always take the back side of Daniel to the peak, but the trail continues down the front side, which seems to slope off at a near-90-degree angle at the peak of the mountain. No thanks.
Due to weathering and people constantly driving up and down these trails, no two visits to the Uwharrie National Forest will be the same as the trails are in a constant state of flux. Many of the trails this past weekend were bordering on unrecognizable, since I haven’t been out there in over a year. It felt good to be back out on the trails doing some more extreme off-roading, but it was also a reminder of how drastic these trails can change.
Daniel is a perfect example of the trails changing. We weren’t even at the climb where the trail peaks when my Jeep—his name is Tank for those of you reading for the first time—had to get hooked up to a tow strap. I was in a bit of a precarious situation. Driver’s side—massive boulder. Passenger’s side—steep drop-off sure to flip Tank upside-down. I want to shift the focus to the boulder. First off, I have no recollection of that rock ever being there. I’ve driven up Daniel nearly every time we’ve visited Uwharrie, but that rock, I do not recall. Rockslide? Maybe. A year’s worth of erosion, rain, and tire travel? Definitely.
I want to give y’all a little bit of background, so you have an idea in your head of what this might have looked like. Tank has a 3” lift and 35s (tire size). He’s larger than your stock Wrangler or Rubicon. I’m 5’1, and his tires stop at my hips. He’s not a small Jeep, but he’s not the largest one out there either (shout out to my buddy Steve, who now has an absolute monster of a Jeep). Where I was on this trail, I could look out of my driver’s side window and see Steve’s legs from where he was standing on top of the boulder. It’s a pretty big rock!
After trying out several maneuvers to get me out of this situation, we hooked up the tow strap and got to pulling Tank out of there. One minute, everything seemed to be going fine, and the next, I’m looking out my window and down at the boulder in my door. I believe I felt the rock before I heard it scraping the paint off the door and denting my side step. I remember looking up at Steve and asking, “How bad is it?” He didn’t say anything, just grimaced and shook his head. That’s when I knew I was going to have a sick ass battle scar. “I can’t wait to see it,” I said, smiling. While most people might grimace at the thought of damaging their vehicle, I fully embrace it. After all, it’s a Jeep; it’s what they’re meant for.
Tank has his fair share of battle scars, dating back to before I even knew he existed. When I bought him, he had a dent near the hood on the driver’s side, which I later learned was caused by the door swinging open and the mirror causing the dent. Shortly after I bought him, I brushed up a little too close to a small tree and got rewarded with a very long scratch on the driver’s side. When Dylan’s cousins came to visit, their dog, Sake, was so excited to see me, he jumped all the way up into the Jeep through the passenger window, leaving his own little claw marks on the way in—both inside the Jeep and outside.
I love each and every single one of the dings, scratches, and quirks my Jeep has. It’s history! It’s a story! I have mud stains on the interior from Windrock Park in Tennessee several years ago, Monster Energy stickers on the “oh shit” handle on the passenger side because Dylan needed to put them somewhere, a small pumpkin stuck to the dash with double-sided tape because my brother-in-law had to be a menace when we were decorating for his and my sister’s wedding. I have a rock in the Jeep that a small child gave me without explanation. I don’t remove any of these things. I feel attached to them in a way, like they’re a part of the Jeep, a part of the history and the memories that I’ve experienced. I wouldn’t change any of these adventures or memories for anything. That Jeep is a driving story, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
