We started from the Vern’s Place (restaurant) parking lot at 10AM – including Lee and I in our 2025 Wrangler and Darin in his 2004 GX470. We drove up Rist Canyon Road to the Old Flowers Trailhead. The weather was perfect all day. The trail was relatively busy since it was a Saturday in July, but not crowded. We eventually caught up with a group of five or six vehicles – which all happened to be Toyotas. We thought it might be some kind of Toyota-only 4X4 group but I ended up talking with one of them and he said it was just coincidence. They were stopped at a section that we had difficulty in on a previously ride in our Ram 1500. On that trip I had to use a shovel to work on a rutted out section of trail before I could get through.
The group of Toyotas eventually got through – helping each other with tow ropes. After they cleared the path, we still had an audience from a couple guys on motorcycles that had stopped to watch the 4X4s. Luckily we walked right up the trail without issue in our lifted Wrangler. We might have barely kissed the trail with our rock rails in one section. Other than that, there was no slipping, bottoming out, or lifting tires off the trail – which would have been an unlikely scenario in that section without the upgrades we made. Darin was in a slightly lifted GX470 and attempted the washed out section of trail a few times, but we ended up helping to pull him through the hardest section with our Wrangler.
As a first for me, we also helped get one of the motorcycles up that same section of trail after we got through. Three of us pushed one of the motorcycles up through the washed out section of trail.
We stopped at the “white rock” spur/campsite area for a break and drove back via Buckhorn Road through Masonville.
