When we first got to Moab it looked like there wasn't very much snow at all on the ground, but by the time it hit 6:00 p.m., it began snowing! In the morning we awoke to 1-3 inches of white stuff on everything.We had a good small group going four wheeling on the first full day we were there. Walt was in his ZR2 Blazer, Chris in his Kia Sportage, Joe in his Isuzu Rodeo, Ken and Jolene in their Jeep, and my wife and I in our Montero Sport along with our dog, Mars.

Because of the snow we decided to pick some easier trails. We started out with Bartlett Overlook. This trail is a nice moderate trail with one major obstacle. It turned out that the one major obstacle wasn't so major after all. Luckily, the obstacle did not have much snow on it and it was fun. What proved to be the more difficult obstacles were the little steep hills throughout the trail. We were the first ones on the trail for that day. We never saw any vehicles on the trail while we where there. We got to the overlook by 11:00 or so, but it was so cloudy and foggy that there was nothing to overlook to! We headed back to town for lunch and picked our next trail.

My wife suggested we try Hurrah Pass and everyone agreed. And we were off! Hurrah Pass was rated an easy trail and was just the perfect length for the time we had left in the day since some of our group was leaving that night. (It was going to be their "last Hurrah!" Ha!) It just so happened that Hurrah Pass is lower in elevation, so there was hardly any snow on the trail. This trail may be easy but it takes you through some beautiful country. The trail winds its way though narrow canyons and an incredible array of landscapes until you find yourself at the top of Hurrah Pass with a breathtaking view. One of the few semi-challenging spots of this trail was the Kane Creek crossing. The edges of the creek had mounds of snow and ice from other 4x4's driving through the creek, which made for some good size drop offs at the edges. This made it much more interesting to cross. We made it to the top of Hurrah Pass by 3:30 or so. After taking in all the views we decided to do a little bit of the other side of the pass called Chicken Corners before we returned to town. Chicken Corners winds its way around the steep canyon walls, going down the other side of the pass. Along this trail we came across a very interesting sign that offered camel rides! We proceeded past this and we stopped about two miles into the trail near the bottom of the canyon. There was a small, slickrock drainage to play on with a dry waterfall drop off that we all tackled in our vehicles. The shorter wheel base vehicles had a harder time with this obstacle. It seems that this is possibly the only real obstacle on this particular trail. Once we all made it over the obstacle we decided to turn around and head back to town. After a seemingly long day of heavy cloud cover, the clouds began to break and we got a little sun just before it set.

The next day it was just Ken and Jolene in their Jeep, along with my wife, me and our dog in our Montero Sport. We decided to do Pritchett Arch trail because we also wanted to do a small hike. At the end of the trail, we intended to do the 30-minute hike to Pritchett Arch. Most of this trail is easy under normal, dry conditions. This trail is fairly long at 30.4 miles round trip. For about the first 5 miles we saw other tire tracks but they disappeared after that. This trail had a desolate feeling to it. It was an awesome sight to see Lone Rock. It was again a foggy day and at the point in the trail where we drove past Lone Rock it truly did appear to be the only thing in sight because it was the only thing that stood out from the fog. About 11 miles into the trail we came upon three ledge drop offs. In dry conditions, I wouldn't have given them a second thought, but because of the snow I was somewhat concerned that it would take us quite a bit of time to make it back up these ledges. We continued for another mile or so when we came upon a rather rocky section of trail. We were beginning to wonder if we would have enough time to complete the whole trail and the hike too, so we talked it over and decided that it would be a good idea to stop and have lunch then start back up the trail. Up until this point we had not aired down, but decided it would be a good idea to make the return trip with more traction than we had started with. It turned out that we didn't have any problems at all getting back over the ledges. We drove back too Picture Frame Arch trail. This is a short off shoot of Pritchett Arch trail, which goes around Lone Rock. We drove around to see the Picture Frame arch and then saw Balcony Arch high up on Lone Rock as we departed. We returned to Moab and headed over to Slickrock Bike Trail in the Sand Flats Recreation Area to show our friends the ever-popular Lions Back and to do a small hike. We got out of our vehicles to take a better look at the Lions Back obstacle and a not so friendly, yet very stumpy German Shepard approached us! We rapidly got back into our vehicles and left the poor dog to himself. We then went on our hike along the Main Loop of the bike trail. While in the vicinity of Slickrock we took advantage of driving up the Baby Lions Back a few times. Baby Lions back is always a fun obstacle to play on! We ended the day again in sunshine and then headed back into town to have dinner and bring in the New Year.