Tacoma vs the mountain

There’s a first time for everything. The experience I’m going to talk about is, about me and a friend who almost getting stuck out in the woods.

It was a bright warm day in southern Utah. It was our day off and we wanted to try out my friends 4×4 on his 92 Tacoma. We were only 18 at the time and nothing was better than hanging out with friends during the summer.

We decided that we wanted to head out to the Nevada/Utah Beaver Dam Mountains and try out our luck with the outdoors. Toyota Tacoma vs the wild. We had nothing but free time and the open road that day. A day with no responsibilities, no worries and a full tank of gas.

We got gas, energy drinks, water and some gummy sharks from the local gas station that was around before I was born. We got onto the road and started to head out of the city limits. We reached the boarders of the houses and soon the city scape was nothing but a view behind us.

We drove about an hour outside last house we saw. We were driving on the long windy road that lead into the mountains. You could feel the air get colder, the air smelt crisp and cleaner. You could hear nothing but the wind and the music from our ridiculously loud bass.

My friends Tacoma had a lift and aggressive big wheels. Every turn we hit the truck would sway and lean into the turn because the high center of gravity. Soon we saw a road that lead off the pavement with some tire tracks. We thought to ourselves that someone else had made it, so we can too. So we turned off to the worn track. We kept driving as fast as we could deeper into the mountain. We hit every bump, hill and hole evermore violently as we kept picking up speed.

Eventually we got to the point to where there was no more trail and it was untouched area. We jumped out of the Tacoma and looked at the hill to see if we could make it. I questioned our ability to drive it up the steep hill. My friend through the Tacoma into 4 wheel drive and we backed up to give ourselves some momentum. He hit the gas pedal and we through ourselves at the hill. We made it up half way with no problem but about ¾ the way up we started to struggle. He threw it into a lower gear but we started to dig in and the truck started to swing back and forth. It was my first time seeing the Tacoma redline but we were so close to the top. Eventually we had to back down and the Tacoma started to slide backwards. We started to slide down sideways to the bottom of the hill.

My friend tried to steer it back to where it was going down straight but we built too much speed. I grabbed the front of the dash ready to flip over but luckily for us we made it to the bottom. The first thing my friend asked was “Should we try it again?” I said no without any hesitation. Then we had to put the vehicle back into 2 wheel drive and unlock the wheels from 4×4. After we unlocked the tires we had to find our way back since we were completely lost. But I’ll end this story about the Tacoma vs the hill here.

Tags: off road, tacoma
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