Trail planning
How Trails Offroad Helps Us Explore Public Lands the Right Way
Some of our best days in the Jeep have been on public land: BLM routes outside Buena Vista, Forest Service roads along the Front Range, and the high passes of the San Juans. That access is a privilege, and it only lasts as long as the people using it do it right.
I'm Dan from Adventures 2 Ranta Bout. We wheel a 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sport named Sucia out of Greeley, Colorado. This year we ran Yansing Gulch, Kingston Peak, Ophir, Hurricane, Poughkeepsie Gulch, Imogene, and Black Bear, plus a spring trip to Moab. For all of it, Trails Offroad is where our planning starts.
Trails Offroad was the first trail app we paid for, and for a while it was the only one. It's still the first one I open, and as a Trails Offroad Trail Ambassador I've seen how much work goes into keeping the guides accurate. Here's how it fits into our planning, and why I think it makes public land better for everyone who uses it.
Start with the right trail for the rig
The first thing I check is the technical rating. Trails Offroad rates every trail on a 1–10 scale, and each tier is tied to the kind of vehicle it suits, from high-clearance 2WD at the easy end to purpose-built buggies at the extreme end.
That matters for us. Sucia runs a 3.5-inch TeraFlex lift and 35s, but she's still on the stock Sport axles. An honest rating tells us what we can run now and what waits until the axle build, which is why a few Moab trails are on our list for 2027 instead of this year.
Each guide also lists the recommended vehicle, the trail length, and a typical run time. Between those and the rating, I can tell whether a trail fits the rig, the group, and the daylight before we commit.
Know whose land you're on
Public land isn't one big open playground. It's a patchwork of agencies, rules, and designated routes, and the difference between a legal route and a closure can be a single sign.
Every Trails Offroad guide lists the managing agency and district, the official route number, and when the trail is typically open. The Yansing Gulch guide, for example, shows the BLM's Royal Gorge Field Office and route 6044. If I need to check on a closure or the camping rules nearby, I know exactly who to call.
With All-Access, the trail map adds national, state, and federal land-management shading, so it's easy to see where public land starts and stops. Knowing where motorized travel ends matters just as much. At Middle St. Vrain, the bridge at the end of the trail is the line: past it is the Indian Peaks Wilderness, and it's boots only. Honestly, it would have been hard to find our way up there without Trails Offroad.
Check conditions from people who were just there
Trails change. Rock gets dug out, storms wash out sections, and routes close. Every guide shows the trail's status and member reviews with the date each person ran it, so I'm looking at last weekend's conditions, not a write-up from two years ago.
Right now, recent Yansing Gulch reviews say the gatekeeper and the Chute have dug out and gotten harder. On September 26, a member reported Tomichi Pass closed at waypoint 2. That's the kind of detail that saves a long drive to a trail you can't run.
It works because people report back. As a Trail Ambassador, I recently sent the Trails Offroad team a list of fixes for the Yansing Gulch guide, starting with new waypoints for the tight turns after the Chute. The more of us who share what we find, the better the information gets for everyone.
Read the line before you're on the rock
On the trail, the waypoints do the heavy lifting. Each obstacle has a description and photos, so we can read the line before we're sitting on it. For Moab this spring, we set up the iPad with Trails Offroad on one side of the screen so we could read ahead to the next obstacle.
This summer we filmed a full run for the channel that starts inside the app: finding the trail, reviewing the guide, navigating to the trailhead, and checking waypoints along the way. That's the whole workflow in one video.
Cell service disappears fast in the mountains, so load your guides before you lose signal. The companion app supports offline use, and you can download GPX files or print a guide as a backup.
Plan well, tread lightly, keep it open
When routes close, it's often because of damage from people going off route or not knowing the rules. I spent more than 20 years in construction, electrical, oilfield, and safety work, and the lesson carries over: most problems are prevented before the job starts.
On the trail, that means matching the trail to the rig, knowing whose land you're on, checking current conditions, and staying on the route. Trails Offroad puts all of that in one place, which makes doing it right the easy choice.
Disclosure: We're Trails Offroad Trail Ambassadors and may earn program rewards when readers sign up through our link. The opinions here are our own.