Tierod Bender Rock Crawling Trail

A great local trail to me, 35's can do it but might see body damage with the bigger rocks. Awesome test for any new build and up and coming folks wanting to get into a ROCK CRAWLING trail.

This trail has changed severely over the summer due to flash flooding. A few obstacles are easier, a few are more difficult, and there are a ton more boulders in the drainage. An update to the trail guide will come very shortly.

Ran the trail with only 2 very well built rigs on 39s and 40s. Took us 20 mins to run all the way through and even had to pull out the winch once for a quick recovery. I have now ran this trail several times, with both larger rigs and rigs that meet the minimum requirements, and it has never taken us much longer than an hour to run. If you are with a group of larger equipped rigs, dual lockers and winches, and don't have any mechanical breaks, this is a quick, less than an hour run. If everyone in your group is minimally equipped, I can see this taking a bit longer as there will be more recoveries.

We were headed towards Holy Cross, so we thought we'd swing in on our way through and spend the afternoon on this trail. Hey, Trails Offroad says it should only take an hour, let's try it and see how it goes! We had 3 jeeps with us that day. My JKU, fully locked, 4.5" lift on 37's, my Son's JKU, Locked front limited slip rear, 2.5" lift on 35's and my other son's 2" on 35s fully locked. We started the trail about 2PM, we were on the trail for 9 hours. If you were in a rock crawler buggy on 42's I can see you completing this trail in an hour. But any street legal Jeep will take 2-3 at best. In our case, My jeep was the only one that didn't end up winching at some point. Had I been alone or with other jeeps of similar build, I feel we could have completed the trail in 3-4 hours. The shortest in our group, the 2" lift was winched many times, and ended up breaking a front axle shaft near obstacle 7. The highlift jacks, winches and skid plates all got plenty of use before we made it off the trail well after dark. Don't even consider this trail unless you have good skid plates, real rock rails that can support the weight of your vehicle, a winch and the know-how to use it, lockers front and rear and at least 35s. This is a serious rock crawler trail that is pretty much a boulder filled dry creek bed from start to finish. My jeep took no body damage, but did bend the transfer case skidplate, repeatedly scarred the rock rails, and left a nasty rock rash on 3 out of 4 of my wheels. That's all part of the fun of jeeping, but the one hour estimate to complete the trail is so far off, we vastly underestimated the difficulty. Basically, it was the most fun 9 hours I never want to have again.