Upper Helldorado
Hey, and this is only the entrance! Upper Helldorado is a hardcore trail located in Area BFE recreational park in Moab, Utah, and it's one of our favorites to drive or just hang out at and watch. The entrance is double tough, and it gets progressively harder as you move through, culminating with the infamous waterfall climb.
Therefore, if you can't drive the entrance without too much fuss, then you should turn around and take the bypass out. There have been numerous novel attempts at wacky lines made over the years, but the most popular way to navigate the entrance to Upper Helldorado is to line up nearly straight into the crack and drop in from the slightly off-camber lip as shown. Depending on how heavy the winter rains and runoff were, the drop in could be as little as a few inches to as deep as 3 feet or more.
After dropping into the trail, resist the urge to make a left hand turn up the rock face since doing so almost always results in high centering or a rollover. It's steeper and sharper than it looks. Climb in and straddle the crack. Shoot for keeping your passenger-side tire up on the rock face. Once you're at the end of the crack, you'll need to turn left while keeping your passenger tire into the big rock outcropping. Try to keep the sidewall pressed into the part just above the vertical portion. Depending on how much travel your Jeep has, you'll probably be hanging a tire high in the air, but if you gently ease down, it's not as scary from the driver seat as it looks from the outside.
After you're down on all four wheels again, you'll be lined up to neatly scale the sharp, rocky outcropping with your driver-side tire. Many try to squeeze between the rocky outcrop and the sheer wall on the front/right, but it always results in body damage or getting wedged. Put your driver-side front tire up and over the outcrop while turning left over the rock and your rear will follow you. Then you're ready for the next obstacle.
GPS Coordinates
N 38.40587 W 109.40690
Tip Over Challenge
If you've ever been to the town of Moab, Utah, then you've seen the Hell's Revenge trail. Even if you didn't realize it. Just stand on any street corner and look up eastward to the huge sandstone cliffs surrounding the town and you'll see it. Hell's Revenge is one of our favorite trails in the area for a lot of reasons. It's close to town, it's not too hard on sheetmetal, and it's got a ton of fun obstacles for built rigs and bypasses for stockers. You can drive nearly anything with 4WD over the trail and not be bored or overwhelmed.
Tip Over Challenge is one of the last obstacles on the trail before you exit down a long, rocky ledge that swings you past the back of Lion's Back and returns you to pavement near the town dump and Potato Salad Hill. Tip Over Challenge has been a hot spot for us in the past to set up with our cameras in hopes of carnage, but in reality, it's not a hard obstacle if you hit it right.
For starters, make sure you're aired down as far as your rims will safely allow. The obstacle is pretty steep and you'll need all the traction you can muster. The bottom of the obstacle is a bit more off-camber and steep than it may appear as you drive up to it. You'll want to drive the whole obstacle in a gentle, swooping right hand curve. It sounds easy, but there's a pretty tall, steep drop off to the right and your brain is constantly telling you to steer away from the fall, not toward it.
Once your front tires are up and your rear starts to climb, put your passenger-side tire just inside the rocky crack that runs vertically up the obstacle. You'll want to use this crack like a blind person reads Braille, because most of the time you will be flying blind. If the setting sun isn't in your eyes, then all you'll see out the passenger side of the Jeep will be air and sky.