Awesome write up! Big Bend is one of my absolute favorite places in the country. South Rim trail is maybe my favorite hike ever. Can’t recommend this place enough! Thank you for sharing this
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Awesome write up, read every bit of it, awesome photos, great journaling and writing and more importantly what an experience, thanks for sharing.
This is the kind of driving I got the BS BL for. Just some honest to goodness trail driving with a few fun things thrown in that takes you cool places. Its also livable and does well with city driving which if people are honest, is what most people do 99% of the time.
Thankfully that 1% of the time, the BL delivers. I'm already daydreaming about my trips this summer with it and the places I'll go which I haven't been able to before.
This is the kind of driving I got the BS BL for. Just some honest to goodness trail driving with a few fun things thrown in that takes you cool places. Its also livable and does well with city driving which if people are honest, is what most people do 99% of the time.
Thankfully that 1% of the time, the BL delivers. I'm already daydreaming about my trips this summer with it and the places I'll go which I haven't been able to before.
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Day 1: Christmas Mountain Trail (and a bit of Big Bend)
We drove into Big Bend, intending to pick up backcountry camping permits for the nights we couldn't book in advance (River Road and Old Maverick Road campsites are only done in-person at a ranger station). However, it turns out that you can only get the permits 24 hours in advance, and we had places outside the park for the first two nights. Just an FYI if you're planning things that involve a night along River Road / etc - it's not only in-person, but also only 24 hours in advance. Things definitely didn't book up, though, despite being peak season, so we were able to get the permits later with no issues, just needed to circle back by Chisos Basin (or Panther Junction), so we shifted some plans.
We poked around the north side of the park a bit. We're both geologists, so there's a lot of fun poking around to do everywhere there - I'd recommend stopping at Persimmon Gap to look at the very spectacular fold exposed in the mountainside there and stopping by the fossil exhibit down the road a bit. We drove a bit of Dagger Flats trail, and then headed across the north side of the park on a small public dirt road to make it out to Terlingua Ranch and the Christmas Mountains Trail by noon.
I already posted a write-up on Christmas Mountain Trail here awhile back:https://www.broncosportforum.com/forum/threads/christmas-mountains-trail-tx.4192/ If you're in the area, this trail is well worth doing and I'd strongly recommend it! It's definitely exposed and steep, but it's a relatively smooth trail (read: for a 4x4 trail - there are still plenty of exposed rocks). This is the one place during the entire trip where I wished the sport had 4-low. Nothing to do with climbing, purely the ability to avoid needing to ride the brakes the entire descent. We certainly didn't hit any issues with it, but the brakes were somewhat hot at the end of the trail. Trail control / descent control / whatever it's called by Ford is actually really nice for this and I used it most of the way down, but it's still riding the brakes, while a true 4-low range is geared low enough that the engine can help braking even at 3-4 mph speeds. At any rate, I wouldn't hesitate to take any trim on this trail -- I'm pointing out the 4-low part mostly to emphasize that the car has a crazy amount of torque, a really surprising drive system, and will climb damn near anything. It doesn't need 4-low for steep climbs or (surprisingly) even for control on technical sections. The descent down this was the only time I felt that it would have been quite helpful, though.
We picked up supplies in Terlingua and stayed outside the park that night and the next. The views are pretty darn pretty.
Ford says the trail control can go all the way down in the mph, did it not hold it 4mph and under?
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It absolutely does, and it will hold it to 1 mph if that's what you set it to.
However, it does so using purely the brakes at those speeds, which means you're slowly heating up the brakes during the descent. Eventually, they'll overheat. 4-low is helpful to avoid that, as the gear ratios are low enough the engine can help in keeping things moving slowly and doesn't put all of the load on the brakes.
Christmas mountain was enough of a long steep descent to have this matter. It was surprisingly the only time I really missed a low range on this trip, but it would have been nice there.
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What an awesome trip! Great write up and pictures!
Excellent. Thanks for the heads up on that one. What if you switch to manual and use the paddle shfiters down? I have used paddles with my BMW (which has an 8 speed auto like the BS) and it uses the engine to bring it down in speed. It would use the transmission and engine in that case. I know people that have crosstreks that do that in steep offroad downhills because of brake issues.
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That's what we were in. The issue is that 3-4mph is an idle in first gear without a low range. The engine can't help with breaking unless it's at significant rpms at the gear + speed, and any standard gearing can't be at 3000-ish rpms at 3mph. That's what a low range is for.
If it were a trail you could do 10-15 mph on, then sure, the engine could help. But with most trails, you have to be going slower that that. As a result, a low range can help with slow off-road descents in cases where normal gearing is just too high.
Ought to show this to all the people on FacePlace that keep complaining about the "fragile" windshield. It looks like not even once did you use the over-hyped bottle opener! Lotsa good shots in there, thanks for sharing.
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What an awesome looking trip, thanks for sharing your great write up of it all! Looks like an incredible place to visit. I’m not nearly so daring to venture that far off the beaten path alone for so long, but perhaps I’ll have to at least do day trips & drives. So really enjoyed reading about your travels!
Wow, heck of a trip and awesome write up! You have a knack for photography, so many cool shots in there. Outside of Rock Crawl, did you spend much time using the other drive modes?
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Thanks! They're all phone photos, as I broke my bigger camera and haven't replaced it. Crazy what phones will capture these days, especially in bright light.
We only used rock crawl for very short stretches. It's easy to toggle on on-the-fly when you need it, and most of the time it's overkill.
For rougher trails, we mostly used mud & ruts, toggling on rock crawl mode for a bit here and there if multiple wheels were likely to lose traction. Mud & ruts is a great "general 4x4" mode (and it softens the throttle and keeps things in a lower gear compared to toggling on 4wd in normal mode, which helps control dramatically on rough sections).
Honestly, the unexpected hero of a lot of the smooth trails was eco mode. It's great for smoother trails and gravel roads because it keeps the throttle response slow, while also not keeping things in a low gear overly long. Normal mode is a bit too "peppy" on trails sometimes, and eco mode compensates for that nicely. (Read that as: "eco mode avoids my lead foot messing things up in normal mode")
More generally, if you spend a lot of time in mud & ruts/etc mode and then switch back to normal, it makes normal feel like sport mode on steroids. Eco mode is a bit more in between, which made switching back and forth between mud & ruts and eco mode more seamless than switching to normal.
This is such a great write-up, Joe. So glad you were able to check out some cool spots in your Bronco, your trip looked awesome. Thank you so much for posting these photos and insights!Day 7: Drive home and final thoughts
Not a ton to say about the drive home, but there was an amusing incident with the navigation system. After filling up, it went in circles around our previous location as we drove away, then eventually put us at “Null Island” (0N,0E lat,lon).
After awhile, it decided to update our position to Timbuktu! (literally! It’s a real place near that arrow!) Everything was fine after the next restart / stop for gas, though, I just found it amusing.
We eventually got home to a very sweet hound dog who was very happy to see us!
Somewhat surprisingly, the only significant scratch I can find on the underside of the car after all of that is the one on the rear diff skid plate, which was definitely what we hit on Black Gap. Given how many times we had loose rocks bounce off the underside or hit something that I thought I’d clear, I expected more scrapes. We definitely pinstriped up the outside a bit, but almost all of that buffed out in the end.
This was the first extended trip we’d done in the sport, and it massively exceeded expectations. The interior is really very well designed for this type of trip, and the extra tech makes the long road trips much, much more enjoyable. It’s also a beast offroad, all things considered. This thing will climb damn near anything. I’m floored… I know it’s not a “real” offroader, but there really isn’t much else like it. The Cherokee Trailhawk, sure, but Subaru’s/etc don’t come close. I loved my Forester, and I do think they’re great, but this is the vehicle I wanted when I bought it. Even compared to the old mid-80’s Blazer I grew up driving (which was a “real” offroader), this thing is way more capable. (Note: the Blazer was stock and didn’t have locking diffs, which is a big part of what I’m talking about here. Got stuck multiple times when one wheel on each side lost traction in the Blazer, and that just doesn’t happen in the sport. If one wheel has traction, you’re going forward.)
In terms of offroading, clearance really is the sport’s limitation. 9” isn’t terrible, but an extra inch or two would go a long way. I’ve thought about a lift, but the truth is that most of what I do is on-road driving, and especially in an independent suspension vehicle, you can’t lift it significantly without affecting alignment and on-road handling. I really do like how it corners (just spent a lot of time driving very windy mountain roads in TN while visiting family - the sport feels like a small car on those). Furthermore, most of my offroad driving is sand and mud in SE TX. Sure clearance helps there for ruts, but what I have is good enough, and I’m going to be straddling deep ruts no matter what. At any rate, I think a modest lift would really boost the sport’s off-road capability, but I’m personally not planning on doing that at the moment.
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