Are you looking for the best way to find overland routes or off-road trails to travel, camp and explore? How can you tell the difficulty level of an off-road trail and determine if it’s best for your vehicle and abilities before biting off more than you can chew?
There’s the misconception that to enjoy any off-road travel one must have an expensive 4×4 vehicle, preferably with an air-intake snorkel for crossing deep streams, an arsenal of tools and jerry cans attached to it along with giant tires and a towering lift kit.
We’re certainly not knocking preparedness by any means, but there are many easy to moderate off-road routes that may be suitable for stock and slightly modified SUVs.
While we highly recommend four-wheel drive for travel off pavement, along with a bit of extra clearance as well – there are routes that can be explored by vehicles of all kinds. Gear such as extra spare tires, tow straps, shovels, along with extra fuel and water are essential, regardless of what you’re driving.
The key to having a good experience is knowing your vehicle’s capabilities, along with what kind of trail route you’re getting into beforehand.
Whatever kind of trail you’re looking for, easy ones for SUV’s, or more technical ones for your rock-crawler, there are guides, websites and apps where you can choose off-road trails by difficulty level and even type of vehicle. As for us, our family off-road adventures keep us mostly on Easy to Moderate trails on the Charles A. Wells scale, or levels 1-5 on the Peter Massey scale.
If you have the feeling you’ve taken on more than you or your vehicle can handle, often the best thing you can do is to turn around and go back the way you came.
Determining The Difficulty of an Overland Route – Off Road Guidebooks
We like the off-road guides by Charles A Wells, such as the Guide to Arizona Backroads & 4-Wheel-Drive Trails. These break overland routes down into mile-by-mile segments, with trail difficulty level, points of interest and other pertinent information at your fingertips.
These guides have their own off-road trail rating system for readers to use to determine if a route is suitable for their vehicle. Wells’ guides break trail difficulty down into three categories, Easy, Moderate and Difficult, with descriptions of each category as they pertain to the vehicle you drive.
- Easy – Gravel, dirt, clay, sand or mildly rocky road. Water level low except for periods of heavy runoff. Wide single or double road with room to pass on shelf areas. (see guide for more.)
- Moderate – Rutted dirt or rocky road. Careful tire placement may be necessary. Some grades are steep but manageable when dry. Sideways tilt will require caution. (see guide for more.)
- Difficult – Grades can be steep with severe ground undulation and large boulders. Sideways tilt can be extreme. Deep water crossings, deep sand. (see guide for more.)
Off-Road guides by Peter Massey, like the Utah Trails Southwest Region, feature a trail rating system of 1 through 10, with 1 being dirt roads suitable for passenger cars, and 10 being hard-core trails for rock crawling type jeeps, etc.
Note: Trail ratings can give you a good idea if a route is right for you, but won’t tell you what actual conditions are, and what may have changed, such as fire and trail damage caused by storms. The dirt track into Paria Ghost Town near Kanab (top) is the epitome of an easy trail, but not after it rains! Before heading out on any trail, be sure to check local sources such as USFS ranger offices, local off-road clubs, and trail reports using apps such as FunTrecks and OnX Offroad.
- Wells, Charles A (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 236 Pages - 07/10/2020 (Publication Date) - Funtreks Inc. (Publisher)
GPS Mapping Apps Aren’t Enough
While GPS mapping apps like GAIA GPS ($19.99 yr.) and Garmin’s Earthmate are helpful for navigation, they don’t tell you about trail conditions, POI’s or spots where you should exercise caution.
FunTreks One of our favorite go-to sites for online trail information is FunTreks. This site’s interactive map lets you view all the listed trails in an area, along with photos, difficulty level and user ratings. There are filters such as “Unlicensed Dirt Bikes”, “Side by Side 60″ wide” “SUV or Pickup Truck” and “Hardcore Modified” to further narrow down the trail’s suitability for your vehicle.
An easier way to use FunTreks is through their app, which is currently only available for Android. As apps go, it’s not cheap at $59.99, but it is worth it if you do any amount of off-roading in new areas. Author and off-road enthusiast Charles A. Wells, whose guides we mentioned above, also works with FunTreks. The app is designed to be used with the guidebooks for the best experience.
The FunTreks app gives turn by turn directions and lets you download maps for off-line use with one click. It doesn’t cover all of the USA, but has info on more than 600 of the most popular trails in parts of Colorado, California, Arizona and Utah.
onX Offroad – We love using onX Offroad. The $30 per year charge for the premium version of this app, which includes offline maps, is worth it. onX Offroad contains thousands off off-road routes, many of which have trail difficulty ratings. Thousands of hours of local research and trail recon have gone into making this app, which is one reason it’s so popular.
You won’t regret signing up for onX Offroad, but until their mapping catches up to Gaia GPS, you’ll probably want both on your phone.
Overland Trail Guides – We also recommend Overland Trail Guides for their well-researched overland route planning resources. These include downloadable GPX files to use in GAIA GPS, and detailed info on hundreds of routes and trails across the globe. Annual membership fees start at $36, which lets you download routes and access most trail information.
Other Helpful Off-road Trail Guides
Off-line maps on GPS apps such as GAIA (premium version), onX Offroad and Garmin Earthmate are very handy, but nothing beats a paper map for backup use if electronics fail. Our favorite topo maps for off-road use are Delorme’s Atlas and Gazateer. These map books are easy to use and show most Jeep trails, along with National Forest boundaries, BlM land etc. These cost about $20 and come in very handy when you’re exploring an area that may be just outside that which is covered by the guides by Charles A. Wells or Peter Massey.
- Delorme (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 64 Pages - 06/27/2019 (Publication Date) - Rand McNally (Publisher)
We hope this information above was useful in helping you choose the right trail for your vehicle and abilities. If you have a preferred method of choosing off-road trails by difficulty level and for obtaining updated trail info for areas where you travel, please share it with us and we’ll post it here.
See our page Recommended Gear and Gadgets for Off-road for some important safety gear you might consider taking along on your next adventure.
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