Dangerous Elevation | Jeep Gladiator VS. Steep Mountain Road in Snow Storm

There's a place nestled into the mountains of British Columbia that is only accessible two to three months out of the year. You need a well-equipped 4x4, at least a couple of days, balls of steel, and a sense of adventure. But the experience will be well worth it, especially if you bring along some good friends for the ride. My name's Sean and this is the story till now. We're headed to Lillooet today. We've been driving for about three hours or more and this is barely the start of our adventure. Got to the start of the trail. So far so good. Getting air down. This river here, I don't know if you can hear it inside, it's raging. It's loud. A lot of snowmelt in the area. Look at this. It's in this crazy canyon. There's a mining claim post there. Oh yeah? That red thing right there? Yeah. It's got five tags on it. It's like molly gold. We got Mike here today. My neighbor Mike. 91 FJ80. Four liter gas. Two and a half inch lift. Make all the bar work myself. So that's about it. Of course we have Mr. Kim Reeves here. G'day. Also in the Land Cruiser. I swapped the transmission and transfer case. A little bit. Yeah. 15% lower. So I'm happier off-road. After getting the trucks prepared at the trailhead, it was time to begin our ascent. I wasn't sure what the road conditions would be like as we were likely going to be the first crew to attempt this route for the season. For the most part, things were pretty smooth with amazing views and just the occasional sign of fallen rocks on the road. On the way up, I encountered a quad headed down and a woman got off to chat with me. I was a bit thrown off by this claim of motorized access being prohibited above 1900 meters and I radioed back to Kim to get his thoughts as he's a bit of an expert on these types of regulations. As suspected, no basis to this 1900 meter claim. We carried on up the road as planned. As we got up higher, the trees and brush began to disappear and we began driving along the thin road on a steep cliff that leads to our intended lakeside camping spot. There is no room for error on this road. Almost. You're good. Okay. Right there. Now turn hard driver. More. Right there. Send it. Yeah. There you go. These small patches of snow, while they may look like nothing, were proving a bit problematic as there isn't much room on this road to slip and slide without sliding right off the edge, which is what I almost did right here. Whoa. That looks a little sketch. So my back end is slidding some snow on this out, kind of hanging off the edge of this waterfall. Because right now it just, as it spins, it just keeps going that way, right? It's pretty risky to attempt it. Yeah. My front wheels are both on solid ground though. Pack that ball of snow out right at your back tire. Hey, just gained a couple degrees. And as we made our way past the last few snowy sections, I knew the lake was just around the corner and we could relax and set up camp. It's only just one. Cheers. I absolutely love this place. There we go. When it comes to views, it really doesn't get much better. It's working and swinging these days. Oh yeah? Are you a swinger? I cut the whole tree. All right, camp's all set up. I've lived at Lake. Chopping up some wood. Mike's the professional swinger here, so he's getting it done, as you can see. Meanwhile, epic views in every direction. We're at such a high elevation that I'm completely winded, but this is just epic. I could sit here and stare at this view for hours, maybe all day. Everywhere you look around us was just completely epic views. Let me show you what I mean. I'm wasting all this time and I'm losing focus. I go to play this old song, but the record's broken. Sitting waiting by this door, but it's never open. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but you need to know. Everything, everything is all right. It's all right to let go. Everything, everything is all right. It's all right to let go. This was unexpected. Snow. It's July 2nd. Ground was completely white earlier this morning. Not so much now, but it is still snowing. My dirty stove is baking in the snow. All right, it's day two. Morning. We're going to head up towards the peak. We know there's going to be snow fairly quickly, but we're going to see how far we can get and what we can see. As we started up the trail to the peak, it became clear fairly quickly that fallen trees were going to come into play. Luckily, we are well prepared for these types of situations and had multiple chainsaws gassed up, sharpened, and ready to go. Yeah, we're done. That's a big piece of wood. Thanks. A couple of really big trees were in the way. Got those handled. Hopefully, there's no more. Getting above the tree line, huge fallen trees were replaced by alpine meadows, light snowfall, and wide open views of the valley and surrounding mountains. After passing the first switchback, things started getting hairy. Large snowbanks covered portions of the road, and I got out to walk ahead and assess the road conditions. Against the advice of my friends, I decided to proceed. Any slippage at all could result in the gladiator taking a long roll down the cliff, so I'd have to take it real slow and be very careful. Things were looking pretty good until I got a ways up, and the snow was covering the entire road. It was only a small section, but definitely impossible to safely get past. Oh yeah, I'm gonna have to come back. This is some fairly precarious reversing. Well, we made an attempt for the peak. There was big snowbanks on about a 45 degree angle covering about 90% of the road, so that was a no-go. We're gonna turn back from here, and this is still a pretty spectacular view. Even though we didn't make it to the peak, it was still a great weekend camping with friends, and we were surrounded by some of the best views that nature has to offer, and I left feeling satisfied and refreshed. Thanks for watching guys. If you're not already subscribed, please do me a favor and hit that subscribe button. I really appreciate you. I'll see you next time.