Montezuma Falls 4WD Track | Bog Holes and Big Ruts | Finding The Limits Of Our Ford Ranger!

Well g'day, welcome back to another episode. In this one we are tackling the Montezuma four-wheel drive track in western Tasmania, just near Zeean. We've just come across this epic bog hole that we're going to try and get through with our mates here, Luke and Ali and their 105 series cruiser. This one's going to be a gnarly one. Yeah, don't know how we're going to go here. Well today's adventure is the Montezuma Falls. We are taking the four-wheel drive track up to Montezuma with some mates of ours, Luke and Ali, who we met right back at fourth when we first landed in Tassie, so excited for this one. We're not really sure what this track's going to have in store for us. We're not sure how gnarly it is. We're just going to give it a crack. They're up front in their 100 series or 105 series cruiser, so hopefully they can help us through anything that gets a little bit serious, but we'll see what we come up with. So it's about 14km in. It's going to take us a couple of hours to get in there, I think, and then a really short walk to the falls themselves. The other option is if you want to head to the falls, there is a 10km relatively easy, from what we've heard, hike into the falls. Montezuma Falls is just outside of Xi'an, or the trackhead for this one starts just outside of Xi'an. I'm pretty sure the hiking track, if you're going to hike, is closer to the town of Rosebury. I'm just going to get this branch. But yeah, anyway, we're into it. We just started the trail. It's pretty easy so far, but let's see what it's got in store for us. It's like someone's conveniently left that stick there for you to test. Something that is really nice is having mates with you when you go four-wheel driving. It just means that for us, we can tackle the trickiest stuff just with the confidence that you've got someone who knows where you are and can help you out if you need it. I love this feeling though, this nervous anxiety you get when you're tackling a bit of the unknown. It's the butterflies in the stomach and gets the heart rate going. It's good fun. With our little Ranger running on standard suspension, we're still running factory suspension and have done obviously for the whole trip, so it definitely limits us with ground clearance. The belly of the Ranger sits pretty close to the ground, so a little suspension lift would certainly help it out, especially when we're tackling some of these harder tracks. I'm not sure I'd tackle something like this on my own with the Ranger, just because it's so unknown. You're just not really sure what you're going to come up against. Yeah, it's really just about good tyre placement, trying to keep the belly of the car up away from as many obstacles as possible, straddling all the big ruts and crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. Good tyres makes a big difference. Having decent tread makes a huge difference and we've aired down a fair bit. We're down to 20 psi, just to give us plenty of traction and give us as much advantage as we can. We obviously don't have a winch or anything like that either, so that's also something I take into consideration if I'm going to tackle something by myself, is how easily I can recover myself. We've got the tread recovery tracks and we do have recovery gear. Yeah, I mean on the plus side, the Ranger does come factory with a rear diff lock, which certainly helps, especially on some of the big ruts and it can make up for a lack of ground clearance when you've got a diff lock. So yeah, we'll see how she performs. With these tighter tracks and the deep ruts, it's sometimes a choice between scraping the belly a little bit along the dirt or scraping the vegetation down the side of the car, which is a brutal choice sometimes, but we'll get there. I heard pinstripes are the new black, so that's what we're rolling with for this Tassie expedition. Yeah, it doesn't take very deep ruts for this thing to bottom out. Can straddle. Couple of ruts here. Yeah, okay. All the treads worked well there, they're a good substitute for lack of clearance. Pack them in the deep ruts and save us bailing it out as much as possible. It's not that challenging of a track, it's not steep or anything, it's just a lot of bog holes and a lot of deep ruts. So for the middle section of this track, there is just a river running down the tracks and you can see just how much it's going to erode the tracks out. There is a warning at the start of the track saying it's impossible when wet and I would definitely be checking the weather forecast. It rained a little bit last week and for it to be this wet still, it would be hectic after you've decent rainfall here. All right, so we're almost at the first creek crossing and we've just come across some ruts. Have a go with these ones. Yeah, as much fun as that looks, I think we'll take the chicken track. So I want a cruiser so I can play with the big kids. Hurry up mate. Ring Toyota Australia, what's going on? That sucked. I'm going to grab a few extra tracks and put them in the front here. Yeah well even this stuff is slippery where it's not wet once you start dragging water up on it. Alright, what's he cleaned up? I don't have a plan. Luke's going first. It's very slippery, very deep, very off camber. We're mostly worried about this bank on this side. The car's either sliding or scraping along that wall. Just trying to level ourselves out as much as possible. There was already a heap of logs in here when we got here. Just packed up with a couple of treads to try and even it out a bit more and help us out. The tricky part is guessing your wheelbase and your wheel track width to try and figure out what tyre's going to go up what and in what order to try and get an idea of what the car's going to do. We may just have to get it up here and see. You just spat all the tracks out but if you try and climb now and it slips you're going to come whether you want to reposition. It's looking good. Just got to get your ass to come up on that log. We've got that log spliced between your front and your rear now. The rear's got on the other side of it. That's what I'm worried. It's going to kick it sideways and you'll end up. If you just back up about half a metre I might be able to reposition that log or jam a track in there to push you back out. It was looking really good until that log slipped. I wonder if I can get max treads in there to make that rear try and climb that log. Should I say I was happy I put boots on? Yeah perfect. Let's come on top of that log now. Straighten up. Easy. Now we've just got to get the ranger through. Easy as. How's the heart darling? Well we got through that. Liz nearly went arse up. The trouble is we're only about half way down the track and it's probably taken us 2 and a half, 3 hours to get to this point. On the plus side we've come super prepared with a bottle of wine. You're not worried. I'm not worried at all. It doesn't get dark until about 10 o'clock and we've got food so the kids ate all the snacks so they don't really need lunch. You can always walk down hill out the other end. An easy 10k they reckon. Sausages might be for dinner now. Sausages might instead of being lunch be a dinner cook up. Early dinner. And then a night run out. That'll be fun down here. It's not dark till 10. At one point I was like maybe Ali and I will hike the 10k's and race the boys 4 wheel driving and see who gets there first. Just in case you're wondering, definitely hiking is the faster way. After making it through that obstacle we were absolutely stoked and finally felt like we were going to make some progress on this track. That's going to be fun to go back down. There's nothing like a track you've got to do twice so you know exactly what you're in for. Sometimes it's a good thing and sometimes it's not. My poor rear mudflaps have been copping and clogging. It's just relentless. There's no easy bit. There's no bit where you just have a breather and then keep going. It's just obstacle after obstacle after obstacle. And all of like mild-ish obstacles. There's a few big doozies in there that definitely had us worried. But after another hour or so pushing along through the track we started to realise that maybe we'd bitten off a little bit more than we could chew. I don't know I'm coming from under up there. Is it getting gnarly is it? It's not too bad. Just drawing on. Yeah we've been having that conversation. Yeah I reckon we're not much beyond, we're not three quarters of the way we're a bit past maybe two thirds of the way you reckon? Yeah two thirds. So at best we'd probably still be another hour and a half. Maybe, at least an hour anyway an hour and a half. Yeah at least an hour. That puts us there at four and then by the time we cook and look luckily we leave by five and I reckon we've got at least three hours back out you reckon? Yeah about that hey? We could always hit it another day and do a 10km leg. Alright I think we're going to bail. Well I think this one's beat us. So yeah you probably heard most of that conversation on the UHF but we're a few hours in. We'd be lucky to be two thirds of the way and yeah there's still a long long way to go so we're just going to try and turn around I think and call it as it is. It's going to be a late late arrival back at camp. The fall's left to wait for another time. Righto so we called it to have a break there feed the kids some sausages on bread and just assess how we were going. It's now 4.30. We're going to leave it and that's life. You don't always get to where you want to go. It was really really handy having heaps and heaps of food heaps of water with us so it wasn't stressful at all but it is just a timing thing. It's probably taken us four hours just to get to the second Montezuma Falls sign at this point. Mostly because the ranges has got such low clearance we've had to stop and put treads in a lot of the way but that's alright. Speaking of scratching and belly scratching sounds that's the horrible sound of the car scraping along the bottom but it's what it is and yeah I just wanted to share it's like reality. Some people probably wouldn't share that they didn't make it or tried to do something else we're just going to call it. We've all got kids we've got families it's how things roll. Anything else you want to add? Nah I don't think it's definitely a lot slower with the low clearance we've got in the ranger I think even a 2 inch lift in this and yeah you'd definitely get through a lot quicker. A 2 inch lift maybe in one tyre a tyre size or two up would make a big difference. I mean we did just pass a 4 inch lifted patrol on 35 inch tyres and it only took them an hour to get to where it took us 3 hours to get to so yeah it's not all, not necessarily that slow if you've got the right vehicle for it but we're certainly pushing the limits of the ranger in this one which is good I'm happy to do that but at the same time you've got to know when it's time to call it and that was our time so we'll leave Montezuma Falls for another time. But it's been an absolutely stunning drive this track actually follows the old what they call the old tramway so it's actually quite flat it has some amazing cuttings through the forest and through the mountain really feels like the proper depths of the Tasmanian wilderness so it's been an outstanding drive despite not making it all the way through. No regrets at all it's been good fun. It makes me so excited about our 76 lane cruiser build this year we're just going to have to come back with our cruiser and hit it again. Yeah it's been a hoot We're almost back at the highway we're almost going to air up it's 6.30pm we've still got a half an hour drive back to camp in Queenstown that means we spent 7 and a half hours on this track and didn't actually make it to the end so we're going to head home, we're going to have a few drinks, we definitely earned them, we're all exhausted. Night guys I didn't even see that one. Oh good my finest hour. Is there something in front of you? Just waiting for a mate. Do you need this mirror? I need all the mirrors you have. I'm just going to film. You just go at whatever pace suits you and if we need help we'll get stuck. Straight up, touch, right hand down, yep that's good Woah that's a big wave coming up, bonker