Our group of six vehicles was about halfway up the steep ascent of Imogene Pass, which connects Telluride with Ouray over a 13,114-foot summit, when we came to a halt. Graham Jackson, who was in the lead in his Defender 110, was around a cliff corner from Roseann and me in the tailgunner spot, and invisible. Uphill traffic has the right of way on Imogene—as on all one-track trails of its kind—so we assumed Graham was waiting for someone coming down to back up into a safe passing spot.

But as the minutes went by, we stayed immobile, and I began to wonder if someting else was up. So I got out of the Troopy and walked up past the three client vehicles and fellow guide Maggie McDermut’s 4Runner, in the middle of the pack. Finally I met Graham coming back down, shaking his head.

What had happened was this: He had come around the corner to find a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon coming down. No big deal, as there was a generous pull-off on the nice comfortable inside of the trail just 20 yards behind the Jeep. 

The Jeep’s driver, however, seemed frozen in fear, which proved to be exactly the case as Graham walked up to talk to him.

The Wrangler turned out to be a rental, the driver (who had his girlfriend/wife with him) a complete novice in the 4x4 world. Furthermore, someone at the rental company had apparently pointed to a switch on the dash and told him, “If you need more traction just hit that.” Thus this poor guy was driving down Imogene Pass with both front and rear diff locks engaged. And of course his steering was severely hampered by the locked front diff. And now he was faced with backing up the trail with a 1,000-foot drop right out his window. And even though Graham walked between his vehicle and the drop-off while marshalling him to safety, the poor guy was petrified and could barely inch along. At last Graham got him back safely into the nook in the trail and, with a few earnest pointers on negotiating the rest of the descent, led us on by.

We saw many more rental Jeeps, as well as various iterations of the increasingly ubiquitous and increasingly obnoxious Polaris RZR (“Razor”) also on hire. The astonishing thing to me is that more people haven’t driven off the side of Imogene or its neighboring trail, Black Bear. 

There’s really no moral to this story, except to watch out for rookies when you’re on these popular trails.