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We read on a few internet forums about a road called Iron Gap road. We finally found it on the map and saw it was between Cowan and Winchester. There are a lot of interesting things to see in that area so we thought we would make a scouting run before loading up the Jeep on the trailer and making a full scale assault.

We got to Iron Gap by taking the road through Cowan and then taking the new 64 bypass just outside of Winchester. We then took HWY 16 due south to the top of the mountain.

Just at the top there is a fire tower visible. We turned there and hit Iron Gap road beside the Keith Springs Community Center. We saw some trailers parked there so our plan is to park ours there when we return.

The road starts out paved. But just before you get to a nice farm house, the road veers right and becomes unpaved. There is evidence of an old gate here. The trail starts out as a nice unpaved road with a few shallow mud holes. Janice drove her stock XJ while Jennifer navigated. I sat in the back.

The road followed the ridge for about three miles. Then as it started down the mountain, it stared to get a bit rockier. I got out a spotted Janice as she drove over some of the smaller rocks. As we neared the valley floor, the rocks got bigger and the hill got steeper. After walking a particularly tricky section, I decide that we should turn around. If we had had another Jeep with us or some recovery gear I might have tried it, but it looked too risky to try coming back up alone.

Janice was tired from the drive over and the bumpy ride in so I turned her Jeep around and headed back up the hill. We posed for a few pictures on the small stair case climbs. It definitely looks like a place we will have to return to with the off road Jeeps.

Back on the pavement, I had hoped to return to Cowan via the Turnpike road. We found what I think was the road, but it was marked private by a hunting club. So, we elected not to risk it and headed back to Cowan the way we came.

We stopped for a quick tour for the train Museum and to check out the old cars in the Texaco across the street. We then headed up the mountain to climb the overlook rock near Sewanee just at sunset. Since Jennifer had never seen the campus at University of the South, we made a small detour through the campus. She did not see much in the dark however; just enough to want to come back.

UPDATE: Return to Iron Gap

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In order to get a bit more off road capabilities, Jenny decided to go up a couple of tires sizes. She ordered a set of Dick Cepek Crusher tires from Tire Rack after reading many reviews and considering factors such as shipping time and customer service. To read more about her decision making process see her blog post at: http://thejeeptalks.blogspot.com/2010/11/dick-cepek-crusher-tires.html

The Dick Cepek tires have a very interesting tread pattern in a dog bone shape. The side lugs are in the shape of a skull and cross bones. The tread has a huge void area that makes for good traction in mud and rocks and self cleans quickly. The lugs are also siped for improved wet traction on pavement.

The tires arrived quickly from Tire Rack and were delivered by my friendly UPS driver who was kind enough to off load the very heavy tires in front of the shop door.

Mounting them on the rims with my manual tire changer proved to be a challenge due to the heavy sidewall construction. It was difficult to compress the tire enough to get it to slide into the drop groove on the rim. In fact, we got only three mounted before the concrete anchors that held the machine to the floor failed. I had a local tire shop do the last one and I noticed even his fancy pneumatic tire machine had a little trouble pushing on the last part of the bead.

While I was mounting the tires, Jenny worked on opening up her fender wells to accommodate all that rubber. The stock flares were removed and the flange was folded under to make a smooth surface in case the tires did contact the body work.

In the front, the bump stops were also extended an inch and a half with spacers mounted to the bottoms of the coil spring perches. The tires looked great mounted on her black Cragar steel wheels.

On the road the tires are surprisingly quiet. The road feel is fantastic and they are very smooth running. The tires required very small weights to balance which surprised me considering the total amount of rubber on them.

On the trail, they showed their value right away. She first aired them down to 15 psi. They did a fantastic job of getting her up the very muddy class III and IV trails in Harlan, Ky. The sidewalls still looked very stiff over rocks however so on day two she dropped the pressure more to 11 psi. I was pretty sure that as stiff as the sidewalls were there was little danger of them popping off the rim.

In the infamous Lower Rock Garden the tires did a fantastic job of gripping the rocks. The skull shaped side lugs that I had thought were mostly for show gripped rocks like glue. At one point the only thing holding her to a rock was the side lug and as she drove forward the tire went up the rock instead of slipping off. And this was in wet snowy conditions.

She was very happy to make her first successful run through the Lower Rock Garden. The new tires worked great.

Also on one very muddy climb where the only trucks that had made it up ahead of her were running Swampers, she made a quick mud slinging run and made it all the way to the top in one pass. The deep bone shaped lugs dug in and cleared out just as they were needed to make it up the twisty climb. I think she embarrassed some of the guys running BFG’s in that she made it look easy to climb the hill.

As we were leaving on Sunday, she aired them back up to 30 psi for the trip home. Even at interstate speeds, the tires ran smooth and quiet. The Dick Cepek Crusher tires proved to be very tough and versatile. They handled everything she threw at them: rocks, mud gravel and pavement with equal ability. Hopefully the tread life will be as great as the traction and she can enjoy them for a long time to come.

Dick Cepek Crusher Tire Dick Cepek Crusher Tire priced from $167.

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