Colorado’s Gateway Canyons Resort is a paradise for adventurers and auto enthusiasts.
“Now, a lot of what we are doing might seem counterintuitive,” the voice coming over my helmet radio said. Bouncing off a distant satellite and then relayed back to Gateway Canyons Resort & Spa, the words sounded like they were coming from the dark side of the moon, though the man talking—former Grand-Am Road Racing driver Jeff Humberson—was standing barely 10 feet away on the Colorado red-rock clay. But he did have a point. There is definitely something counterintuitive about climbing feet first through the passenger window into a cockpit that is lined with steel tubing and sits six and a half feet off the ground. The vehicle itself defied credulity. What was originally a Ford F-150 Raptor had been transformed into something out of Mad Max, all motor and wheels, several inches wider than a Hummer H1, and capable of outrunning the most high-powered exotic across the desert.
As Humberson observed, after wiggling in behind the steering wheel, driving this vehicle is not for the faint of heart. “First-time drivers think hitting the brakes will make the truck stop, but it will just pile up dirt in front of the truck like a snowplow,” he said. “You have to learn to be comfortable with being out of control.”
“Things can get scary if the truck goes sideways,” Humberson said, “but as long as the wheels are turning, it will chew its way through the dirt. Just be sure to keep your head straight up when we hit the jumps. The helmet’s heavy, and you don’t want to snap your neck when we land.”
Roger that, I assured him, giving him the old thumbs-up. But what did he mean by “jumps”?
It was too late to ask, because now the truck was screaming like a Formula 1 racer as it accelerated onto the rutted test track. We were about to go airborne.
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