CLIFFHANGER

If you're paying a visit to Moab in Utah, it's only right and proper to indulge in a great American tradition. Just don't look down

- JACK RIX

I'M ON THE EDGE, both mentally and literally, peering over the brow of the obstacle that earned this trail its infamy. A series of giant ledges flanked by some loose looking rocks and several thousand miles of fresh air. When you're climbing there are off-road techniques to be deployed - left foot braking with smooth dabs of throttle to ensure all momentum is of the forward variety, sawing the steering wheel side to side to find the tiniest sliver of traction and my personal favourite... gunning it and hoping for the best - but on the descent, your only real option is full send with as much mechanical sympathy as possible. Otherwise known as driving forwards and falling off. I drop the nose over the edge, then the rear - clattering the overhang and remodelling the tailpipes into new and interesting shapes. I repeat this three, maybe four times, clenching my buttocks and teeth ever tighter each time, until the world levels out and I breathe a sigh of relief. Then it dawns on me there's only one way off this death road... the way we came in.

Cliffhanger. The clue's in the trail's name. And yet, at no point during multiple pregame meetings with guides and experts did anybody mention to muggins here that we were skiing a diamond black run with sticks of celery glued to our feet. To be fair to our guide, Jim, he did mention the drops were "long enough to read a book on the way down", but that isn't a surprise (I have a loose grasp on gravity and plummeting 1,000ft to a valley floor is self-explanatory), it's the fact we're squeezing this box fresh and bone stock Wrangler between boulders the size of lorries, pointing it up walls of rock that in any normal circumstances would mark a dead end, and tiptoeing like a sticky hoofed goat along skinny paths carved into sheer cliff face. I thought we were here to admire the scenery, not to become a scorched smear on it.