A South Carolina man reportedly drove a Kia Telluride up Black Bear Road on Wednesday and immediately got stuck, resulting in the complete closure of the off-road pass that leads to the town the vehicle is named after.
Reports of the incident stem from local outlet KDVR Fox 31, and has since been confirmed by local authorities.
From KDVR:
The San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office said that until a tow can make it into the area, the roadway will remain closed because the car is unstable and it is not safe to be driven around.
Black Bear Road is a well-known roadway that closes each winter due to the weather and is used as an overlanding trail for Jeep and other off-roading enthusiasts. The roadway starts at the summit of Red Mountain Pass on Highway 550 and peaks at Black Bear Pass, which has an elevation of 12,840 feet, according to local tourist agencies.
The vehicle is stuck on one of the switchbacks above Bridal Veil Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls Powerplant, the sheriff’s office said, which is a one-way area on the roadway. The Kia got stuck at about three to four switchbacks past the falls when the driver managed to get his wheels off the side of the road, leaving the car unstable.
While the average all-wheel drive crossover will assuredly handle a sketchy off-road pass better than a sports car with poor ground clearance, they’re rarely purpose built for such passes. The Kia Telluride may be named for the town situated near the very same mountain range the crossover ended up stranded upon. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ready to devour every single trail within a 100-mile radius.
It’s still a unibody vehicle and lacks a number of features you’d expect to find on more hardcore off-road models. Even the Kia Telluride X-Pro, which comes with some light all-terrain ties and a tad more ground clearance, forgoes true locking differentials or comprehensive underbody protection. We could also argue whether or not it has enough suspension travel, sufficient entry/departure angles, or the proper wheelbase to be a legitimate off-road vehicle.
Better than plenty of other choices, the Telluride clearly wasn’t an idyllic choice for the infamous Black Bear Pass. However, based on how the vehicle is situated in the photos, it might not be fair to fault the Kia entirely. It looks to have been stranded on a relatively easy portion of the trail. It’s difficult to say whether the vehicle slid off the path or the driver foolishly opted to pull over for a photo opportunity.
Taking another gander at the photos, driver error seems the most plausible explanation. But it may not have mattered in the long run as the trail just gets progressively harder the further one drives. The pass entrance even comes with warnings advising someone to have a Jeep (or similar off-road focused vehicle) and suggests taking the route at your own risk. Meanwhile, the Kia in question was clearly equipped with street tires and lacked some of the potentially helpful terrain features offered by the X-Pro trim — which likewise would have struggled.
We don’t want to dunk on the Telluride exclusively. Crossovers getting stranded on particularly hairy trails seems to be a growing problem. A lack of off-road experience, combined with the wrong type of vehicle and the overconfidence that comes with some modern tech, can spell trouble. There aren’t any hard figures for how often this is happening. But the number of reports we’ve seen where a tourist imperils themselves by taking the wrong vehicle on an off-road adventure certainly seems to have increased in recent years.
There are likewise channels devoted to off-road recovery and they all seem to be exceptionally busy over the last several years. This often involves having to save a perfectly capable ORV that’s been stranded by a local on an absolutely brutal stretch of trail. But there are nearly as many instances where someone came in from another state or country to high-center their rental car on the first hump in the road.
This incident seems to have been one of those, as the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office noted that the South Carolina man drove the Telluride up the one-way trail “despite being advised not to do so by people in the area.”
Considering how steep of a drop the Kia looks to have been situated next to, things certainly could have gone worse. Rather than the Telluride rolling down the side of the mountain, it simply ended up being caught up in a pile of rocks. But it hasn’t worked out as well for other off-road enthusiasts, as the path to Telluride, Colorado has been shut down indefinitely until authorities figure out what to do with the stranded vehicle carrying the town’s name.
Police said they aren’t sure when the road will be cleared. The Bridal Veil Trail is supposed to be clear. But Bridal Veil Road is closed basically from the parking area all the way up to the Bridal Veil Falls.
[Images: San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office]
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