MINOR UPGRADE

Adrian Holmes’ ’12 Wrangler Unlimited has slick sleeping quarters and a hearty backcountry appetite

- Jered Korfhage

If you’re asking about my first overlander, that’s it,” said Adrian Holmes, referencing his old ’00 GMC Sierra. “The eight-foot bed had enough space for a futon mattress ... it fit right between the wheel wells.” The truck had a camper top and a footlocker of gear, and carried Adrian and his wife all over Colorado, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and other remote places. But that’s not the vehicle that kindled his off-road fire.

Adrian told a cliffhanger of a story, taking us back to the summer of 1998. The location chaplain driving a Suburban K2500 heading the was northern New Mexico where he worked at same way as me, and he offered me a ride. Farther Philmont Scout Ranch, a 100,000-acre wilderness ahead the road became extremely narrow—a area where Boy Scouts go to trek across the backcountry for multiple weeks at a time. “Once, while drop over the passenger side. Without much flex rocky shelf road with at least an 800-foot vertical hiking a road back to basecamp, I came across a in that 3 ⁄4-ton chassis, the Suburban got real tippy crawling over the bigger rocks. I have very little fear of heights, so when the truck leaned hard passenger, all I could see out the window was 800 feet of thin mountain air, and I actually found it rather amusing. While leaned over, gripping the seat to keep myself from sliding against the door, I heard the chaplain’s seatbelt click open. I looked over to see his white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, eyes locked on the road ahead. I asked him why he took his seatbelt off, to which he replied, ‘So I can jump out if we start to slide!’ I said, ‘What about me?’ The chaplain replied, ‘I’m praying we both make it out of this, but if this thing goes over, you’re on your own!’”