Hey y'all. Figured I'd chime in on this thread. I do hope that you take the comments on our site in stride. It is not the Editorial staff opinion at Rockcrawler.com that Xterras are no good. Quite the contrary, actually. Having had one for review, we put one through its paces last month and were quite pleased. Our biggest beef other than the IFS, of course, was the large overhang up front.

This overhang did seem to cause you folks some trouble out there on Golden Spike, where we witnessed high-speed burnouts as some of you tried to traverse the Golden Crack - even with a tire bridge.

We did see a few of you doing some rock stacking and we did see one or two haul tail through the Body Snatcher. Still haven't figured out why on the latter.

But rock-stacking is not the issue here. If you can't make it over or you get stuck, place a rock or two and move on (but put the rocks back where you got them).

Anyway, I guess I'm trying to apologize for anything that may have offended you guys on our boards. I dig the Xterras and for the most part enjoyed running into you folks on Golden Spike. Your courtesy was appreciated when our gangs came up on each other on the trails.

I personally don't care to enter the Xterra vs. Liberty debate. I have driven them both on the trails and think they are both very capable vehicles. The Liberty that ran with us covered almost everything on the trail in stock form other than his Goodyear MT/R tires and without stacking rocks. In fact, he was running his tires at 35psi we found out the next day!

Regardless, the point is, that it's not so much what vehicle is driven, but who is driving it. I was surprised at the high-speed attempts at the Crack, frankly. Picking a proper line and using finesse goes a long way toward success on the trails and getting home in one piece.

Enough for now. Thanks for USING your Xterras! Hope to see you again some time. Let us know if you come to the Alabama region for some Southern crawling.