As an east-coaster, it’s hard not to romanticize the American West. The weather alone could convince most New Englanders to pack up for good. Every time I visit the West, I consider tossing my return ticket in the trash.
Even more enticing than the scenery, the food, or the people, is the sense of adventure. I’ve lived on the East Coast for almost 30 years and feel like I’ve seen everything there is to see. But out West? The possibilities are endless as the Montana sky.
The sheer scope of The West suggests adventure. Deserts, huge snow-capped mountains, and gigantic swaths of national parkland are mostly foreign concepts on my coast. But they’re available to anyone out West, free of charge.
The Most Beautiful State in the Union
I’ve only visited Washington once before. I was 22 and just a month into my full-time position at Road & Track Magazine, when the higher-ups asked me and editor Bob Sorokanich to drive the mag’s long-term Acura NSX from Seattle to R&T’s Ann Arbor, Michigan home base. Day one of that journey, snaking through the gorgeous Cascades in the height of summer, was my first and only exposure to the state. I wanted more.
That first time in Washington set high expectations. The Pine-lined mountain ranges and sky-blue lakes looked lifted from a fantasy. What better way to revisit those views than up close?
Thanks to something called the Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR), planning such a trip is child’s play. The BDR is a non-profit organization aimed at providing free, easily accessible routes for off-road enthusiasts who want to ride or drive off the beaten path. And because Washington is littered with publicly accessible dirt logging roads, there are hundreds of miles of BDR-curated trails in the state, free to use and easily navigable by GPS.
All you need to do is pick a route. And pick a rig.
The Plan
Washington’s BDR is a single, continuous line of mostly dirt roads that run north-south up the spine of the state, ending at the Canadian and Oregonian borders. The BDR is split into six legs. Each takes about a day to traverse at a leisurely pace, whether behind the wheel of an off-roader or behind the bars of an adventure bike. After some research, I picked three legs that’d best mix fun with challenging terrain and breathtaking views.
The choice of vehicle seemed obvious. The Lexus GX—known as the Land Cruiser Prado globally—has been a go-to for American overlanders for two decades. No other vehicle offers a better balance of capability, reliability, comfort, and affordability in the off-road SUV segment. New or used, the GX is the default choice for dirt-bashing adventure (with a side of glamping) over trails like these. Everything else is simply worse in one way or another.
The Lexus GX550 promises to be even better than its lovable predecessors. All-new for the 2024 model year, the GX now rides on the same body-on-frame platform as the bigger Tundra and Sequoia. The old GX’s marshmallow body lines were buffed up and squared off, and for the first time in what feels like 15 years, Lexus finally sells an SUV with a handsome front end. Style-wise, the GX is a home run.
In Overtrail trim—the only choice for buyers who plan to leave the pavement—the GX backs up its utilitarian silhouette with equipment like a locking rear differential, an adaptive suspension system, an aluminum skid plate, detachable anti-roll bars, and a set of 33-inch all-terrains.
Joined by Motor1 staff writer Victoria Scott in the passenger seat and photographer Ian Allen following us in his kitted-out Toyota Tacoma, we set out for two days of pure adventure.
Taking It All In
The third leg of Washington’s BDR starts in Ellensburg, a small town two hours southeast of Seattle. Getting there requires a 100-mile jaunt on I-90. After just a few miles the GX550 reveals itself as an entirely agreeable freeway companion, free of the tire noise, swaying suspension, and the clunky unpleasantness usually associated with off-roaders of this caliber.
Aside from the occasional body-on-frame jitter over big bumps, this Lexus rides as well as anything built for normies. It’s so civilized, you’d never peg it as a vehicle that could scale Moab’s toughest obstacles. The GX rides soft, thanks to all that tire sidewall, but it’s not a floaty ride either, and doesn’t require constant steering inputs to keep the wheels pointed straight. And because there’s a healthy amount of sound-deadening, tire noise never crossed my mind, even at Interstate speeds.
Day One
Arriving at the base of WABDR’s leg three, it’s easy to admire the thought put into this route. Originally mapped in 2010 by Washington locals Bryce Stevens and Andrew Cull, each leg takes about a full day of rustic travel, but you end up in a real town every night, complete with amenities like gas stations and hotels. That gives travelers tons of flexibility. You could simply show up one weekend day, traverse a leg of the BDR, then drive home. Or you could do the entire thing by hopping between hotels, capping each night with a warm shower, and welcoming each morning with hot chow. A multitude of pull-offs means camping is always on the menu.
WABDR’s leg three begins on pavement but turns quickly to dirt as we ascend the nearest hill, leaping headlong into the trail. The GX doesn’t blink when the terrain goes rocky, its adaptive suspension working in tandem with those Toyo Open Country A/Ts to erase small imperfections. So far, this truck is without flaw.
New or used, the GX is the default choice for dirt-bashing adventure (with a side of glamping) over trails like these. Everything else is simply worse in one way or another.
After five minutes ascending the trail, the scenery becomes jaw-dropping. The weather was kind to us on day one, an ocean of clear blue sky and the mercury parked at 70 degrees. The endless sea of rolling pines, broken in the distance only by the snow-capped peaks of Mount Adams, Stuart, and of course, mighty Rainier. We stopped three or four times in the first hour just to gawk. Those views could’ve had us staring all day, but the fear of getting stuck at altitude after dark kept us moving.
Higher in the Cascades we meet a few obstacles, an awkward trundle over a set of logs and a plunge through a muddy watering hole. Until now, I use the GX’s full-time all-wheel drive and Dirt mode in the Multi-Terrain Select system to get around. The 3.4-liter twin-turbo V-6 and its 479 pound-feet make for easy cruising over light imperfections, and would likely carry us the distance.
Despite that, I flip the GX into 4Low for these challenges, not just to make sure I’d have the extra torque, but also to ensure the truck’s Electronic Kinetic Dynamic Suspension System (e-KDSS) is active.
The e-KDSS disconnects the front and rear sway bars using hydraulically controlled pistons on the bars, allowing for more than two feet of individual wheel articulation when necessary, while keeping body roll and suspension travel in check the rest of the time. That means surpassing on-road comfort paired to unsurpassed off-road capability.
The GX’s ECU actuates e-KDSS automatically, factoring in steering angle, vehicle speed, and lateral g-forces to determine when to connect and disconnect the bars. Depending on which mode you’ve selected, the system may even preemptively disconnect the bars to prepare the truck for tougher terrain. Going into 4Low unlocks a Rock-crawling mode for the Multi-Terrain system, better optimizing traction for low-speed maneuvers with lots of suspension travel.
I have no doubt the GX would’ve aced this stuff without using 4Low, but the Lexus’s off-road systems turned alpine obstacles into nothing more than speed bumps. All I had to do was point the steering wheel, watch my spotter, and press the gas pedal.
The most challenging part of the journey came later in the day. While most of the trails we used had plenty of room for error, a steep, loose-gravel climb presented us with a rock face to one side and a sheer cliff on the other. In doing my research for this trip, this was the only obstacle I felt stressed about. Turns out I didn’t have to worry at all.
Our photographer’s Tacoma needed a second try to scale the steep climb, but the Lexus made it feel like a march up any San Francisco street. With 4Low engaged, I use the GX’s front-facing camera to stick to the narrow path as the car GX crawls upward. No spinning tires, no weird steering jolts, no drama. The GX handles everything with grace, thanks mostly to its terrain-specific traction system, which distributes power seamlessly up the messy slope.
As we descend to the town of Wenatchee, the scenery turns to storybook perfection. The sun sits low in the West, its rays draping a golden cloak over the land below. Birds chirp and a light breeze pushes the crisp alpine air over my face. Like one of those dream sequences from a movie, it feels too perfect to be true. Except it is. It’s truly the most beautiful slice of nature I’ve ever experienced.
Day Two
Leg four of the Washington BDR picks up right where leg three ends, in the small town of Cashmere, just northwest of Wenatchee. After a few minutes carving up a paved section of trail, we dive right back in, straight through the heart of the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.
The scenery in this section looked surprisingly different from leg three. After climbing to the nearest peak to soak in more comically perfect views, we turn inland and North, trundling past pines and spruces, using the GX’s 360-degree camera system to avoid any bigger branches.
This truck is about as big as I’d want to have on trails like this, just thin enough to squeeze through the tightest sections without crawling past every protruding branch. Any bigger, and the pinstripes this GX’s paint picked up would’ve turned into real, right-to-the-metal scratches.
After a couple hours snaking up and down cliff sides, we arrive at an arid valley scarred by recent fires. At the same time, the road opens up and the gravel smoothes, giving us the opportunity to speed things up. The GX550 can travel over dirt terrain at highway speeds comfortably, it turns out. It’s amazing what a bunch of sidewall and a well-tuned set of shocks can do.
Throughout this journey the V-6 and 10-speed transmission remain steadfast and pleasantly responsive, fading into the background to make sure the rest of the GX could perform without hiccups. With 349 horsepower on tap, it’s more than powerful enough to push this 5,675-pound behemoth up a collection of rocks, and sufficiently potent for quick highway on-ramp blasts. By itself, the drivetrain isn’t very memorable. But it contributes to an overall feeling of resolution and cohesion.
The only hiccup during two days off of pavement is the GX’s inability to switch between 4High and 4Low on the fly. You still have to come to a stop and pop the gearbox into neutral to switch the transfer case.
Also, optioning the Overtrail trim deletes the third row, which sucks if you want to take a bunch of people on adventures with you. But as far as complaints go, those two are it. The cabin is an excellent mix of physical buttons and big screens, laid out in an easy-to-learn, logical fashion. The materials are good, and the seating position is nice and high, for solid visibility, even when you’re tilted 20 degrees sideways off-road. This is easily one of the best all-round vehicles I’ve ever driven, a wildly impressive machine that looks good and performs flawlessly.
Towards the end of leg four, the BDR’s roads treat us to one last breathtaking scene: An unbroken view of Lake Chelan, a thin, 50-mile long body of water that stands as the third-deepest lake in the United States. It’s home to the vacation town that bears its name, and the hotel marking the end of our expedition.
The GX’s dusty haunches and that timeless Western landscape remind us why we turn to Japanese trucks in the first place. We entrust our families, friends, lives, to these trucks, simply because they have a better way of getting you where you’re going for decades after they leave the assembly line. Our very American obsessions with preparedness and self-reliance are best served from behind the wheel of a truck like this. (So too, our obsession with the projection of capability).
Facing the ever-daunting, always variable wilderness of this nation, it’s Japanese trucks, the most reliable things available, that we turn to. That relationship has stood for decades, and judging by this GX, it won’t change any time soon.
