Easter Jeep Safari, and the week it takes.

The 2027 event runs from 20 to 28 March 2027. The dates move every year because the event is built around Easter, so they are never the same week two years running, and that is the single most important planning fact about it. Registration for 2027 opens in January 2027 and stays open on the Red Rock 4-Wheelers event pages until the trails fill. The 2026 edition was the sixtieth annual, and the club running it is the oldest four-wheel drive club in Moab.

Seventy five dollars per vehicle per trail day, and a trail usually takes the better part of a day. You register for specific trail days rather than for the event as a whole, which is why the cost is quoted that way rather than as a single entry fee. Registration opens in January for the March event, and the popular trails go first. Packet pickup happens at the Spanish Trail Arena, and it is closed on Big Saturday and Easter Sunday, so the paperwork has to be done earlier in the week.

The club accepts full-size street-legal four-wheel drive vehicles of all kinds, plus street-legal rock buggies. A stock four-wheel drive can handle many of the trails rated at the lower difficulty levels, which is the honest answer most first-time entrants want. The harder trails on the grid call for high-clearance, seriously modified vehicles. The trail ratings on the published grid are written by people who run these routes constantly, and the mistake is not misreading them but deciding your vehicle is an exception.

The final Saturday of the event and its largest single day, sitting immediately before Easter Sunday. Registration and packet pickup are closed on both Big Saturday and Easter Sunday, which is worth reading twice: it means the administrative side of the week has to be completed before the two days most people are in town for. Packet pickup at the Spanish Trail Arena runs 7am to 10am from the first Saturday through Wednesday, and 7am to 6pm on Thursday and Friday.

Only if that is why you are coming. During the event lodging is booked out months ahead at prices set accordingly, US-191 through town moves at walking pace, restaurants run at capacity at every hour rather than only at peak, and the popular trails are spoken for. US-191 is also the only route north to both national park entrances. A Moab park trip landing inside Safari week is a materially worse trip for reasons that have nothing to do with the parks themselves.

Across the whole system around Moab, with a heavy concentration in the Sand Flats Recreation Area east of town, which carries close to thirty miles of jeep trail including Hell's Revenge and Fins and Things, both within walking distance of the Slickrock Bike Trail car park. West of town, Poison Spider climbs onto the mesa above the river off SR-279. Beyond both, the network runs out on Bureau of Land Management roads in every direction, which is what lets dozens of separate runs go out on the same day.

Yes. Outside the event they are open ground, with a gate fee where the Sand Flats Recreation Area applies: 10 dollars for a private vehicle for seven days, 5 dollars for a bicycle or motorcycle, or a 35 dollar annual pass. Most federal passes are not honoured there. What changes in Safari week is the volume of traffic and the presence of a volunteer leader on every run. The vehicle requirements do not change at all: a trail that needs a modified high-clearance vehicle in March needs one in September.

The Red Rock 4-Wheelers, a Moab club and the oldest four-wheel drive club in the town. The event is built as a grid of trails against days, with a set number of vehicles permitted on each trail on each day and a volunteer leader assigned to every run. It is not a race and it is not a vehicle show, although manufacturers have long used the week to display concept vehicles. Registration, the trail grid and the current year's dates all live on the club's own website.

Stricter than the regulations require, and the club sets them that way deliberately. The event runs on public land at the discretion of the agencies managing it, and the argument for keeping it there is made by the condition of the ground afterwards. Stay on the designated route rather than widening it, do not cut around obstacles onto undisturbed ground, and treat the cryptobiotic soil crust between the rock as the living surface it is, because a single tyre track through it takes decades to recover.