I was part of a wildlife group some years ago. The group was about preserving big horn sheep. I needed to go into remote areas to do my inspections. Normally I went alone. The issue here is, after a while it becomes routine and you stop paying attention to your surroundings.
This particular trip I was headed out into the Mojave Preserve. What that means is, no one is allowed to drive there so, no people and no possibility of people. I managed to talk my wife into letting me drive her new, dark green, 2wd S-10 Blazer. The road wasn’t bad and I had no need for 4wd. The truck got twice the fuel milage and was way more comfy than my 1979 CJ7.
Here I am, cruising about 30mph down a dirt road, shifted my attention to the side and drove into a sand wash. Now the sand wash was something new (It rained real hard) and was never across the road.
The general rule here is, when you hit sand, increase speed and float over the top and get back on hard ground. If you start to spin tires and dig, you let off the gas. Almost made it. I ended up 30 feet from hard pack and the sand was so soft, I literally sank to my frame.
A few issues here.
- no one knew where I was.
- Way out of cell range.
- no recovery tools
- No chance of anyone driving past
- about a thirty mile walk from the closest civilization.
UGH. My tool arsenal was a two gallon bucket and the factory scissor jack. For the next SIX hours I had to dig out using the bucket and build a road out of rocks. OH….forgot, there were no rocks. I had to “import” rocks from around the area using my plastic bucket. A note here, the road needed to be four-plus times wider than the tire. Build a base for the jack, lift vehicle, dig out tire with bucket, install rocks and watch as rocks “squish” to the sides when you lower the vehicle down on top of them. UGH, again.
Did I mention it took me six hours to build this?
Managed to make my way to hard pack, scratching the sides of my wife’s new Blazer (Did I mention it was dark green?). Needless to say, I ended up polishing out the truck the next day.
One would think getting stuck like that would teach me to pay more attention. Well……..No
It did do one thing, showed me the need for an SUV. I bought a 1991 Cherokee. Now i have 4wd, better milage and an enclosed cabin. YAY…luxury.
About six months later I went on a trip up north with some friends to explore the area around a ghost town named Bodie. South of there is a lake called Mono Lake. On the back side are cool formations called Tufa’s. At one time, there was a rail line that went from the lake to the town. We decided to follow this route and come into the back side of Bodie. The route was very smooth with small sand sections. Keeping my speed up in the Cherokee, I just floated over them.
All was good until the road (which was lined with five foot tall bushes) took an abrupt left turn at the top of a rise. What I didn’t notice was the left turn was the side of a sand dune. What do you do when on soft sand? Speed up.
I accelerated a bit, trying to cut across the face of this dune and get back to hard pack. In theory, that’s a great idea. What actually happened was I ended up stuck on my frame (again) at the bottom of the dune. No hard pack here (no rocks either). I radioed my friends and had them stop at the top. What we found was, I was out of range of the winch line and all the straps. At least we had recovery gear (sort of). For the next several hours, we dragged dead brush into a pile, laid it down, criss crossing them into a multi layer lattice “road”. We made about thirty feet of road and got me on top of it. I drove (slowly) to the end. We pulled up what I already drove on and placed it in my path, leapfrogging our road bed until I was close enough to be winched.
By the time we got me back to the road, almost four hours had passed. We did conclude that the route we were following came to an end there.
What did I (finally) learn from this?
Nothing, still end up stuck in dumb places. At least I have better recovery gear now.
