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Buried the Off-Road.
Was out to shoot some aerial video in the mountains outside Denver, easy enough...I thought. After heading up 1 of 3 ways to get to the plots, I turned back because snow was getting pretty deep and drifted. I tried a second route that turned rather narrow and snowpack and backed out on that option as well. So far, so good...4Runner was doing great with the rough roads.
On to option 3, the last option. The road started out wide and dry, quickly turning wet but still muck, no snow. After about a mile and a half we run into alot of frozen melt sheets. Basically large sections of solid ice. Easy peasy over that and I carried on. I was getting within a zone I could fly and photo graph the lots without signal interruption. The ice turned to packed snow that turned to deep somewhat packed snow the further I went and noticeably next to nobody else had ventured. I decided to stop at a 3-way section of the road that would allow me to turn around...maybe safely and get back out.
I was wrong, with a subtle veer to the left to make the best of the few point turn, the front driver wheel just sank, not just sank but sank deep. I immediately stopped, put it in 4L (from 4H) and crawl mode low in reverse, hoping I would be able to back out in my exact tracks. This felt like it might work for a moment until the back shifted a few - 6" to the left and down it went into the deep drifted ditch of snow. I tried rocking, I tried locking, I tried it all but when I tried to open my door. I knew I was boned. The 4Runner had sunk into the spring crunchy/melty deep snow up to and step bar and only allowed the driver door to open maybe 10".
After some effort, I resigned to the fact I wasn't getting out of this alone. A few folks on 4-wheelers from out of town came by and tried their winch, no dice. I recruited my brother via a single bar of LTE service to wrangle a recovery truck to venture up to my lat/long. A few hours passed as the driver came in a standard tow truck for some reason and had to return to get a jeep and tools. Once he did, he even decide to not try the road and walked up with traction boards and a shovel. That didn't last long as neither helped, even with a low crawl in reverse or forward.
The big hurdle was getting out of the what was clear a cut in the side of the road for water run-off that was very well concealed by snow drifting. Like a sneaky trap door!
The recovery driver finally decide to try the road in his jeep and made it without issue. We successfully used Yankum ropes to get the 4Runner out of its resting place but we were still stuck down in the deep stuff. After a few tries rocking back/forth in crawl we wiggled up enough to give it one more yank and was able to pull the 4Runner back onto the very narrow icy but packed surface.
It was a delicate dance down in reverse crawl until I could turn around at a point lower down the road.
In the end, it was a good experience, a first stuck (glad to get that out of the way) and a good to know on some of the limitations getting out of that kind of jam.
Bring on that hate folks
Was out to shoot some aerial video in the mountains outside Denver, easy enough...I thought. After heading up 1 of 3 ways to get to the plots, I turned back because snow was getting pretty deep and drifted. I tried a second route that turned rather narrow and snowpack and backed out on that option as well. So far, so good...4Runner was doing great with the rough roads.
On to option 3, the last option. The road started out wide and dry, quickly turning wet but still muck, no snow. After about a mile and a half we run into alot of frozen melt sheets. Basically large sections of solid ice. Easy peasy over that and I carried on. I was getting within a zone I could fly and photo graph the lots without signal interruption. The ice turned to packed snow that turned to deep somewhat packed snow the further I went and noticeably next to nobody else had ventured. I decided to stop at a 3-way section of the road that would allow me to turn around...maybe safely and get back out.
I was wrong, with a subtle veer to the left to make the best of the few point turn, the front driver wheel just sank, not just sank but sank deep. I immediately stopped, put it in 4L (from 4H) and crawl mode low in reverse, hoping I would be able to back out in my exact tracks. This felt like it might work for a moment until the back shifted a few - 6" to the left and down it went into the deep drifted ditch of snow. I tried rocking, I tried locking, I tried it all but when I tried to open my door. I knew I was boned. The 4Runner had sunk into the spring crunchy/melty deep snow up to and step bar and only allowed the driver door to open maybe 10".
After some effort, I resigned to the fact I wasn't getting out of this alone. A few folks on 4-wheelers from out of town came by and tried their winch, no dice. I recruited my brother via a single bar of LTE service to wrangle a recovery truck to venture up to my lat/long. A few hours passed as the driver came in a standard tow truck for some reason and had to return to get a jeep and tools. Once he did, he even decide to not try the road and walked up with traction boards and a shovel. That didn't last long as neither helped, even with a low crawl in reverse or forward.
The big hurdle was getting out of the what was clear a cut in the side of the road for water run-off that was very well concealed by snow drifting. Like a sneaky trap door!
The recovery driver finally decide to try the road in his jeep and made it without issue. We successfully used Yankum ropes to get the 4Runner out of its resting place but we were still stuck down in the deep stuff. After a few tries rocking back/forth in crawl we wiggled up enough to give it one more yank and was able to pull the 4Runner back onto the very narrow icy but packed surface.
It was a delicate dance down in reverse crawl until I could turn around at a point lower down the road.
In the end, it was a good experience, a first stuck (glad to get that out of the way) and a good to know on some of the limitations getting out of that kind of jam.
Bring on that hate folks
