| The property that the cabin resides on
is a large track of land. The back end of the property which is surrounded by state game
land goes down into a small valley with a stream running though it. Parallel to the
stream is an access road which occasionally gets used for a short trip to the lower end of
the property, sometimes for firewood, other times for fun. This time, because the
conditions were what the were we thought if we're going to play we might as well play
close to home. That way if someone gets stuck we are close to base camp. |
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 I
have to say that a Toyota Land Cruiser
is a damn good vehicle to be fourwheeling offroad with. It has a large high output
engine which sends plenty of torque to it's all time four wheel drive system with fully
locking front and rear differentials. Over the weekend (as with every offroad trip)
it was THE best performing 4x4 of the bunch. In one instance I lost traction
crawling up a hill and the next thing I see is this big black Land Cruiser go off the
trail and around me up the hill. The expression on the face of the guy driving the
thing was one of "What's the problem??". Just for that, Stephen, come
spring I'm putting in a rear locker in my truck. That being said let me just say it
is a heavy vehicle. Probably 2 1/2 tons worth of steel and aluminum. So when they
can't dig themselves out with their fully locking front and rear differentials, you know
something is holding this beast back. In this case it was a 15 inch log downed
across the trail. We all hopped over it on the first pass. The Land Cruiser
suffered some minimal running board damage as it came down on the log (nothing to write
home about). On the return trip it's left front tire hopped over but then it seemed
to be suspended on the front frame. All FOUR tire digging holes. Ok... no
problem. |
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| Minor running board damage. |
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| You don't see it to well in these pictures but there's a large log hidden under the
ice and snow. In normal situations it would have presented no real obstacle to any of us,
especially a Land Cruiser, but with the icy conditions it made it that much more difficult
to gain any traction. |
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| First we tried pulling the Land Cruiser backwards off the log however the truck doing
the pulling just slipped. We thought about lining the vehicles up in a chain and
pulling back. That's not always a good choice in some situations so we decided to
just work on the log. |
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| First thing we tried to do is cut the excess of the log off on both sides. A
chain saw is always a nice piece of standard equipment. You never know when it might
come in handy. We also dug the piled up snow away from the tires. Then we
tried pulling the front of the Land Cruiser towards the tree which would line the front
wheels up closer to parallel with the log. That got it to grab going forward but
then it was still hung up underneath. It probably could have extracted itself from
this position but we thought at the time we could use some more firewood for the cabin
that night. So we proceeded to hack it up and pull it out from under the vehicle. |
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| Using another piece of standard equipment, the High Lift Jack, we lifted the rear of
the Land Cruiser and pulled pieces of the log out from the sides. |
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| As unforseen situations come up such as this one
it just goes to demostrate that having the right recovery equipment is a must when you're
out fourwheeling in remote areas. Just about everyone on this trip encountered a
sticky situation that required some assistance. Most situations were taken care of
with good push from some fellow fourwheelers or a quick yank of the 20,000 pound tow strap
(too quick for a photo). This situation just happened to stop us long enough to
take some pictures. |
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