61 replies to this topic

[busboy66]

After reading DD's flat tire/wrong lugnut adventure, that poor guy that parked his truck and camper in a river bed and SunMan's short circuit/meltdown, I wondered how many of you had really been in the weeds metaphorically and realistically speaking. What you did to get out of it?

This could mean breakdowns, wrecks, stuck vehicles, pissed off animals, bad weather, what have you.

We have been lucky so far. I Only had to grab the hatchet once for self preservation. I just thought a few heroic tales might embolden others trying new things.

[Stan@FourWheel]

My first thought was ... "Don't Ever Eat Hot Links in the West !"

This story below was posted by someone awhile back.

I don't think you could even make up a better story than this.



_____________________________________________________________________________


. . . Here's some more detail on how this fiasco happened:

I ate lunch last Tuesday at a restaurant located on a nearby trout stream. Hot-link sandwich and a beer. Although I'd told my wife I was merely going to lunch, I got a wild hair and started scouting the river for some likely spots.

A couple hours later, headed home, I stopped at a liquor store and bought a 12-pack of Killians and a pack of smokes. Then I headed home on a back road that I knew well and had driven often.

At this point I became aware of some acute gastrointestinal problems. Bad hot links? I needed privacy, fast, and I turned off the road and up a side road. After taking care of my business, I decided that I had put the truck in a position that I couldn't back it up, and would have to continue forward.

For a couple miles, the road seemed totally reasonable. It was headed in the right direction and Tuesday was a beautiful Colorado spring day. So I continued on. After all, I had four-wheel drive! For reasons I can't really explain, I continued up this road even when it became more difficult. And then another wave of nausea hit, and I blindly kept going up this road. Why I can't really say, except that my judgment was clouded by illness.

I'm not a 4-wheeling kind of guy. I have it on my truck for snowstorms, mud season and for the occasional trip over a rough road. But performing tricks on hazardous mountain roads has never appealed to me. I'd rather die by sliding off a barstool than sliding off a mountain road.

Soon I had hit snow, the terrain became undulating, and I was sliding down the mountain -- skiing in my truck, for chrissakes! I crashed the truck several times, but couldn't turn around. Then more nausea. Finally I came to a place where I couldn't continue. I was utterly off the road and lost as hell. And physically and emotionally exhausted. I keep camping gear in my truck, as I always do, and collapsed in my bag. Don't believe I ever slept that night because I was still dealing with nausea and, of course, fright.

At 5 a.m. Wednesday, I got up and started a fire. Plenty of fuel to be had, and soon it was blazing high. I got in my truck, turned on my flashing lights and began belting out S.O.S. on my horn. Surely someone would notice.

Then I began to wonder whether today's Internet savvy kids even recognize Morse Code. Would they think I was some crank just amusing myself? S.O.S.? What's that?

When the sun came up fully, I started throwing fresh pine boughs and rotten wood on the fire, to create as much smoke as possible. I was pretty certain that the authorities would be looking for me by now. And I surveyed the position of my truck and decided it would be suicidal to drive off this mountain.

I still was feeling weak and still nauseous with no hunger. Good things, because my emergency cans of chili had disappeared from my camping box. (Probably got hungry one night at home and fixed myself a pot, only to forget to replace it.)

So I finished off my 12 pack and thanked God for the Irish and their devotion to good beverage. I longed for a shot or three of Jameson, but that was futile. Actually I was longing for a lot of things. Finally I collapsed in my bag and had a solid night's sleep. The next morning, I was damn certain, help would arrive.

The next morning, help never arrived, even though I'd repeated the signaling with the truck lights and the bonfire. I listened intently to KOA radio, hoping to hear that a search had been launched. Turns out, it had been, but KOA never reported it. Had they done so, I would have stayed put.

By noon, I was convinced that no human had ever encountered the terrain where I was stuck. If I wanted to survive this ordeal, I'd have to save myself. And that, I feared, could prove fatal. By now I was hungry and wondering what kind of greul I could brew up with some fresh pine needles). Just driving up this mountain had damn near killed me. Driving down in a weakened state? Through deep snow with no road underneath? Unthinkable, yet I had to do it.

I knew from my trip odometer that I was 14.3 miles into the woods from the highway. That was too far to tackle on foot and almost surely I'd get lost trying to do it. At least with my truck, I had a survival system in case I got stuck again.

So I found a ballpoint pen and began writing a note to Becky, explaining why I might not be around for our 35th anniversary later this year. In a very perfect metaphor for the whole damn trip, the pen ran out of ink after two sentences.

Further discouraged, I screwed up my courage and headed down the mountain. The first mile took more than an hour. After a couple miles, I was certain I would make it, and finally I did.

If there's a moral to this story, I suppose it is this: Beware of hot links sandwiches anywhere in the West.



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[SunMan]

I've mentioned this here before but once while camped in Cottonwood Canyon in DV we realized as we were breaking camp that my battery was dead in my truck. It is about a 15 mile one way hike to Stovepipe Wells and it was raining, not to mention Superbowl Sunday. I'd often wondered if I would be able to jump my rig with my house battery in an emergency. Fortunately for me I found out it was indeed possible. That would have been one real crappy walk.

[Ted]

The same trip as DD's flat tire experience was probably our biggest oops. Sorry, dear, my biggest oops. It was the trip that earned me the Magellan moniker.
Earlier in that trip we camped with DD at Soldier Meadows hot springs. It had been raining heavily for several days and the roads were pretty muddy. Rather than go out Soldier Meadows Road, I was convinced we could make it out by taking a route over to High Rock Lake and connect up to County Road 34 by the petrified forest. The campground host didn't recommend this route because of the recent weather. My thought was that only the low desert roads were affected by the rain. The roads over the mountains would be rocky and not as muddy. I assured my wife we would be fine, said our goodbyes to DD, and headed out. As DD says in his trip report, "Cue the Gilligan's Island music."

Going over the hills was much as I expected. Rocky, with occasional large, slippery puddles. The scenery was nice and we stopped for photos off and on. The descent into the valley that is home to High Rock Lake had some really slick spots, so we were keeping it in 4x4 low. Once down in the valley, the road was a typical desert road bladed through the sagebrush. About ten feet wide with no way to pull off or turn around. As the valley floor leveled out, the puddles got longer - like 100 feet long. And then they didn't end. The valley floor was flooded. I couldn't pull over or turn around. I was afraid to stop because I thought the lack of momentum would cause us to sink in the mud and be stuck until it dried out. I remember thinking my wife had food and water and would be ok on the camper for a couple of days while I walked back to civilization to get help.

This went on for about a mile. Neither of us were talking, just holding our breath and hoping for the best. Then up ahead was a slight rise on the road, about 20 feet that was wet but above the standing water. And for just that little section the road was wider. We stopped and finally exhaled. I told my wife I didn't know what was ahead and the road could get worse. But we made it this far and if we could turn around we could make it back. And that is what we did. About a 7-point u-turn and back into the water, up the slippery slope, across the mountains, and back into Soldier Meadows. As luck would have it, there was DD. He snapped a picture of our truck as we drove up. It kind of tells the story of what we had been through. BTW, if you ever see us on the road, you'll notice I'm not usually the driver anymore.

[LT Traveler]

We killed the truck battery 35 miles down Hole in the Rock Road outside Escalante, Ut. Hole in the Rock Road is a 55 mile dead end dirt road and we were actually about a mile off that down a dead end spir road. We hadn't seen another sole in 3 days. Freaked out for about a minute, calmed ourselves down and then loaded up packs with food, water, sun screen and dog food and started hiking.

The plan was to hike the mile out to the main dirt road and sit there all day and hope for someone. At the end of the day if no one arrived we'd return to the truck(where we had tons of food, water and beer) spend the night and do the same the next day. After a couple days of this with no luck we'd have to hike the 35+ miles out to the main blacktop at night(to avoid the 100+ degree heat during the day) to find help. Unless of course we found someone along the way.

We started hiking the spur road to begin our vigil and less than 5 minutes from the truck a car turned down our side spur road! We had jumper cables he jumped out battery and we were good to go! Could have turned epic, but literally 20 minutes after realizing we were screwed we were up and running. Crazy!

[SunMan]

The same trip as DD's flat tire experience was probably our biggest oops. Sorry, dear, my biggest oops. It was the trip that earned me the Magellan moniker.
Earlier in that trip we camped with DD at Soldier Meadows hot springs. It had been raining heavily for several days and the roads were pretty muddy. Rather than go out Soldier Meadows Road, I was convinced we could make it out by taking a route over to High Rock Lake and connect up to County Road 34 by the petrified forest. The campground host didn't recommend this route because of the recent weather. My thought was that only the low desert roads were affected by the rain. The roads over the mountains would be rocky and not as muddy. I assured my wife we would be fine, said our goodbyes to DD, and headed out. As DD says in his trip report, "Cue the Gilligan's Island music."

Going over the hills was much as I expected. Rocky, with occasional large, slippery puddles. The scenery was nice and we stopped for photos off and on. The descent into the valley that is home to High Rock Lake had some really slick spots, so we were keeping it in 4x4 low. Once down in the valley, the road was a typical desert road bladed through the sagebrush. About ten feet wide with no way to pull off or turn around. As the valley floor leveled out, the puddles got longer - like 100 feet long. And then they didn't end. The valley floor was flooded. I couldn't pull over or turn around. I was afraid to stop because I thought the lack of momentum would cause us to sink in the mud and be stuck until it dried out. I remember thinking my wife had food and water and would be ok on the camper for a couple of days while I walked back to civilization to get help.

This went on for about a mile. Neither of us were talking, just holding our breath and hoping for the best. Then up ahead was a slight rise on the road, about 20 feet that was wet but above the standing water. And for just that little section the road was wider. We stopped and finally exhaled. I told my wife I didn't know what was ahead and the road could get worse. But we made it this far and if we could turn around we could make it back. And that is what we did. About a 7-point u-turn and back into the water, up the slippery slope, across the mountains, and back into Soldier Meadows. As luck would have it, there was DD. He snapped a picture of our truck as we drove up. It kind of tells the story of what we had been through. BTW, if you ever see us on the road, you'll notice I'm not usually the driver anymore.

Ted,
I don't know about you but I'll always wonder if you could have made it!

[pods8]

Ted,
I don't know about you but I'll always wonder if you could have made it!

+1.


No really crazy adventures with the FWC. I've had some more interesting event in college in the UP of michigan, bombing around in snow and wheeling in the woods.

[home skillet]

Ted,
I don't know about you but I'll always wonder if you could have made it!

+2.


In all the years that we have been "out there" (many times waaaay out there), we have never had a real scare (that sound is me knocking on wood).
I did have to coast my 1977 FJ40 1.5 miles into Lakeview, OR with a blown clutch line and burned up distributor cap. That really wasn't such a big deal except that we were headed out into the northern Nevada desert (coulda been worse).
The best part of that whole trip was meeting a guy named Bill who was an old school Harley guy living in a single wide trailer with a barn chalked full of all kinds of old car parts. He had a long scraggly beard and a real talent for systematically replacing parts until he found out what was really wrong.


Long story short: Bill got back on the road and we were able to limp the FJ back to Bend. We still talk to Bill from time to time.

Home Skillet

[busboy66]

Awesome (scary too)

So far, besides the bad sammich, mostly equipment failure. I guess that speaks volumes about the need for preparation.

No bears, skunks, snakes, sink holes, propane leaks etc?

[MarkBC]

"We're fvkt!!"
My true story of, if not horror then at least serious anxiety during a truck-camping-travel adventure.
I guess it's also kind of a trip report, so bear with my very long story...or not – just look at the pictures.

The year was 1995, early June it was -- June because we had to wait for one of the 3 of us to be done with his community college teaching job for the year. We were headed to remote, little-visited, Smith Creek Canyon on the east side of the Snake Range in extreme-eastern Nevada, about 20 miles north of 50/6, accessed (for the first 25 miles) by a good-quality graded gravel road that takes off from US 50/6 in Nevada then crosses over into Utah for most of its route north, parallel to the NV/UT border.



Taking off the this gravel county road, the Smith Creek road then crosses back into NV to head up Smith Creek Canyon along the creek, the valley walls rising up to limestone cliffs. It was late spring, the valley floor was green, yucca were in bloom.



We were 3 guys in two Toyota/Nissan 4x4 pickups with canopies/caps. Since it was spring, the creek was running pretty heavy, and there were several fords required as the road crossed back and forth. The next-to-the-last stream-crossing wasn't a ford; the stream went through a big culvert -- maybe 20 feet long and 3+ feet diameter, so it was a flat crossing on dirt.
If this was a movie, one of the characters would have said at this crossing, "Man, I sure am glad this culvert is here!" (cue ominous music).

We spent a couple of nights camped at the end of the road, near the edge of a wilderness area. We did a great hike up the canyon, one with many stream-wades as the trail (a former jeep trail at first), constrained by the narrow canyon's steep walls, wound back and forth across the creek. But since it was sunny and warm we didn't mind the wading.
Sunny and warm...so there was a lot of snow melt. In fact, on the second night the creek rose enough that it almost touched the bag of the guy who was sleeping next to it. During that night around the campfire we thought we heard boulders shifting/rolling somewhere nearby downstream, moving under the force of the spring flood. (cue more ominous music)

Our trip out began with this stream ford, Jim leading in his truck, the ford deeper than it had been on the trip in...(more ominous music) :





We went a couple hundred yards further, round the bend to the culvert-crossing...that is -- (cue "Psycho"-shower-scene-like shreak-music)-- where the culvert had been!




That big culvert had been completely washed out, away, downstream! That had been the “boulder” noise we’d heard the night before!

"We're fvkt!!", Jim exclaimed, as we got out of our rigs to gape -- shocked -- at the sight! It was a >4-foot drop with straight-walled sides down to the stream -- no way to ford this former culvert-crossing.
We wandered downstream a bit – found the big culvert where it had been carried almost 50 feet from where it was supposed to be, walked down further and proceeded to try to build a ford in a low-banked spot. But every rock and boulder that we threw into the stream – those small enough that we could lift or even roll – was immediately carried away by the force of the water. The canyon walls came in next to the stream, so there was no way to go very far upstream or down that would have led “out”. No way to drive out without crossing at the former-culvert spot, which our trucks couldn't do. We were indeed “fvkt”!!

So, what to do?!?! We realized that we could walk out to “civilization”…maybe take a bus home… but neither Jim nor I considered abandoning our rigs an acceptable option. (Larry, passenger, didn't have that concern -- lucky him. )

Jim decided that he would ride his mt bike down to the main road, find someone...see what they might suggest, get help somehow. With some old climbing rope we put Jim (with bike) on belay to get across the rushing stream, after that he was on his own as he rode down the canyon. (He later told us that at another crossing downstream he had been knocked off his feet by the water and almost lost the bike!)

A few hours later Jim returned with, as it turned out, the perfect guy that he could have found – a Mr. King who was a deputy sheriff (in Utah’s Millard County) as well as an employee at Great Basin National Park – a guy with the right connections. He surveyed the situation and told us to sit tight where we were overnight, that he’s send some help up the next day. I was still mighty worried that night about what was going to happen with my truck.

Next morning we saw coming up the road on the other side of the creek a big front-end loader with two guys from the Millard Co (UT) road dept., who regularly work on the main gravel road on the Utah side, though we were in Nevada. Their plan was to use the loader to scoop out the banks of the stream where the road crossed to make it a ford.
But before they would do anything they threw across the stream a clipboard with a statement for us to sign absolving them of any responsibility if the USFS got mad about someone doing unauthorized road/stream work in the national forest. While we were surprised and a little concerned by this legal angle, it was a reasonable request – and really, what choice did we have?

So, we signed the waiver, threw it back across the stream and the front-end loader went to work. In literally a few seconds – a minute at most– the loader had carved out a ford. But the water was still too deep and too fast to ford in our light-weight rigs without serious risk of being swept away by the flood. So, using a long chain that I happened to have in my truck, the loader towed us across; We were saved!







The water actually surged clear over the windshield!! Being somewhat clueless about really-deep fords I didn’t think about the possibility of sucking water into my engine while the hood was submerged, so I had the engine still running at this point. But, apparently, no water got sucked in anyway. The two guys with the loader towed us through one more deeply-flooded ford, too.

We were so relieved and very grateful! We offered these Millard Co road workers a case of beer for their trouble, but they declined – either because they were on duty or (we assumed) because they were devout Mormons. So, we relaxed with a beer (or a few) for a while, then headed south towards the UT/NV border and the wonderful/funky Border Inn.
Funny thing: a few miles south on that main gravel road we came upon one of the road crew – the younger of the two, by himself this time. He walked over to us and said, “Do you guys have any herb?" (Hmmm…"no thanks" to beer, but “herb” is OK with his religion/job?…or maybe he was able to ask now because his boss wasn't around). Well, we didn’t have any herb (surprisingly, for the era), so we said, “No, sorry, but thanks again”, and we were on our way again.

For several months afterward I had the dread that I’d get an angry/official/legal letter from the USFS about the unauthorized “procedure” that had been done to Smith Creek….but we never did. Two years later I revisited the same spot, and there is still no culvert – just the deep ford cut by the Millard Co Road Dept – to rescue us, a crossing which is actually quite ford-able if not during spring flood.