Sean P. Holman
When trails attack!
It was spring of 2003 when I got a group of good friends together to explore one of my favorite 'wheeling destinations, Death Valley National Park. We decided to make it a four-day trip, so we could get a couple good days of backcountry exploration in. With the complete examination of Death Valley in mind, we conquered such trails as the Lippencott Mine Road, Pleasant Canyon, the Race Track, Saline Valley Road, Echo Canyon, Surprise Canyon, all without any issues, saving the easier Goler Wash for the end, putting a more relaxing cap on an otherwise excellent and challenging trip.
With just a couple hours of daylight left, we departed the ghost town of Ballarat for Goler Canyon Wash, where we were looking forward to seeing the infamous Charles Manson hideout, Barker Ranch. After a while of exploring the ranch, everyone's curiosity was satisfied and our group charged hard down the trail, trying to make it back to the highway before sunset. Goler Canyon is a hard-packed dirt road with sections of washes, and we were making good time traversing it as a group.
With just over 25 miles to go, dusk was hot on our tails when, with a loud bang and a sharp jerk, my truck took an unexpected heading change skyward. Stopping immediately to survey the damage, I saw the intact tire and forged wheel, which only received minor cosmetic damage from the impact, momentarily setting my mind at ease. Looking around for what I had hit, it was apparent I came around the corner a little too hot in my 2002 Ford Ranger FX4, and never saw the boulder jutting out in the road, which I struck with my right tire and wheel. As I turned my attention to the underside of the truck, I could see that I paid the price for failing to abide by one of a 'wheeler's most important rules: Know what is on the other side of a rise. From the look of all of the power steering fluid on the ground, the collision forced the tie-rod into the steering rack, cracking the rack's body in several places, effectively stranding us in a lonely place known worldwide as Death Valley. Wanting desperately not to prove the name correct, we had to think fast and work as a team.
In typical Murphy's Law fashion, the weather started getting cool and the sun was setting fast, making each passing minute critical to our problem solving. At first glance, we thought we could bypass the power-steering pump by removing the serpentine belt from the pump's pulley, but we quickly discovered that the tensioner would not be able to take up that much slack. So much for Plan A. Our next path of reasoning had us digging through each rig's spare parts for a shorter belt, to no avail. With daylight waning and options fading fast, our last chance of making it out of the wash under our own power centered on being able to isolate the power steering-rack, while still keeping fluid in the power-steering pump. Our last hope was to connect the pump's high-pressure and return hoses to each other, effectively bypassing the rack. With fingers crossed, we filled up the pump and started the truck. As the truck idled, we cleaned up the trail of puked ATF from the desert floor, and verified our makeshift fix was holding pressure. With everything buttoned up, we started out cautiously down the trail.
Sure that we weren't leaking any more contaminants into the environment, we picked up the pace, experiencing a steering effort about 10 times worse than what you would expect from a fluidless power rack turning 33s. In fact, my Dad, who was riding shotgun with me that day, had to help grab the wheel around the sharper turns.
Amazingly enough, our temporary fix held, not only off the trail, but the whole way home. After seeing the rack out of the truck, to this day I am still amazed it didn't blow on the 350-mile trip home. The moral of the story: Know what's on the other side of a rise--or know how to get yourself home safely when you are careless and ram a boulder at speed.
Douglas McColloch
How many editors does it take to open a garage door?
I was going to write about getting stuck in downtown Detroit the night the Northeast Power Grid went out, but I'll stick to an example of how some basic "trail smarts" can bail you out of some unlikely places. In this case, it was my own garage.
It happened in 1991. One morning as I left home for work, I opened the door to the garage where I kept a Mitsubishi Mighty Max I'd been testing for Four Wheeler. (One of the truly great mini-trucks, I might add.) The garage, which sat behind the 1930s fourplex where I lived, was a rickety old hull - with an ancient waterlogged door and rusty coil springs to match - and when I jerked the door upward, whannnnnggggg!!!! A coil spring snapped, and the door collapsed on the left-hand side, coming to rest on the left-side spring bracket, halfway down the doorjamb.
Great! I had a garage door hanging on one spring, tilted askew and dangling diagonally at a neat 30-degree angle. It was easy enough to crawl underneath and clamber inside the truck, but when I tried to back out ... damn! The bed of the truck cleared easily enough, but that dangling door kept banging against the back of the cab. I tried backing out at various angles, but no matter which line I tried (it was a one-car garage, so there wasn't much room to maneuver, even for a mini-truck), I kept hitting that damn door. I was already late for work, and didn't have the time - or the tools, most likely - to remove the door altogether (and even if I had, it would've been far too heavy to move on my own). What to do? Assessing things closely, I surmised I only needed 4, maybe 5 inches of clearance to get the roof of the cab safely under the door. This was followed by several minutes of head-scratching.
Then ... Eureka! The four-wheeler miracle cure! Out came the ballpoint, jammed into the valvestems, and out went the air in the tires. Ever run a Mighty Max with stock tires at 3 psi on pavement? That's what I did - after the now-lowered Mitsu slithered under the garage door, eased down the driveway, and crawled half a mile to the nearest filling station (yep, in low-range). Maybe not a genuine "worst stuck," but a new twist on the concept of "airing down to get out." Thank goodness Super-Dutys hadn't been built yet.
John Stewart
Not just stuck, but stranded in a blizzard
For the well-prepared four-wheeler, getting stuck is a brief puzzle to be solved, and half the time, all part of the fun. But getting stuck someplace freezing, in the middle of an astounding blizzard, on a glacier in Iceland the size of the state of Rhode Island, where nobody can find you, much less rescue you ... well, you begin to wonder.
In this case, we had taken advantage of fine weather to successfully winch to the top of a 7,000-foot mountain, the highest place in Iceland, and plant a flag. Heading off the glacier that night, our caravan of five vehicles got hammered by a blinding blizzard, gusts that rocked the vehicles, and in the zero-visibility cold, broke down. Vaporlock claimed my vehicle. Another ran out of gas, another wedged into a crevice, and the next thing you know, we were all disabled in the middle of a wind-driven snowstorm so vicious, it packed snow into every crevice of the engine compartments. We holed up in the vehicles, unable to run the engines, with a few candy bars and a case of frozen Coke for food. After 24 hours, I was learning Icelandic by reading a copy of the telephone book. By the end of the second day, the frosty condensation from our breathing inside the Bronco was half an inch thick. By the third day, we were taking pictures of ourselves so that, when they found us - if they ever did - they would know what we looked like when we were alive. We could probably have lasted another week, maybe more. But fortunately, we didn't have to.
The next day, the weather broke and we were located by an Arctic Cat snowmobile. A team of four-wheelers reached us with gas, and in the clear sunlight, repairs were made. Aside from a case of snow-blindness and an involuntary crash diet, we were all fine.
Jimmy Nylund
Upside down and (not quite) on fire
It was in 1980, on a trail outside of Gorman, California. Technically, my Jeep wasn't stuck - I was. The seatbelt wouldn't unbuckle with my weight on it, and I couldn't reach the ground to push myself up enough to get loose. I also had a hard time reaching the ignition switch to turn the engine off. Meanwhile, battery acid was dripping down my back, but my thoughts were primarily focused on how the Holley carb could possibly keep the engine at a near-perfect idle while upside down.
Friends eventually helped me with the seatbelt, and the lessons I learned include: Don't use regular car-style seat belts; a rollcage would've protected me and the vehicle better than just a rollbar; and don't install wet batteries behind the seat (or anywhere near the occupants). Also, don't worry about how a carb can function upside down, or on its side -- just be glad it does and accept it.
Bruce W. Smith
Look before you leap
More embarrassing than anything in my career photographing feature vehicles for four-wheel-drive magazines or four-wheeling around the world was the time I sent a truck owner across a muddy area to get some good mud-slinging shots of his beautiful Dodge Ram. He stood on the throttle and went sailing into the smooth mud. Moments later, it instantly sank to the frame in thick, black goo. Unbeknownst to either of us, he'd driven straight into the Indiana equivalent of quicksand, in gumbo form.
After two solid hours of futile attempts by at least a half dozen other trucks with winches to drag the just-restored 4x4 out of the black quagmire, a D8 Cat rolled in from a nearby construction site to help. The dozer almost suffered the same fate, and it had to be hooked to a second dozer before both it and the Dodge were free. It cost me $200 for the extraction and another $100 to have the Dodge owner's truck pressure-washed. Lesson learned: Make sure you know what you're driving into before standing on the throttle.