Last night after I got home from work (10pm) I got a call from my friend Tim with a 1990 Cherokee. He's ... WAY out in the middle of BFE, on top of a mountain barely getting cell fone signal.
his truck is in the lakebed below, hopelessly buried beyond the axles in mud.
As an added bonus, his battery's drained from holding up a headlight and tapping SOS in morse code with some speaker wire - aiming the headlight at an unidentified light source atop a distant mountain.
I groan, tell him he owes me big, and after getting basic directions on where he is I hit the road with some recovery gear.
He's WAY out there. After passing "Seven Springs" I decided to air down my tires to about 15psi, to make the next 90 miles off-pavement a bit more comfortable.
While airing down and observing the beautiful moonlight, a little red ford exploder pulls up and the driver asked me if I was OK. I explained what was going on and he enthusiastically offered to drive all the way out to where Tim was stuck, since he is familiar with the area. The guy in the Exploder was just out enjoying a moonlit drive with his wife(?) and had nothing better to do, so extracting someone's stuck friend sounded good to him.
We got back on the road and soon discovered that driving 45 miles on increasingly rough dirt roads in the middle of the night when you have been awake all day and need to be at work the next day, sucks.
About a mile from the Verde River, we saw a somewhat odd sight for such a remote area: a plump, healthy looking little dog with a collar and name tag! This is a seriously remote area... no houses anywhere within reasonable distance. We were in a hurry so assumed the dog had an owner nearby and kept going.
Finally we got to Sheep's Crossing(?) where one must ford the Verde river in order to continue. I told our new friend in the Explorer that this might be a good place to turn around, since his truck looked pretty clean and was about as stock and generic as a vehicle can be. He said he'd drive across so I didn't argue with him.
I knew that Tim had driven his Cherokee across here so I proceeded to slowly cruise through the knee deep river - no problems.
Next up, our new friend forged through but used a little less care with the skinny pedal - pushing a big cresting wave along right up until his engine violently came to a stop. Hydrolock. Dumbass.
He tried to start the truck several times until I managed to convince him that it was no use until we got the spark plugs out. He was not very experienced with the ways of truck destruction so I had to introduce him to the concept of hydrolock.
We strapped him out of the river since his truck was taking on water in the cab.
Since Tim was still waiting for us, and the Exploder needed to cool off before I was going to touch his spark plugs, we all piled into my Trooper and kept driving 'till we found what looked like the turnoff Tim took. His four mismatched tires (three of which had been on various vehicles of mine before I gave them to him) made it pretty easy to determine he had definitely come that way.
A bit farther along the turnoff and we saw what we were looking for: the north shore of Horseshoe Lake, a half submerged Jeep XJ, and two dumbsticks covered in mud.
This is the part where I wish my digital camera had taken pictures of "half submerged jeep in the middle of #%@#$%@ nowhere" rather than "ambiguous fuzzy blobs of light and darkness"
So, after discovering that Jeeps, the "king of off highway" don't have any tow hooks anywhere on them, nor any other suitable recovery points - Tim tied strap around a bumper mount on the rear and I proceeded to prove to him that anything the strap was tied to would follow my truck, regardless of whether or not his truck was still connected.
Another great picture would have been here, if my camera didn't suck.
Failing with the bumper, I next strapped his rear axle. Several good pulls later I decided that I was going to have to actually jerk him out with slack, rather than just straight pull.
This again proved useless, because his truck just kept making popping noises as I pulled. I think that might be bad.
So, despite being in a soft, gooey lake bottom, we pulled out my trusty high-lift. It sunk in pretty good when presure was applied but we still got his truck up high enough with the front bumper to un-bury his front axle. There were lots of river rocks a couple hundred feet away which were brought over and stuffed under his tires. The rear could not be jacked due to bumper damage from the prior pulling.
another picture WOULD be here, too <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />
<img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />
Strapped around the front axle, and easily pulled him forward. my 33x12.5" tires kept me from sinking in like he did and surprisingly, the A/T tread didn't pack up too badly in the slippery goo either.
Back in business, we returned to the exploder and discovered that while I had a spark plug socket and short extension, the EGR rail on the drivers' side of his engine was designed by satan himself to cause me pain and frustration. Eventually with a combination of meditation and arcane ninja exercises I pulled all of his plugs, and he was able to expel at least three full cylinders of water.
I explained again at that point what the heck happened to his truck, since the driver was pretty clueless about this whole water ingestion thing. I made him swear he'd get an oil change in every part of the truck that contains any kind of oil, and replace his air filter too.
Tim even had anti-seize for the spark plug threads, in the back of his truck
More ninja tactics to re-insert the spark plugs past that cursed EGR tube and we were ready to cross the river again. did I mention it was now daylight? I directed our new friend to cross where the water was fast (shallow) this time, and drive a heck of a lot slower. With daylight comes the ability to at least post a picture!
![[Linked Image]](http://apanthropy.nailed.org:150/pics/ExploreRiver.JPG)
Finally ready to go home, we decided to soak for a little while in the nearby hot spring. You know the rules: birthday suits only <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/butwiggle.gif" alt="" /> - we watched the sun fully rise over the river foliage and finally started for home in earnest.
What did we find 2 miles up the road again? one small, plump and very scared dog. We stopped and managed to capture her - thankfully she had a tag with her name "Frannie" and a phoenix phone number. She also had an expired "glow stick" on her collar.
Finally home, we gave the dog's owner a call and they'll be picking up Frannie sometime this weekend. Apparently the owner's granddaughter took the dog to what she called a rave, way out in the middle of nowhere - and lost the dog through no doubt a combination of negligence and stupidity. Glad that wasn't the same night I came through, I hate candy kids! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/angry.gif" alt="" />
A lot of work, a lot of expense (gas), and no sleep... but damn I had a good time!
sorry about the massive length of my.. post. I guess the moral of it all? 4x4 buddies help each other out no matter what <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />
bedtime for me now <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />
