Cruisin'
Out in the shop, building something cool!
We had near incident yesterday. I thought I'd share it since there might be something to be learned from what we had done right, and what we learned that might make a challenging situation go better.
I actually was thinking of Sass through parts of this, and am very grateful for how my situation turned out. It could have been disastrous.
We were on the road up the backside of Mt. Cheam, up the Chilliwack River Valley with some friends in a Suzuki Sidekick. Each truck had two adults and 3 kids in it. The conditions were not great, with about 2" of snow on top of ice. The truck was slipping a bit, so I aired down to 15psi. Several hundred meters after airing down I wasn't able to make it up the approach to a cross-ditch and slid backwards down the road 20 feet or more. We decided at that point to play it safe and turn around to head back down.
Not long after turning around to head down the truck started to slide. I was going down in low range, first gear, letting engine braking keep us slow, not using the brakes. The slide was taking us towards a very large embankment which was a very scary direction to be heading. Pumping the brakes was doing nothing to gain control. In hindsight a shot of throttle might have helped to regain control, but at the time that seemed like a sure way to go over the edge. The tires found a small bit of traction right at the edge of the road, with the passenger's front tire starting to drop over. With the truck finally stopped and my foot HARD on the brake pedal we had to sort out what to do next. I was pretty positive that any attempts to drive it out would put us over the edge.
A plan was quickly hatched, and my wife got out and got on the business end of the winch cable. I spooled it out as she took it across the road and climbed up an embankment on the opposite side and wrapped it around a tree that was perpendicular to the front of the truck. She has never helped with a recovery but kept her cool, and followed my instructions to a tee. I kept the brakes on hard as I spooled the winch in, pulling the front of the truck back onto the road. It was slippery enough that the truck slid sideways across the road until I was able to roll forwards and get it pointed towards the ditch on the safe side of the road. Once I had determined that I had some traction we pulled the cable off the tree and I drove the truck into the ditch, figuring that would be the safest way to get down the hill. I drove the ditch down until the road flattened out, and even then stayed close to the ditch for the rest of the way out.
Lessons learned:
-We had decided to head back once we realized how poor the conditions were. Yet it was on our retreat that things went bad.
-I was already aired down, and yet still had practically zero traction. Airing down helps, but only chains on all four would have really worked on this icy and snowy road.
-Everyone in the truck stayed (relatively) calm when we realized we were in trouble. It was a situation that required that we make a plan fast, and work quickly to get us back into a safe situation.
-I have my winch wired with in-cab controls. This was a massive help as we didn't have to open the back to get the controller which would have eaten up time. If I didn't have the in-cab controls I would take this as a reminder that even when doing some low-key wheeling it is good practice to have the controller hooked up and ready to go at the start of the trail.
-I have no idea how I would have gotten us out of this predicament if I didn't have a winch...
-Because I was more concerned with getting to safety than I was about the condition of the tree, I decided to wrap the cable directly around the tree. In the future I will consider keeping a tree saver strap and shackle in the cab for easy access.
-I was pleased to have another adult in the truck so I could stay in the drivers seat while the helper hooked up the cable (the other people we were with were ahead of us, and not aware of what was going on yet). Also if things had really gotten bad we were not alone. There was another truck to go get help.
-The Land Cruiser is a heavy truck, and once it starts to slide its very hard to get it back.
I posted this in the hopes that something here may help someone else stay out of trouble or get out of it more easily. If anyone has any suggestions or comments I'd be interested to hear them.
I actually was thinking of Sass through parts of this, and am very grateful for how my situation turned out. It could have been disastrous.
We were on the road up the backside of Mt. Cheam, up the Chilliwack River Valley with some friends in a Suzuki Sidekick. Each truck had two adults and 3 kids in it. The conditions were not great, with about 2" of snow on top of ice. The truck was slipping a bit, so I aired down to 15psi. Several hundred meters after airing down I wasn't able to make it up the approach to a cross-ditch and slid backwards down the road 20 feet or more. We decided at that point to play it safe and turn around to head back down.
Not long after turning around to head down the truck started to slide. I was going down in low range, first gear, letting engine braking keep us slow, not using the brakes. The slide was taking us towards a very large embankment which was a very scary direction to be heading. Pumping the brakes was doing nothing to gain control. In hindsight a shot of throttle might have helped to regain control, but at the time that seemed like a sure way to go over the edge. The tires found a small bit of traction right at the edge of the road, with the passenger's front tire starting to drop over. With the truck finally stopped and my foot HARD on the brake pedal we had to sort out what to do next. I was pretty positive that any attempts to drive it out would put us over the edge.
A plan was quickly hatched, and my wife got out and got on the business end of the winch cable. I spooled it out as she took it across the road and climbed up an embankment on the opposite side and wrapped it around a tree that was perpendicular to the front of the truck. She has never helped with a recovery but kept her cool, and followed my instructions to a tee. I kept the brakes on hard as I spooled the winch in, pulling the front of the truck back onto the road. It was slippery enough that the truck slid sideways across the road until I was able to roll forwards and get it pointed towards the ditch on the safe side of the road. Once I had determined that I had some traction we pulled the cable off the tree and I drove the truck into the ditch, figuring that would be the safest way to get down the hill. I drove the ditch down until the road flattened out, and even then stayed close to the ditch for the rest of the way out.
Lessons learned:
-We had decided to head back once we realized how poor the conditions were. Yet it was on our retreat that things went bad.
-I was already aired down, and yet still had practically zero traction. Airing down helps, but only chains on all four would have really worked on this icy and snowy road.
-Everyone in the truck stayed (relatively) calm when we realized we were in trouble. It was a situation that required that we make a plan fast, and work quickly to get us back into a safe situation.
-I have my winch wired with in-cab controls. This was a massive help as we didn't have to open the back to get the controller which would have eaten up time. If I didn't have the in-cab controls I would take this as a reminder that even when doing some low-key wheeling it is good practice to have the controller hooked up and ready to go at the start of the trail.
-I have no idea how I would have gotten us out of this predicament if I didn't have a winch...
-Because I was more concerned with getting to safety than I was about the condition of the tree, I decided to wrap the cable directly around the tree. In the future I will consider keeping a tree saver strap and shackle in the cab for easy access.
-I was pleased to have another adult in the truck so I could stay in the drivers seat while the helper hooked up the cable (the other people we were with were ahead of us, and not aware of what was going on yet). Also if things had really gotten bad we were not alone. There was another truck to go get help.
-The Land Cruiser is a heavy truck, and once it starts to slide its very hard to get it back.
I posted this in the hopes that something here may help someone else stay out of trouble or get out of it more easily. If anyone has any suggestions or comments I'd be interested to hear them.
