Videos of Pigs Drifitng?

[inkpot]

Oh my GAWD!

Glad you’re OK man! I know where you’re talking - there’s some steep descents down into Cherry Creek from that road.
How long did the extraction take?

Well, not including the initial shock and awe time, and the "Hey John, what the hell are you doing down there? Ya know it not a legal route!!" bullsh1t, it took over 2 hours. First it was make a plan, and I was too far down the hill to be in the conversations, so I had to chat on the CB for my share of the input. Then we had to stack the winch rigs on either side of me and then place an anchor rig behind them. Then Travis had to jump off the cliff with a cable in each hand. He did a survey around my rig and found no damage and no flats, and me sitting there with the AC blasting. Then they had to perform parallel pulling at nearly right angles since the trail is so narrow. After the first 40 feet or so, they had to reset the rigging, including a snatch-block in a tree way up the high side. There was only ONE real stout tree around. This meant that I had to sit there for 20 minutes held in place by only my brakes. That is what you can call a giant leap of faith! It all went well, until my back bumper was about 6 feet below the road surface. The step off grade was nearly vertical, and we had to figure out how to lift my fat ass up that without having an overhead advantage. Plan B was to re-rig the cables onto my front bumper and try to push my butt up over the lip onto the trail. Plan A was for me to triple lock my rig, slap it into reverse, and on the count of 3, nail it long enough to get up over the edge of the roadbed and slam on the brakes before I rammed into the high wall on the other side. Plan A worked. Better than any carnival ride I could ever go on. My rear bumper was into the high wall, and my front tires were just barely onto the shoulder of the roadway. I declined a 99 point turn to get turned 90 degrees. We hooked one cable to my front bumper and left the other one on my back bumper. Hit the buttons, and I am slowly turn 90 degrees so I can drive down the trail. It was at this point that my a****** released its strangle hold on my upholstery! Kudos to the whole group for making a coordinated, controlled recovery. Double kudos for Richard for taking charge of a really nasty situation and managing a really complicated recovery. Besides being embarrassed about driving off a cliff in the middle of nowhere, I was pretty pissed at myself for wasting several hours on a recovery, which used up the hours I wanted to use to explore one of the few places that you can access Cherry Creek by vehicle. It would be a great place to camp.

 

[RUSH55]

As terrible as it was to get into that precarious predicament, sounds like you were extremely lucky to have some competent extractionists on the trip

 

[PabloCruise]

Yup. I am fine. Couple of months ago we did a TRAL run up Cherry Creek Road, aka trail 203. Just 4 rigs, makin good time. We have all been there multiple times. There were a few erosion features that required paying attention, but I never locked in axle all day. I was coming around a brushy curve about 15-20 mph, lightly kissing the brake pedal, and all hell broke loose. Best I can figure was that I caught a rock with the edge of my right front. It must of been 12-15". As my tire started to ramp up on it, the impact caused me to stab the brakes, which have NO ABS while in low range. The tire locked up which caused the rock to roll, but it did not roll very straight. It rolled to the right about 2 feet, so when I came back down my front right was JUST off the edge of the roadway. By now I was moving about 5-10 MPH, still on the brakes. I figured I could stay on the brakes till it stopped, then lock the rear and back up into the center of the trail. Just as it got to the stopping point, the right rear dropped over the edge. That put me at more than a 45 degree lean downhill. Cherry Creek is about 500-600 feet straight down, so I did the one thiing that my mind came up with: steer downhill and nail the gas. I figured I would rather slide to the bottom, or to a stop, than roll. It worked. I came to a sliding stop in soft dirt and gravel about 70 feet from the road. Damn I hate hanging from my seat and shoulder belt! No bad sounds or smells, all gauges reading OK, AC still working well, so I left it run cause I was kinda HOT. Called out to Richard on the CB to come back and give me a hand, as I had a little problem. Tailgunner had held back as he got to watch the whole thing. Richard got to the TG and could not find me. TG had to point be out down the side of the mountain. Well, 2 hours, 2 80's, and 2 steps on the winches go my ass back up on the trail. That slope was so steep that Travis came down on the cables as he could not climb down. Drove it home. I still had 2 knuckle studs that held torque and the tierod was only slightly bowed, so why not. Its a LAND CRUISER!!! After replacing the tierod and knuckle studs, and upgrading to a 105 steering sector and matching pitman arm, we went out and ran Devil's Canyon, east of Superior just to check it out. All is well.

Wow, a simple rock in the trail had some significant consequences.

Note to self...