Hi! I am in desperate need of an offroad recovery out in grizzly gulch near Torrey's peak. I was wondering if anyone out there with a winch and a towstrap would be willing to take a few hours out of your time tonight to help me. Im pretty broke and cant afford a commercial recovery. Basically i am caught on some mud. I would reimburse gas and whatever else is necessary.

EDIT HE TEXTED BACK AND PAYED FOR A TOW.



Calling members in CO
Im trying to get attention to this thread for you bud.

@RonMAIDEN
@Duhockey
@Ron Helmuth
@HOJeepster
@Desert Fox @WrexHAmm @Gerdo

Ill make some calls. If I had my last runner id be on my way.

Sorry dude, I mapped it out and it's a long drive from Lyons. I hope you get some help soon.

I cant get away

You might try posting on the FJ Cruiser forum. There are a lot of FJs in that area.
Colorado - Toyota FJ Cruiser Forum

If you are still in a bind Saturday I can probably get someone with a winch to help.

Good luck

EDIT, he got out.

For sure he got out because my buddy and I can prolly head down first thing in the AM.

Edit or right now. My buddy is ready to go haha. So if he needs it we can be there in a few hours.

Glad he got out.
It would bug me to leave my runner in the mountains. I would be camping in it.

Hey guys, thanks for the replies. What a mess of a day. I'm pretty wiped, but details and pictures (with some video) tomorrow or the next day. What a freakin' expensive lesson that was. Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect when I posted the call for help here, and I'm really happy that I got the replies and calls that I did. The only reason I didn't wait longer was because the commercial tow place gave me a deadline of 5pm, and I was freaking out and desperate. It literally took one single pull from a winch to get me unstuck, but to get their rock crawler back there, it took two hours. $250 an hour, you do the math. I'm hurting now for sure, but at least I have my truck back.

Now to go figure out how I'm going to pay for this with my $13/hr dead-end job. =/

Glad you got out, and you are not hurt...
This is why the number 1 rule in wheeling is: NEVER go alone.
Rule #2: ALWAYS let others know where you are going and when, you should be back.
again, glad that you are not hurt, and the rig is home.

Well, that's the trick. I wasn't really wheeling, or planning on it. We were getting to a pretty remote trailhead to climb and then ski down a peak out here. The road was "rough" but certainly no more than a 5 or 6 on a scale up to 10. There were a lot of should-of's during the drive in, and the last one was "I should have just pulled off at that really nice spot that we stopped at for a second and then decided to keep going". We thought snow would be the biggest obstacle, and we didn't encounter any, so just felt confident that we could press on.

The other big mistake was that I was not in 4-lo and didn't lock my rear diff. Had I done those things, I would have got right out. I can't live like that though and just wish history was different, ya know?

*sigh* Now I can't sleep because I'm down half a grand and trying to figure that out.

According to my calculations you should be good to go in ~38.5 hours

Don't loose too much sleep over it, everything you should've done always seems real obvious in hindsight...important thing is you got through it and you're out safe!

Glad you are ok, hopefully the tow company will work with you on payment.

Wisdom comes at a cost and gives you some good conversation material when you are old like me.

I call these events crayons, each one a new color. I have the large bucket of Benny & Smith Crayola Crayons and new colors seem to continue to get added.

Sucks man, sorry I didn't get back to you faster. We would have done it for free. Glad you're out ok though. $500 is a lot of money even I you're not at a dead end job.

Here are a couple of stills from some camera footage.



The meadow didn't look that bad at 4am, but I came up the road and then just had my rear end slide down hill until my driver's rear wheel sunk to the axle.



Again, it doesn't look that bad, but for some reason, I couldn't get my other tires to pull me up and out.



The rock at the left was right up against my trailer hitch, and the rock on the right was underneath my drivers side door. The wood is what we tried to fill it in with for traction, but as you can see, the hole is deep and just water. Incidentally water doesn't give very good traction.



This was after the rock crawler tore up the rest of the meadow trying to get into a position to winch me out. This was after I got winched.



The tow crawler from afar. It's an old Chevy Suburban. He had to winch himself up that hill because he almost slid down into the creek below. After he winched me out of my stuck spot, I made it up that hill without assistance. Go figure.

A few of the things I did wrong. First, I underestimated mud. Never underestimate mud. Second, when I went for it, I didn't think it was going to be anything more difficult than what I'd done previously on the road, so I didn't switch into 4-lo or lock my rear diff. Once I got stuck, I started panicking and didn't lock my rear diff and put it into 4-lo. Third, my tires were inflated for pavement. Fourth, I wasn't planning on wheeling this hard, so I didn't bring much in the way of recovery gear.

Enjoy the tragedy tourism!