You gotta do what you gotta do but there's nothing harder on poly or steel line than running out of a hawse or roller fair lead at that "sharp" of an angle. It puts tremendous strain on the line and then of course risks building up line on the drum quickly on one side. This leads to popping the stay bars on the winch AND you loose efficiency from the winch. (Your winch is rated to maximum pull strength at the first wrap on the drum. You loose pulling efficiency every wrap beyond that.) We seen many'a student bust poly line, bust winches, and kink steel line pulling at bizarre angles like that! Break out the snatch block and make your line-to-fair lead angle less acute.
Your also shock loading the line when you drive faster than the winch can pull. In your video you can see slack in the line than the truck rolls back or looses grip and the line is "snapped" tight. That's shock loading and it's waaaay bad. I talked to Thor from Viking Line a few years ago during a clinic we were giving and they see more line failures from shock loads and sharp angles off the fair lead. Drive the winch - once you see slack, stop truck movement and let the line catch up. A winch line was NEVER designed to be used as a dynamic recovery tool. It's a static tool only. It doesn't store energy, it just lets go. When you shock load a line you're imparting energy which the line can't store. You'll exceed line load very quickly.
We teach "skid" or 180 turns using a Hilift come-a-long rig off of the back of the truck. It doesn;t take as long as you might think.
But again. You gotta do what you gotta do.
While I agree with you in theory, this was less than an ideal situation or what I would consider a “textbook” basic recovery. There was no way to go forward without sliding into the tree well and smashing the side of my 4Runner, or rolling it in the process. The snow was extremely slushy and slick due to the fact that it was 55 degrees outside, and towards the end of the day. I tried to back out and just slid off my tracks a couple feet later, falling into the deep soft snow on the edge of the trail. The idea of using a High-Lift jack to move the rear end around is a good one, but it wouldn’t have worked as good as you think in this situation. The back tire was down in the deep snow, and pulling on it would have just dug it down deeper in the snow (and put an extreme amount of pressure on the High-Lift). Plus, there was a tree only a few feet away so by rotating the rear of the truck I wouldn’t have made it very far before the back of the truck was against the tree. Rotating the front of the 4Runner, on the packed snow was the smartest (and possibly only) option.
The video does not capture the entire recovery, just the interesting parts. It would have been very boring if I included the entire ordeal. I repositioned the winch line three times to work the front end around. The use of a snatch block wouldn’t have helped anything because I needed a fair amount of angle to get the front end to slide, instead of just pulling myself forward.
You also seem to forget that this is slick, slushy snow we are talking about, not dirt or rocks. At no time during the recovery would I consider the winch being under a hard pull (or anywhere near it), and that’s also why I kept the tires moving; to keep the tires on top of the snow and not dig in, thus creating a hard pull.
And while it was less than an ideal situation you need to remember a couple things. First, this isn’t the first time I’ve used a winch or gone wheeling. I would say I’ve used my winch more times than 95% of the people that have them, and I go wheeling just as much as anyone else on this forum. It’s easy to see a couple seconds of GoPro video at an awkward angle and think you have the whole situation figured out, but until your actually there it’s just a fraction of the whole picture.
For reference, I have a 12,000-pound winch, with the nicest winch line you can buy (Master Pull Superline XD). I knew exactly how much line was on the drum and how far I could winch before having it bunch up on the drum. I planned every step out before hand, and followed that plan the best I could. When it’s all said a done, I got out, I got home, and there was no damage to anything on the truck. All in all a successful trip!
