Part 3A: Breaking shit all night
Final part to catch everyone up!
Last weekend I went wheeling twice, Friday night and Saturday night. Saturday wasn't very exciting besides having an attractive passenger :zoom: BUT this post is about Friday night!
This trip was supposed to be a quick trip because a guy contacted the USU Offroading Club that the Grand Cherokee Guy, my buddy with the Cherokee, and I run; he was wondering if anyone was going wheeling, and of course we were game! The idea was a simple snow wheeling trip, just do the loop we didn't do before (Part 1) as it's only about a mile long but has cool sights and stuff and we hadn't done it in awhile. Were we ever wrong!
Group: [MENTION=89531]Cartzo[/MENTION] with his 1st gen that had been running for like two days, me obviously with the gen 3, the Wrangler from Part 1 (33s open), another Wrangler (33s open).
Well the 1st gen got stuck on the road just going up, but in his defense his tires are shit. And I was happy to finally have someone who could keep up with me
After airing down he had no issue getting to the loop. I had aired down to 15psi on the first trip, and never aired up (still haven't) since majority of my driving is offroad.
Stopped helping the 1st gen air down, this is just the open part leading up the trail, so you can get some idea of snow conditions:
We got to the loop with no issue, and I dropped into it not worrying about much:
That gives you some idea of the snow conditions, it was SUPER powdery. Like nothing for the tread to even imprint on, it just sunk through. For a brief description of the trail, it goes down, has two successive dips that are pretty good, then a third, then it drops down and turns and goes up a hill, down a saddle, then down the other side and back around. Nothing too fancy, though I should of known when traction control started helping keep my momentum it wasn't gonna be a walk in the park for the other guys :rockthrow:
The 1st gen got stuck on the first dip right away. And it was like oh great, we're screwed. I tried backing up and couldn't stay lined up with the trail to make it back to him. Then the new guy with his white Wrangler got stuck behind the 1st gen and couldn't pull him back, and something about the other Wrangler at the very back was stuck too. So out of four vehicles I was the only one not stuck, and only one who couldn't get back to save everyone! So we (Cherokee buddy was riding with me) said adios and left them!

eace:
We figured they could maybe make progress, and we would try to complete the loop and come in behind them to help. Our notion being I knew the trail, had a winch and full suite of recovery gear, and we had cell service so I could definitely handle myself if something happened and with three vehicles maybe they could figure something out. Well it took like 10 minutes to complete the loop and get behind them (pro driving obviously

). Once we were behind everyone, we were going to pull the new guys Wrangler with the winch back up the trail and then get the 1st gen.
But the 1st gen, thinking he was smart, had four of us push him and got going and then just took off to keep momentum. Which was a BAD idea we found out again :flipoff:
This then happened:
On the last dip/turn before the saddle, so he made it aways but still got stuck. And that doesn't look bad, but when no one is in front (and too steep for even Rzrs to make it up the backwards way we had found out in Part 1, let alone me to get in front) and he didn't have a winch it gets tricky...
With the 1st gen out of the way, we got the white Wrangler going and moved the pack up with me following the Wrangler and then the black Wrangler following me.
We tried a variety of things, but the white Wrangler started sliding off the trail trying to pull the 1st gen straight back, which then I had to pull him back onto the trail (piece of cake

: ). Though it put the 1st gen in an even worse spot:
We then used my Hi-lift as a jack with his front end and a tree to pull him onto the trail. This was working great, but slow as hell, until enough snow was building up that his front right tire was starting to have the bead unseat and was leaking air all of a sudden. We quickly relieved the Hi-lift and his bead fell back in place, but that was scary for a second... All of this lasting probably two hours keep in mind... We then pushed it with like 6 people and got it back onto the trail and going.
What we hadn't realized, was that the new guy was a totally newbie at offroading so he wasn't even in 4Lo and fell right into the same spot at [MENTION=89531]Cartzo[/MENTION].
I went to help the 1st gen climb the hill before dropping into the saddle, which was hard with his tires being so ungrippy. While this was happening, the part of the Hi-lift on the end that you can stick a hook into to use it as a jack somehow snapped off in tension :shrug: Luckily no one got hurt, but now the Hi-lift was pretty useless as a jack. I then went back to help recover the Jeep and eventually [MENTION=89531]Cartzo[/MENTION] got up the trail.
(Apparently I can only have 20 images, so this story is cut in half here)