Getting in over my head

[dragoneggs]

Another reason I am not a fan of mud!

Unless there are trees around. Love my winch. Of course you coI’ll go old school and carry a couple of heavy duty ratchet straps.

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[Mocopo]

Sounds more like your friend in over his head…

Agreed, but I ultimately convinced him to take the trail (not difficult, he was up for it) I felt like I had a responsibility to get him out of it.

 

[wibornz]

I try to not make bad decisions, try I say. I was down by Lake Meed trying to get to the waters edge to camp. The ground looked solid. It was NOT.

 

[TX_Ovrlnd]

If there is no one shooting at you, there is always time to walk the trail. Glad you made it through with just scrapes.

 

[Remorseless]

My best over your head story is fairly similar to yours OP. Me and a group I used to wheel with were toodling around the Hurricane Creek area in western NC. Not hard trails at all - in fact, on the actual Hurricane Creek road, you don't even need 4H, 2H will suffice, it's basically a really pretty forest road through the mountains. Anyway, we get done with the road/trail and we decide to follow a bunch of other gravel roads around to see what we can see. The group is two JKs (including me), two TJs, and an XJ. All well built Jeeps, so we're cocky about where we can go. We come across a tight trail wandering off into the woods and decide to follow it. Pretty soon it narrows down and becomes clear this trail doesn't see hardly any traffic, and if it does, just small ATVs (this was before UTVs took off in popularity).

Anyway, so we're literally pushing down this trail and it's thick NC woods. The Jeeps are about two foot too wide for the trail and we're just plowing through branches and brush. My Jeep at the time was about a year old and every single branch was just slowly killing my soul as it dragged down the side, down the top, and across the door uppers (you can't get branch scratches out of those PVC windows for nothing). I was really wishing I still had my old beater XJ at this point and not a new Jeep. So, onward we plow until we hit a spot where things open up a bit. It's still very much an east coast hardwood forest - big deciduous trees and very humid - but at least now there's a gap that the Jeeps fit down somewhat comfortably. Keep going on and the trail starts hugging the side of a big hill/small mountain and becomes effectively a shelf road.

This shelf road was about exactly one Jeep wide. Our tires were at the very edge of the road on the right, and tucked up against the vertical portion of the hill/mountain on the left. We're inching along because the drop off on the right is about 20-30 feet straight down in to a small mountain creek. I'm in the middle of the group and can't see anything but my buddy's big XJ in front of me and suddenly everyone stops and starts freaking out on the radio - dude in front of my buddy's XJ dropped the rear passenger wheel of his TJ off the edge of the road on the right when the ground got slick and gave way (it's NC in the mountains, everything's wet all the time).

Ended up having to run winch line to a snatch block off the Jeep in front of him, up the side of the hill/mountain to another snatch block off a tree, and down to his frame to drag him sideways back onto the trail. This was a massive pain in the ass because the hillside was vertical enough you had to crawl up it on hands and knees practically, and you had to fight through tons of brush to get to a large enough tree to attach the block to. He was anchored to my buddy's XJ behind him to keep him from going over while folks worked with the winch, but the XJ was light enough that the XJ was sliding down every time the TJ would slip a bit the wrong way. So we had to anchor my JK to the XJ and the XJ to the falling TJ. The ground was saturated enough that this was still not enough weight to keep from sliding in the clay. Both my JK and my buddy's XJ kept sliding the whole time towards the edge of the shelf road.

Eventually we did get him winched up and backed down the trail till we hit a spot we could flip around and plow back through the brush to the trailhead. All the Jeeps were scraped up good, but at least we didn't lose anybody over the side.

 

[falcon241073]

My best over your head story is fairly similar to yours OP. Me and a group I used to wheel with were toodling around the Hurricane Creek area in western NC. Not hard trails at all - in fact, on the actual Hurricane Creek road, you don't even need 4H, 2H will suffice, it's basically a really pretty forest road through the mountains. Anyway, we get done with the road/trail and we decide to follow a bunch of other gravel roads around to see what we can see. The group is two JKs (including me), two TJs, and an XJ. All well built Jeeps, so we're cocky about where we can go. We come across a tight trail wandering off into the woods and decide to follow it. Pretty soon it narrows down and becomes clear this trail doesn't see hardly any traffic, and if it does, just small ATVs (this was before UTVs took off in popularity).

Anyway, so we're literally pushing down this trail and it's thick NC woods. The Jeeps are about two foot too wide for the trail and we're just plowing through branches and brush. My Jeep at the time was about a year old and every single branch was just slowly killing my soul as it dragged down the side, down the top, and across the door uppers (you can't get branch scratches out of those PVC windows for nothing). I was really wishing I still had my old beater XJ at this point and not a new Jeep. So, onward we plow until we hit a spot where things open up a bit. It's still very much an east coast hardwood forest - big deciduous trees and very humid - but at least now there's a gap that the Jeeps fit down somewhat comfortably. Keep going on and the trail starts hugging the side of a big hill/small mountain and becomes effectively a shelf road.

This shelf road was about exactly one Jeep wide. Our tires were at the very edge of the road on the right, and tucked up against the vertical portion of the hill/mountain on the left. We're inching along because the drop off on the right is about 20-30 feet straight down in to a small mountain creek. I'm in the middle of the group and can't see anything but my buddy's big XJ in front of me and suddenly everyone stops and starts freaking out on the radio - dude in front of my buddy's XJ dropped the rear passenger wheel of his TJ off the edge of the road on the right when the ground got slick and gave way (it's NC in the mountains, everything's wet all the time).

Ended up having to run winch line to a snatch block off the Jeep in front of him, up the side of the hill/mountain to another snatch block off a tree, and down to his frame to drag him sideways back onto the trail. This was a massive pain in the ass because the hillside was vertical enough you had to crawl up it on hands and knees practically, and you had to fight through tons of brush to get to a large enough tree to attach the block to. He was anchored to my buddy's XJ behind him to keep him from going over while folks worked with the winch, but the XJ was light enough that the XJ was sliding down every time the TJ would slip a bit the wrong way. So we had to anchor my JK to the XJ and the XJ to the falling TJ. The ground was saturated enough that this was still not enough weight to keep from sliding in the clay. Both my JK and my buddy's XJ kept sliding the whole time towards the edge of the shelf road.

Eventually we did get him winched up and backed down the trail till we hit a spot we could flip around and plow back through the brush to the trailhead. All the Jeeps were scraped up good, but at least we didn't lose anybody over the side.

This is why you always bring a roll of toilet paper on the trails.

Glad y’all made it out and no one was hurt.

 

[Remorseless]

This is why you always bring a roll of toilet paper on the trails.

Glad y’all made it out and no one was hurt.

Pretty sure there's a little section of that seat that's missing for sure lol

 

[roaniecowpony]

In our late teens (almost 50 years ago), best friend and I were bowhunting deer up in the Sierras in the area around Bass Lake...Peckinpah Meadow, IIRC. We were driving his mother's Pinto hatchback ?, a real off-road machine.

Somewhere around there, we found a "jeep trail" going down off the high ground. The OP's trail reminded me of this little adventure. I questioned the idea of going down a steep trail in our one wheel drive we had dubbed the "Huntmobile". A couple hundred yards down (literally down) the trail, it was obvious even to my knucklehead friend that it wasn't wise to keep going. Too late. No place to turn around, one wheel drive on the uphill axle. ? I thought that Pinto would be there until it converted back to iron oxide. (A come-along and some of that die-knee-mer stuff would have been pretty handy about then)

Since he had overridden my vote to not go down the trail and he was as strong as a moose, he got to push while I tried to back it up the trail. After what seemed like an hour, we made it to flat ground.

The old "Huntmobile" was on many trips. Not all bad. Some good memories with that off-roader. I'll see if he has some pix of that thing.

 

[ABRubi]

That's an overgrown mountain bike trail.

Double track is not a mountain bike trail

 

[cafecito820]

So what's your favorite story of getting in over your head? Any permanent damage? Would you do it again?

You might want to specify if answers have to be Jeep-related or not. I can answer these questions using my marriage, for example...

 

[roaniecowpony]

You might want to specify if answers have to be Jeep-related or not. I can answer these questions using my marriage, for example...

Could apply to bar fighting, jeeping, or even hookin up.

 

[rickinAZ]

I bought my first jeep almost 2 months ago. We've taken it on a few short off-roading day trips, but decided to take it camping this weekend.
On the map there I noticed an alternate way out from our campsite. We figured why not try it. What's the worst that could happen?

The trail was not well travelled and very narrow and twisty. I think it was more of a UTV trail than a jeep trail. The elevation was around 8500 to 9000 feet so there were a lot of shrubs, aspens, and pine trees encroaching on the trail. The sound of half inch thick tree limbs scraping on a vehicle with only 700 miles on it was excruciating. And there was a lot of scraping...

At one point we came across a narrow section that had a very narrow choke point between two Aspens. It was barely wide enough for the jeep to fit. In fact, I almost ripped the rear fender off trying to get through it. I had a to spend a few minutes going between forward and reverse before I could inch my way through it. But with no way of turning around we didn't really have a choice.

Later on there was an Aspen that had halfway fallen across the trail. I inched my way forward and thought I would have enough clearance. Well, I had clearance at first, but the second half of the roof did not have enough space. I'm still not sure if the mark on the roof is permanent, or if it's simply tree bark that can be scraped off.

We've agreed to never do the trail again. A day later I'm still not sure if it was Type 2 fun or Type 3 fun. Maybe Type 2.5 fun?

So what's your favorite story of getting in over your head? Any permanent damage? Would you do it again?

Good cautionary tale. It reminds me of that old skydiving joke: "why would I jump out of a perfectly fine airplane." Only, in this case, it's a perfectly fine vehicle and a branch-choked trail. That said, I bet you are way past worrying about that first scratch.

 

[uawho]

Most Jeepers have "that story". My wife is super comfortable with me driving into bad crap. But occasionally, I'll ask her to get out, just in case so someone will still be alive to call for help. Then she knows it's serious.

 

[WorkingMan]

I was too busy driving to get anything good, but my wife got a couple from her view in the passenger seat.

That is a good day!

 

[300K06TJ]

I bought my first jeep almost 2 months ago. We've taken it on a few short off-roading day trips, but decided to take it camping this weekend.
On the map there I noticed an alternate way out from our campsite. We figured why not try it. What's the worst that could happen?

The trail was not well travelled and very narrow and twisty. I think it was more of a UTV trail than a jeep trail. The elevation was around 8500 to 9000 feet so there were a lot of shrubs, aspens, and pine trees encroaching on the trail. The sound of half inch thick tree limbs scraping on a vehicle with only 700 miles on it was excruciating. And there was a lot of scraping...

At one point we came across a narrow section that had a very narrow choke point between two Aspens. It was barely wide enough for the jeep to fit. In fact, I almost ripped the rear fender off trying to get through it. I had a to spend a few minutes going between forward and reverse before I could inch my way through it. But with no way of turning around we didn't really have a choice.

Later on there was an Aspen that had halfway fallen across the trail. I inched my way forward and thought I would have enough clearance. Well, I had clearance at first, but the second half of the roof did not have enough space. I'm still not sure if the mark on the roof is permanent, or if it's simply tree bark that can be scraped off.

We've agreed to never do the trail again. A day later I'm still not sure if it was Type 2 fun or Type 3 fun. Maybe Type 2.5 fun?

So what's your favorite story of getting in over your head? Any permanent damage? Would you do it again?

Been in over my head many times . . . that's where the good stories are

On my way to Sunday dinner with my parents my son and I decided to take a very short little detour. 3 hours and a backhoe later . . .

Dinner was great BTW. Mom and Dad enjoyed the story.

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