Meet my 90, and share the adventure.

[Toxic_Avenger]

There is always one nut-bag on the track who takes the 'pro line' and ends up getting stuck.
Today, that person was me.

It's been a while since I'd visited the Moonbi hills, 15 minutes from Tamworth NSW, and just north of the township of Moonbi. There's a heap of tracks going thru the mountains which are mainly rutted, sandy granite type surfaces, with sections of loose dry dirt.
After a bit of a mess about in the lower sections (a few little hill climbs and some side tracks- videos below), I came across a nice little gully / creek bed section which I scoped out and decided to drive. Seeing that I could actually get to it further along the main track, I thought I'd have a go in the uphill direction, rather than the downhill direction from which I scoped it out.

Keen to get to the business end of the track, I spotted a sandy ledge in the track, which led into a fairly seep rut along a fairly flat section of the track and thought "I can take this!"

Well... this happened:







I ended up jamming the diff and the APT track rod hard against the ground, and getting no traction on opposite corners... meaning no forward or reverse worky worky.
I ended up using the shovel and the winch to pull the diff off the ledge, getting me into a nice angle almost hard up against the soft sandy granite wall of the rut. A second adjustment of the winch line helped to pull me away from the rut wall while I drove out of it.

Ended up driving the creek gully and blitzed it. The BT50 I was with is so long that it really struggled with the tight track, as well as having less clearance and wheel travel. But it's got a factory locker in the rear which really helps it out.

All in all it as a good afternoon out, and a good drive with a good crew (all bar that peanut who got stuck in a rut)


Video of a little side track that we played on
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmRC1xoU3xY[/ame]

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g8J4_hwPQk[/ame]

[Toxic_Avenger]

Gentlemen, it has been a long time between drinks...


Turns out Hanging rock might get snow <900m elevation.
Time to go get stuck.

Hold my beer and watch this!

[cuppabillytea]

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. You can have that on your Pat Malone.

[numpty]

If it does, we might have to pay a visit.

I'm off up to Nundle today actually.

[Toxic_Avenger]

Well, unfortunately I didn't get stuck.
Can't say the same for the BT-50 and D-max that I was playing with.
Something about their slush-box automatics and the descent into the mud didn't make it an enjoyable day. The landy was on winch duties pulling them back up a hill section and away from the edge that the mud, sludge and incline was pointing them towards. I on the other hand, managed to drive the same sections of mud with no dramas. Not sure whether it was due to the line I took or the extra momentum I hit it with, but the mule performed well.

Another issue of the day was all the fallen trees over the tracks with all the rain we've had after a long dry spell. The land up at hanging rock is like a shale and rock base with a good layer of thick mud from all the pine needed which have decomposed over the past 100 years of forestation. So when we get a bit of rain, all the trees just seem to fall down the hills and over the tracks. Managed to move what we could with the bush saw and tomahawk, but the 2-foot diameter trees were a turn-around job.

As for the snow, we found some icy slush on the shaded side of a hill around 3pm, but nothing much to look at after the fact.

[cuppabillytea]

Thanks Mitch. I'll pass that on to a work mate on Monday. He owns a Pine Forrest in Latvia. I think he'd better get a Land Rover for when he next has to do some timber getting.

[Toxic_Avenger]

Made some soft shackles.
Much fun. Very concentrate.



Banana for scale.








More info to come!

[cuppabillytea]

Hi Mitch. May I ask what kind of Knot you have in the end of that device? I ask because Dyneema is very slippery stuff and knots which normally work well in most other fibres, can fail in Dyneema. The usual way to make a sling or strop in our game is to make a very long splice. So that Knot could be a very handy one to know.

[Toxic_Avenger]

It's a button knot with the ends fed back thru the middle of the knot and tapered, spliced into the core of the other 2 strands of dyneema.
Apparently some grand-master of knot karma sutra designed the knot, and it's commonly used in a number of applications with good success.
Some slackline people tied and tested this design to give approx 218% if the single line strength of the dyneema.
The loose ends are tapered and fed back thru the middle of the 'tail' end, which you might be able to see it's a bit chunky in the pics.

[Juniorgc]

Billy, have a look on YouTube, there are some great videos on making these. I will be make Ng some too but still researching the safety of them over d shackles