Thread: Most memorable 4x4 moment

Bushie,

Good Link!

Brought back memories of that Overlander site...long time not lurked.

Has Wilsey returned to the fold or is he at the other place?

Nah, wilsey is still Over there, and just been made a moderator :roll: [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif[/img]

...

i remembered to refresh this time.

a long long time ago, some of my "possie" took me for a trip up to barrington tops. the weather had been inclement during the previous week, so the rd clay up there was going to be somewhat greasy. we weren't disappointed.
there was 5 cars, if i remember correctly, 2 hiluxes, a four-skinner, a troopy and something else, possibly another hilux. the geographically-challenged clown in the four-skinner was leading the trip.
after several hours of forest trails we started heading down a pretty sedate slope that went for a few km. some of that descent was pretty well ice skating due to the mud on the track.
we found where the downhill stopped and the uphill started at about 4pm. the trip up was going to be a lot shorter than the trip down, only about 200meters.
the troopy was first to have a go. as he had a locker in the rear and fairly new muddies, we thought he'd be the best bet to get up. well, he didn't. he made about 20m. i was behind him in my hilux with the same mud tyres but i only had a limited slip diff. so i gave it a run with him still up there and fell short of his mark by about 5m. at this stage it was time to have a think and hatch A PLAN. so we lashed the 2 vehicles to trees and did a bit of geometry.
out came ALL the recovery gear from every truck. first task was to get the troopy to the top. so, being short on winches etc, we attached a builders wheel (dirty big pulley about 300mm diameter that takes rope up to 40mm diameter) to a tree uphill from the troopy, ran a bit of nylon ferry rope through it from the troopy to my ute. i then reversed down the hill, pulling him up it, until we ran out of rope.
we then moved the pulley up the hill, as far as the rope would reach from the troopy, attached the appropriate amount of straps to it and i again drove up as far as i could go and pulled him up again.
we repeated this process about 6 or 7 times until he was at the top. well, until he had traction anyway.
each car in turn took a run at the hill and was pulled up from there by the troopy, BUT, we only had 20m of towing room at the top, so after each "tug" we had to back the troopy down the hill the length of 1 strap, hook on to the next one and pull again.
5 hours later, we got to the top. it was now about 9.30. our leader was lost. so, we set up camp in the middle of the track, made dinner and hit the sack.
the next morning, as we tried to get our bearings, we found the we were about 5km from where our trip leader thought we were.
but it was really a lot of fun anyway.

Still dont seem to be able to post a longer reply but at least the speed has improved (slightly).


Bushie