Thread: Winch Recovery - No Trees

Originally Posted by chazza

The hedgehog is a good anchor as well but how do you lift the pegs out afterwards?

We used to tap them back out with the same small lumphammer we hammered them in with. If there was a stuck peg, we'd lever it out with another peg. We never had any problems.

Originally Posted by windsock

In a post above about the hedgehog idea is fine until you strike a rocky/gravelly river bed, or any alluvial based soil type with rocks present. If you have predefined holes to drive the steel stakes through, there is a big chance of striking a rock and not getting depth.

Considering we used them in limestone mountains, we rarely ran into such problems. The holes in the hedgehog were big enough that you had a certain amount of wiggle room and could angle the peg off in different directions if you did strike a rock. And there were enough holes in the hedgehog that you could easily afford to miss a few. I agree that they aren't suitable to 100% of situations, but I'd be confident that they'd get you out of trouble 90% of the time. Again I'm referring back to climbing techniques here, but if the ground were hard enough that I couldn't get an ground anchor in, then I'd probably be looking for a rock to get a sling around, or a crack in the rock to get a chock into and anchor off of that. I'm not claiming any massive 4x4 experience here, you aussies are the experts at that I'm just looking at the problem from a different point of view. I do like your stake idea though, I guess it's all the same principle really - distribution of load. On a slightly different topic, we had to do many courses on this kind of stuff many moons ago, and there is an optimum angle between your anchor points, which if exceeded, significantly decreases the effectiveness of the anchor point, and increases the chance of it getting ripped out (and in the case of winching out a truck, getting planted through your windscreen). I'll see if I can get the material emailed to me - it makes for an interesting read.

Originally Posted by garrycol

the hedgehog - will it actually hold?

I would, and have done in the past, bet my life on it.

Originally Posted by garrycol

No one has mentioned ground anchors - anyone actually used them?

I've never used these, but they look very similar to what we use in snow rescue - we call them dead man anchors. The key is getting the correct angle on them - too shallow and they pull out, too steep and they rip the ground up like a plough. Get them in at 45 degrees and you have a rock solid anchor to work from.

Do a google search under "Ground Anchor Plates"

I saw a demo of this:


At a boat show, and was very impressed. It's called a SARCA ground anchor.

Super SARCA Anchor - anchorright.com.au

There was a good video on how it works, and how it is better than normal ground anchors, but I can't find it yet.

Originally Posted by Hymie

Do a google search under "Ground Anchor Plates"

Did that - some companies selling them but virtually nothing on experiences on how well they work or do not work.

Garry

This gets good reports from people in the UK who do winch comps:

X-eng High Performance Off-Road Engineering

what you're calling a hedgehog I call a herring spine and when its pegged in its a herring bone anchor.

each link of 4 pegs (on the ones I get hold of) is rated to 250kg in softish sand and 500KG in medium clay and up to 1000KG in hard clay, its an operator experience how you call the ground, with a suitable jackhammer you can drive the buggers into roads and concrete slabs if you need to. (never had to and I dont want it back if I do) the pegs are about 18 inches long.

they work well but are not (IMHO) as versitile as a set of star pickets and a good roll of fencing wire to windlass it all together with.

I dont rate those ground plough anchors for anything but sand/light clay work Ive seen a couple of instances where they've bumped into something and "bounced" free while under tension.

It's been a long while since this one has come up.

Ground Anchors

sand/ground anchor

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

what you're calling a hedgehog I call a herring spine and when its pegged in its a herring bone anchor.

What we used to call a Ground Anchor or Earth Anchor Holdfast to a reccce mech