Friday afternoon picked up the patrol from ARB, it had been driven straight from the dealer to them, I had a winch, front air lockers and OME 2"
suspension lift fitted. Im running 285/70/17 tyres BFG Muddies..
Saturday 3pm left for the
VIC high country, stayed with Brian from bushexperiences.com.au
check out his website.
Every one who knows me, knows that I have a hard head, if there's a challenge i'll take it, poor brian he didn't know that before he jumped in the patrol with me.
As we were driving through the alpine
state forest brian was guiding me, untill we passed a track where I asked where does that one go, his reply "thats the track of no return" me "why" guess were we ended up, yep straight down I mean straaaiiight down ther was no time for assesment it was just short of being a cliffs edge, covered with about 2foot of clay. Brian yelled S!#t use your diff locks. ( no return) boy did I wish I had of listened to him and not gone down there. Diff locks on made no difference, we were fortunate enough that half way down there was a platform enough for me to turn around and then asses the situation.
Our options were 1. Stay the night 2. Winch out, seemed almost impossible. 3. continue on down to the river, where we run the risk of the river being to high to cross, and there would be six crossings to make our way to another fire trail and a long drive ahead of us. 2. Winching was our best option.
We tried our luck driving we managed a whole 5metres, yipee only another 395 metres to go.
A little over 3 hrs later we were out, it was cold and dark. Our biggest concern was while we were winching, it was that steep that every time I released the D shackle from the winch that the truck would slide back, wich it did whilst releasing slack from the winch. (We both found Jesus that day.) oh I forgot to tell you Brian was nuturing a broken leg, so he had the easy job flicking the winch switch.
You can imagine how i felt when Brian the 4wd tour operater would step out of the vehicle every time I released that winch, thanks Brian that was really reassuring when i've got 60k of metal hanging on.
I wont be putting the GU through something like that again, but now I know its limits and its nice to know that all the
feedback on how tuff the patrols are,
well it stands up to its reputation. If I was in anything else I would have surely broken something, I came out damage free thank God.
bushexperiences.com.au has always been Toyota, and there was the joke when I first rolled up, no Nissans beyond this point. Lets see if Brians traded his 100series for a GU by next deer season.