After a couple of years of being able to drive most tracks it looks like the set in mush is back, or at least thats what we concluded during one of a number of short all wheel slides over the weekend.
On this mission we were on a neighouring property re-opening a short 1km dead end track into a forrested gully that had not been driven for a while.
Knew in advance that this track was likely to be right on our driveable limit so we took two cars 300 ft of ropes, all the recovery gear and son was riding my trail bike ahead giving us
text message advice. Times do change don't they !
Left one car at top of track as backup, even though average slope was only about 20 degrees.
Muddies were set to low twenties and we edged slowly down, winding in and out between small gums.
But about 1/2 way down got the message that track was impassable due to large downed trees.
Tried to stop with mixed success as operator error caused a couple of wheel lockups and short slides as I grabbed the handbrake for assistance temporarily forgetting that my current Patrol didn't have a tailshaft handbrake.
Just ahead was an off camber downhill bend around a tree and the track surface was also thickly laid with wet leaf matter.
The only thing I could really do was to inch forward so as not to build up any momentum whilst steering around the tree and hoping the tail end would hold.
This took some minutes to cover a whole 10 meters and definitely caused some sweaty palms.
Next we successfully slid to a stop just above a huge curved fallen tree section that had come down such that its end speared into the very middle of the track forming a sort of arched bridge some 2m high.
Spent about a hour
clearing all the minor stuff away using most of our chainsaw fuel to get a clear shot at the suspended 3 or 4 tonnes of tree which looked from a distance like a bridge over the track.
This was potentially a risky situation as the car was in the way if the tree moved in the wrong direction and we could not winch the tree away even if we had had the traction to hold on the
hill.
My brothers solution to this problem was to cut a long lever and put it under the tree where in had speared into the track, and with 3 of us on the lever we got it to fall over off the side of track.
It worked and twenty minutes later we made it to gully bottom and contemplated the return drive back up over some lovely hot coffees courtesy of our new and surprisingly effective
Stanley thermos flask.
The bike headed off first, but soon got into trouble and just ran out of traction.
Its a CRF-2320 is
well suited to this task, with a healthy amount of low down torque - sort of the diesel of trail bikes. However it tried and couldn't get back up via normal means and had to backtrack and go sideways a few times and with some help
it disappeared up the
hill.
Wasn't looking good for the car so we had to make our best choices and count on getting it right first go else the track would be too cut up.
We elected to leave the rear difflock off as they often break traction on turns like this. Set front lock on, and set tyres to 10-12psi and selected usual 2nd low and went off slowly but not real slow trying to keep engine at 1000rpm.
Essentially we choose to rely on traction with little momentum.
While the Patrols big 4800cc petrol engine has plenty of torque it has little engine inertia so you have to be right on and off the gas quickly as required.
As we went up the revs would dip down below 500rpm and occasionally a wheel would spin a little, but slowly we crawled up in a very memorable climb all the time right on the edge of breaking traction but just hanging in there. Passed the bike
stalled after about 300 meters but knew if we stopped we'd stay so we keep on plugging away till we got right to the top much relieved.
Just a pleasant little trip.
Robin Miller