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Who's Built a Bridge while 4x4'ing...? ( long )


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Hey all.......

 

My Club went out wheeling yesterday and had an exciting hour or so near a creek.....

 

We were driving up a standard logging road when I saw a very narrow trail running up hill beside a creek that you could tell had been very swollen recently with water......It had eroded the ground nearest to the trail pretty good. It had an almost vertical drop from trail to creek of about 25 ft or so....:)

 

I went past this tight spot with no issues , hugging the rock wall on the uphill side as tight as I could....Told everyone behind me to come through at their own risk, as it was very tight. We all got through it , and went up to where the trail dead-ended in a pretty nice little spot on the creek.....Good camping....:)

 

We All got turned around and started heading back out. One wagon got through the tight spot no problem.Bear in mind, looking out the driverside window, your looking straight down almost 25 ft of bank to the creek.....It had a pucker factor of about 8.... :eek:

 

Shane was next in his 98 Forester, which is just a smidge wider than the rest of us, and when he came to the tight spot, he went up the bank a bit harder, thus forcing the driverside to push the soft bad side of the trail off the ledge and thus dropping his driver's front tire over too......his pucker factor just went up to oh say 20+........:eek:

I had to hook to him with the winch, and my cars nose in a tree......Get him back off the now too narrow trail, and looked at the situation.....

 

We decided to use a 10-12 foot section of log that luckily had a faily flat face to it . Dug a trench to bury it in the trail at trail level, and lock it into place using the dirt and rock we had dug out.....Got it all done, and Shane got to test it first....:) Now at this point, spotter was crusial cause driver side is on the log , and fractions of an inch from rolling off the thing and off the bank into the creek.....the log had to support car weight due to the fact that it was only locked in at each edge by about 1 1/2 -2 feet of dirt the rest was out hanging in the air...:(

 

Shane got across with no issues, only settled the log in a bit better for the rest of us....:) then the other 3 cars came across with no issues ever so slowly......

 

This little episode was the high point in our day cause snow line wouldn't let us go high to play...:( and the real 4x4 trail we were going to do , had an old growth tree uprooted and in the trail ...:(

 

I'll have some pics of the bridge work soon......you'll get a way better understanding of the Pucker factor then.....:)

 

Later, John and Crew....

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