The Saga of the Stuck
Durango 04-26-03

Funny how pictures don�t give you the feeling of how it truly was.

We were almost out of this nasty stream until we ran into 2  trucks stuck approximately 50 feet from an offshoot of the stream.   It was going to be a while before they moved and they had plenty of people around to help them out, so I did not want to add to the population so I decided to back out the way I came to a road I saw earlier.  I new I should not have tried backing out but I wanted to get on with the hunt.  Well a slip of the wrist as my tires rubbed on something and did not have enough momentum then all was lost.  The Durango sunk and rested on the sandbar in the middle of the stream.  All 4 tires were off the ground and became paddlewheels that spun freely in the water.  My ground clearance is only 8 inches to the bottom of the differential and 11 inches or so to the skid plate, well it was resting on the skid plate.  If you dug a hole around the tires and put rocks or something underneath them, that would not help.  I had to get the truck off or higher than the sandbar.  The only way to do that was to lift each tire up and stack rocks or hard debris underneath them.  Well that was much easier said than done.  The sand was very soft and fine anything you put on it with a little pressure would sink.  Well there were no rocks around to be used only reeds and little dead trees.  So I was up the proverbial Creek without the paddle with the sun going down.  We called on the radio I don�t know how long to reach someone and finally Deryl got hold of someone and then it got to Tom and the rescue was in progress.  To make the rest of this short, I walked down to the other people who were stuck about 300 feet or so and after they were rescued buy a gentleman named Brian they all came to my rescue.  We worked for 1 ½ hours or more to get it up off the sandbar.  My jack crank handle twisted and it became useless and luckily Brian had many things needed for such a predicament. Shovel, Hydraulic jack, come along & tow straps.
Well were able to put rocks under the tires and lifted the truck of the sandbar so with one final pull with his truck and the extra power from mine it was out.

There are more details to this story.  We tried pulling it a few other times and other people helped a great deal to get my Durango free.  I thank all of them for there help! I am sorry I don�t remember all there names.

You can look at the pictures here.  http://www.thunter.org/pics/april03meathead.html

Moral of my story,  Get lift kit and bigger tires! and try again.  But it still won�t replace my Toyota,  I missed it!
 

De Steve / N6XFC