I went 4-wheeling with some friends tonight, and boy did it scare the shit outta me! It was me, Jorge, and Mike in Mike’s spankin’ new 2000 Ford F-150 (extended cab, short bed, 32X10.5 BFG Mud Terrain tires, no lift). We were about a half-hour’s drive away from any civilization, when we came upon a creek. It looked mostly frozen, with a few broken spots in the ice with a little bit of water showing through. It looked like somebody had gone through before, breaking all the ice up. The ice had frozen back over, but it looked like we could make it through just fine. So Mike gunned it. As the truck drove over the ice, it broke it up into huge pieces, and the water beneath was a lot deeper than we had thought (higher than the center of the wheels). We ended up getting stuck in the middle of the creek. Mike tried rocking the truck out, but the chunks of ice were wedged between the bottom of the truck and the creek bed. I thought there was some serious damage being done to the undercarriage. I couldn’t open my door because there was a huge wedge of ice almost against it, but we all got out (we could still stand on the unbroken ice) and surveyed the damage. The truck has step-rails on the sides to help you step up into the truck, but they also saved the truck from some serious body damage, because the ice was wedged between them and the bottom of the creek. We ended up working for about 20 minutes, rocking the truck back and forth only few inches at a time, trying to loosen some of the ice enough to remove it. Most of it weighed much more than the three of us could handle, but we got what we could, then continued rocking the truck back and forth. Eventually, Mike got enough momentum to bounce over the one huge hunk of ice that was keeping him stuck and literally bounced his way backwards out of the creek bed. I don’t know how the hell it happened because it seemed totally impossible. We were all just about ready to make the several-hour walk back to town in below-freezing weather before he got unstuck.
Wow, this story is getting long. 🙂 Anyway, seeing that truck make it out of there was the most awesome display of power I have ever seen when 4-wheeling. I guess just reading this story doesn’t give you, the reader, the same overwhelming sense of power, but it truly was awesome.