Woodchute Mtn trail

[4x4tographer 3,642]

18 hours ago, SonoranWanderer said:

Here is the super sketchy part. Note the water channel before and after the rock in the dead center of the photo. My rear passenger wheel was in the first washout trying to slide off the road. This picture is not a bad representation of the road grade (side incline). By the time I realized how bad it was, backing out wasn't a good option.

 

My path through the road was basically nose up and left, as high as I could get it and maintain the right turn and control camber (higher up drove up the camber angle). once I got my rear tire up inside the middle rock, I switched on both lockers in case I had to gun it to save myself from a rear right slide through the second washout. I moved forward a bit at a time, getting out to self spot and check tire positioning. (I did not have to gun it.)

 

A note on turning into off camber, turning into the off camber side tends to increase the the amount of off-camber-ness if and as you pull the low side front wheel further down the incline and sometimes push the upper side wheel further up the incline. I know from past experience that my Jeep is reasonably stable to close to 35 degrees, but much above 25, on a ledge, and increasing, makes even me queasy.

 

 

 

You can see where my rear wheel slid down to. The rock is on the left center.

 

 

 

Reverse phot of the sketchy area:

 

 

 

It turns out I did not take a photo of the Jeep in the worst position(s). Often when I'm deep in problem solving I get super focused and forget things like photos.

 

But I got a few Jeep shots of the mildly sketchy part before the super sketchy part.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the photos and scouting it out, @SonoranWanderer! Man, I certainly don't remember it looking like that last time I was up there. The off-camber stuff always makes me pucker. 

[SonoranWanderer 715]

I've been pondering how I might have managed the situation better. While I was in the middle of it, I thought of how traction boards might have helped had I deployed them before my rear wheel slide to the lower edge. Bridging the two deepest parts of the washout might have stabilized the off-camber and likely prevented some of the rear end sideways slide. By the time I thought about the traction boards, it was too late. I needed to back up to put them where they needed to be, but due to the rear end sideways slide I couldn't back up/out. My rear tire was pointed off the trail, into the significantly deeper wash.

 

It was a situation where the more you squirm the tighter the trap gets. This is admittedly the second time in my history of off-roading I can remember doing that to myself. The first time was during the climb on Moab Rim.

 

The other thing I should have done was deflated my tires more. I've been getting lazy lately an only dropping to 19-20 PSI (comfort level, not really traction boosting level). More tire surface area should have reduced the amount of push in and down of the soft dirt of the crumbling lower road bed and therefore reduced the sideways sliding. My ultimate solution was to lock the front and rear, forcing distribution of traction and preventing the right rear from getting too much power alone due to the open diff.