4x4 Icon - Flagpole Knob 12/27/03

Bump in the Road

We counted our blessings and got moving again. At this point I knew there were still some short climbs ahead but we did not have any trail reports to tell us what to expect. The tracks did continue up the ridge so I was hoping we would not encounter any impossible hills.

Then I got to a little hill that was sheer ice. The ruts up the middle were slick and the shoulder on either side was very narrow, with some snow but not very much. The crown of the trail was frozen dirt for about 20 feet and then reverted to frozen ice. It looked like a more difficult version of what we'd been dealing with all the way up so I went up taking the right side, with my drivers side wheels in the middle of the trail and my passenger side wheels on the right shoulder, such as it was. Same as before... Only this time it was a little bit different...

This worked well and I reached the crest of the little hill. Just as I reached the crest, the whole Jeep got light. I had completely lost traction and could feel the Jeep drifting a little to the right, but still moving forward just ever so slightly. As soon as I had lost traction, I regained it again without touching the gas. The trail continued to climb from there but at a much less steep rate. I took a breath and reported the conditions on the radio and then continued up the trail another 40 feet. Traction was sparse at best, and though I had passed the steep portion of the hill, I did not count myself "out of the woods" by any stretch of the imagination. I was spooked.

I moved up a ways and called for Joel to come next. He came up using the same line I took, more or less. When he crested the hill, I saw him pause momentarily. At first I though he was backing off. But very soon I realized that was wishful thinking. His Jeep start moving backwards, first very slowly but soon faster and faster. It was like slow motion. And it was sick. It's that moment when you witness impending doom and you're helpless to do anything to stop it. It was all over but the crying.

They disappeared below the crest of the hill going backward very fast... My heart sunk as I heard a very loud crash. Someone came over the CB and asked if they had heard a crash. I told the kids to stay in the Jeep. Me and my Dad jumped out and headed for the crest of the hill, to go down and render aid. When we got there, my Dad hit the ice. His feet went out from under him and he landed flat on his back. He's 70 years old, limber and active, but no spring chicken. The things he's been through...

Fortunately, he was not hurt. But at that moment, it didn't look very good. I got to him after almost falling down myself. I encouraged him to stay down until he got his breath, and then I slid him to the side of the trail where he could put his feet on something that wasn't slippery. I forced him to get up slowly (he wanted to just jump right back up) so we could qualify his injuries and avoid making them worse. It appeared that he was OK, though he was nursing a bumped head. Once he was back on his feet and saying he was OK, I turned my attention to Joel.

Everybody was uninjured and walking about. Thank God for that. Nobody was out of their vehicle at the time that things started to happen so we dodged a bullet there. If there had been spectators milling about, it could have been ugly. I know I harp on safety sometimes to point of making enemies, but when the unexpected happens, being a nanny goat pays off.

Joel's Jeep was down at the bottom of the hill. He had slid down the knoll, collecting speed and without any control. They whacked Wendy's front end quite hard. He had a fair amount of damage to his rear bumper, tailgate and spare tire area. Needless to say he was happy that he and his friend were uninjured but not happy about his Jeep. Who would be? I have seen very few Rubicons in as nice condition as Joel's and I know it's not a mall cruiser so it is quite a credit to him that it is so nice.

Wendy was out and checking out the damage. She and her passenger were OK and in pretty good spirits, all things considered. Her bumper, fender, grill, hood and latches were in pretty bad shape but she was able to drive the Jeep. The radiator seemed OK. Looking at the situation, it was probably a good thing that Wendy had been there to "catch" him. If Joel had not hit Wendy, he would have had only another 40 feet or so to stop the Jeep before it shot off the edge of the cliff. Her Jeep is also very well maintained and a credit to her care. And Wendy wheels it too, so this too is no poseur rig. It's nice to see people take pride in their vehicles, and all the more saddening when the unexpected happens.

Some folks helped Wendy get her Jeep examined and strapped back together. We briefly debated whether or not Joel would have gone off the edge of the cliff had Wendy not been there to "catch" him, but agreed that we were happy that had not happened. He had about 40 or 50 feet of runoff past the icy ruts, where traction was available. But there is no guessing whether he had reaction time and enough traction to stop before he got some serious air. I don't even want to think of that scenario. This little bend in the trail passes by a pretty serious cliff.

It's beautiful up here but make no mistake, there are places along the way that are risky business. We talk about GWNF like it is the domain of stockers, and that is true. But add some ice and snow, and a you have the opportunity to really get in a world of hurt. Our luck was far from perfect here, but things could have been much worse. I felt silly requiring tow hooks front and rear when I scheduled the trip. I didn't have any such discomfort now.

We spent some more time sizing up the situation. We didn't want to risk having another crash, and I didn't want anyone to be pressured into doing anything they didn't want to do. So while everyone got calmed down, a few people did some work on the hill to try and improve traction. They threw dirt onto the ice and roughed up the slippery spots. They checked the options and came back with several good suggestions. The teamwork that this group exhibited was a great example to newcomers and even oldtimers.

I wanted to get another winch-equipped vehicle up the hill with me. It was well over 200 feet to the top of the hill, with the first crest about 100 feet from the bottom. I volunteered Jim to winch himself up the hill because he had the longest winch cable in close proximity to the hill. (I noticed later that Wayne too has the monster WARN with 125 feet of cable, but I digress).

The problem we faced, if we decided to winch everyone, was that we'd have to belay them in two pulls - the cable just wasn't long enough to get a vehicle up past the problem point. That was fine by itself but owing to the ice and snow, there was no place for me and Jim to secure our vehicles that would put us out of the way and in position to winch others. People with winches would have been fine, but of course that was a vast minority of the group.

That meant we'd winch someone to us and then we'd be in their way for them to get up the trail. That wasn't going to work. There are a variety of other alternatives we could have used, such as putting vehicles behind the winch vehicle and winching them both up the hill and towing the rear vehicle to dry ground. Or wrestle the winch vehicles into the woods on the sides of the trail. Any of that would have worked. But like all the alternatives, it would take hours to move 19 vehicles up in this fashion. It was already 3:30pm at this point and it would be dark in another hour. It was getting colder and the ice was freezing hard again, where it had been almost slush at the warmest time of the day. We needed to get off the trail as soon as possible and winching was not going to do it for us. It was already clear that we would not be making our exit via Dunkle Hollow, and there was no way in the world we would be running Kephart! I was thankful that we had an "early out" in the paved road that goes up to Flagpole Knob. I don't use it when things are going well, but tonight we would be hitting pavement earlier than planned...

We looked at the left shoulder of the trail and decided that perhaps there was a continous strand of snow, dirt and brush that would provide enough traction to get up the hill the way I had done on the right side, and we would not have to span the stretch of unbroken ice that got me and Joel in so much trouble. But the left shoulder was a narrow strand and we had already had enough drama for one day. Remembering the discomfort I have felt on prior runs when situations got scary, I knew there were going to be people that would be nervous about going up. I decided that somebody without any reservations should go first and we could evaluate how well it worked before sending others up.

Wayne volunteered to go. Truth be told, I was not at all worried about Wayne's chances for success. He knows how to drive, was not consumed by fear, and has a capable rig. But because he was locked on both ends, I was concerned that his lack of difficulty might not mean all was well with this line, but simply successful because he has two wheels putting power down. He went ahead and with spotting to keep him on the 6-inch wide "traction strip", he got to the crest of the hill and beyond without any trouble. Now we had three winch-equipped vehicles at the top of the problem area.

We had a quick driver's meeting and the options were put up: be winched or drive up the left shoulder. Everybody chose the left shoulder.

We spotted folks up one by one. This took the better part of an hour. Nobody had any trouble. We used a handheld radio to communicate with each driver and hand signals to keep them on the track. When everyone was up, we reformed the column and continued up the ridge. We had to skip the little side-obstacle near the stone camp because we ran out of time for playing. There were a couple more hills that had similar icy conditions but by now, everybody knew the drill and stuck to one side or the other with traction on the shoulder.

We drove along towards Meadow Knob. I expected the worst and hoped for the best...

Continue to Meadow Knob... >

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