Hi everyone, clearly i'm new to the forum and off roading. I figured you all would get a bit of a laugh from my first "stuck" story, and by stuck I mean stuck.
Summer was just starting and it had been raining heavily for the past 2 days. Me and a friend decided it would be fun to go do some mudding, him in his Blazer, me in my KJ. Four minutes into it everything was going fine, until I made my first mistake. I drove in the ruts. My JK's underbelly clearly had settled onto the ground with my wheels in the ruts. My friend told me he would turn around and come back to pull me out, seems like its going to be all ok. Then his whole left side drops and lands firmly on the frame, he isnt going anywhere. For the next two hours we are out there trying to jack up the KJ to get stuff under the tires, but everything I give it gas the just shoot out and i'm back in the water/mud. We then get a ride from someone we know to go to Home Depot to get a come along and some straps. Once we get back we are just laughing at how we should have had more straps and a come along to begin with. We stopped laughing after we starting pulling trees out of the ground because it was too saturated. Well for the next couple hours more we get another person out there to try to figure out what to do until we decide that we are offically stuck until morning.
Next morning we are back out there with help on the way, a backhoe. Simple enough, he will go back there and pull us out with some chains and that will be that. Until the backhoe got stuck. It took him at least 20 minutes of using both the front scoop and the back hydrolic arm to push himself out of ruts he created, it took a good 60ft of chains for him to be on solid ground to drag us both out.
Here is what I learned from this experience:
1. Go offroading with at least 2 other vehicles
2. Check the terrain your going on to make sure your vehicle can handle it
3. Buy a Hi-Lift and a shovel
4. Carry more straps
5. Get tow hooks or shackles(crawling underneath to tie a chain to your axle is no fun)
6. Get better tires
7. Get a Lift
8. Have at least one person in the group that knows what the hell he is doing
9. That "Trail Rated" badge means hard packed earth, not mud, especially with nearly a foot of water on top of it
Here are some pictures I took with my phone on day 1, sorry guys I didnt bother bringing back a better camera to take photos of the recovery.
