Last night I'm glancing out of my living room window and I notice my neighbors RV is sitting at a 70 degree angle in the ditch with about a foot of soil plowed up against the rear bumper. Seems he was backing out of his drive way and slipped it off of the shoulder. It looked like when he realized that the right rear was in the ditch he might have punched it rather than stopping and trying to pull back out. Regardless, with all of the rain we've had lately, and the weight of the RV, he wasn't going anywhere.
Point of the story is that this was a good time to put my recovery kit to the test. A high lift jack is a great tool to have when off-roading, but in this case, the RV's low ground clearance called for a common bottle jack. I managed to get the right rear tires off of the ground enough to get some broken up cinder blocks under it, and improve the attitude and angle. Still wasn't enough. The weight and angle where still too much and the open differential of the RV just burned the rubber against the blocks. I keep a 3 ton Come-A-Long in my kit, and there were plenty of large trees for anchor points, but even with doubling it back with block and tackle, the RV's 14,000+lbs would snap the cable like sting cheese. (I like cheese). I ended up using a 10,000lb tow strap hooked to my K2500 Suburban. Between my Sub in 4Low, the shored up tires, and the RV's own power, we managed to pull her out.
This was a simple situation made challenging by the size and weight of the stuck vehicle, and it made me feel pretty good about my recovery kit contents.
Whether you Off-Road or drive a Geo Metro... If you don't have a kit, I highly advise that you get one, especially with winter approaching.
A good kit, and the knowledge to use it, might mean the difference between sleeping in your bed on a cold snowy night, or sleeping in your vehicle waiting for rescue.
Just my opinion, and I'm usually wrong.
(I totally missed the boat on the photo ops last night. Sorry)
Do you have a recovery kit? What's in it? I'll try to post some pics of mine tonight.
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