I took the Jeep up to Granby this weekend to see my parents for Father’s Day. It was an excuse to get out of the hot city and enjoy the cool mountain air, more than anything.
Saturday morning the folks left early for a 5k event in Winter Park, I putzed around the old house and property for a bit before getting ready to go home. I had a car show back in Denver at 2pm, and I wanted to get a little mountain driving in(without a functioning winch, foolishly) before getting back on the highway, so I started up the hill around 10am.
The forests in Granby have been hit hard by pine beetle infestation, with something like 90% of trees older than 10 years being killed. It’s really quire horrible. Younger pines and firs seem to be immune, but vast tracts of forest have turned red and fallen down, or are currently being logged for the purpose of preventing a massive forest fire. What that means is that logging roads have opened up everywhere. I took a BLM road up the mountain and was enjoying myself thoroughly when I came to a runoff stream (not a year-round stream, just an area where melting snow has saturated the ground), with a downed tree going across it. I drove over the tree, but too slowly. Without enough speed, I couldn’t make it out of the little bog. My tires quickly became coated in the slicker-than-two-eels-wrestling-in-a-barrel-of-snot mud, and I wasn’t going anywhere. In my attempt to turn towards dry land and get out, I promptly got my front bumper hung up on a large log.
Fuck.
So, here I am, halfway up the mountain, by myself, with a non-functioning winch, and nobody back at the house where a large tractor and other useful things reside. I figure if I can find my dad’s chainsaw, I can cut up the log and get out on my own. I accept the challenge of bailing myself out and head down the mountain in my Tevas. I get back to the house and check the garage and wood shed for the chain saw. It’s nowhere to be found. I grab the keys for one of the remaining cars and head down to the pole barn where the tractor, skidder, and snowmobiles live. No chain saw. I check everywhere it could be, nothing to be found. I think to myself that I’ve really screwed the pooch on this one. Then I look up on the shed wall and spy a hand-cranked comealong and…. an axe.
I knew right then that today was going to be a 
day.
Thirty minutes later I was back at the Jeep, blasting Andrew W.K. from the stereo as I went to town on that log.
Boomerjinks vs. Nature: THE ROAD TO VICTORY
Rolled the log out and away, tossed some of the remaining chips into the mud in the hopes of appeasing the traction gods.
The loss of traction is what got me into the predicament. This is FAR from the worst I’ve ever been stuck, but being by myself and not having a winch is what did me in. You can see in the above picture how saturated the ground was from how deep the tires were sinking into the soil.
Aftermath. There’s the downed tree that I had no trouble getting over…
Where I got stuck on the log. You can see I took down a few saplings as I powered out….
Freedom! Wonderfully filthy freedom!
So yeah, got stuck, and got myself out with a fucking AXE. It’s been month since I felt this manly.
I slid painters tape into the gap between the wheel and the tire, then used 3×4 notecards to shield the rest of the tire. I honestly thought I’d need more than this to protect the tire, but it worked great. Then, against better judgement, I painted my wheels without sanding them. I used Rustoleum Gloss Cherry, hoping to be a little brighter than the stripes so that when it darkened a little it would match better. I stuffed toilet paper between the spokes to prevent paint from getting on my brakes or any of the bits behind the wheel.
