December, Sunday 18th, at 8:57 a.m. (PST), we got a recovery from Javier Savala who got stuck driving his Ford Escape.
We contacted Javier right away and once we verified his location and contact information we submitted the request to volunteers. No more than 20 minutes after passing the ticket to volunteers we got Clayton Shaddox already coordinating with Javier.
Here are Clayton’s notes about the recovery: “Javier, the original caller. A Ford F250 and a Tesla had driven down the same road after Javier asked the Portal for help and got stuck behind him.
The first priority was to get the Tesla backed up the hill and turned around so we could get it out of the way and help the other vehicles. After a lot of digging and leapfrogging the six traction boards I brought to make a roadway for the Tesla we got it up high enough on the hill we could swing the nose around enough I could rig an axle strap through his passenger front wheel rim and winch him around so he was facing uphill. Once he was facing uphill I could winch him from the little factory tow point up the hill to a flatter spot and he could drive himself out.
The F250 was having a lot of trouble. The conditions in the snow were just wet and sloppy and we had a hard time making much progress. At one point he started to slide toward a drop off to the creak too much and I used my MorePowerPuller hand winch to pull his back end sideways to keep him out of the ditch.
Once we had him straightened out and in a position at the bottom of the hill I could get some winch line to him I set up a redirect and a two to one with a couple snatch blocks. Ended up using all my winch extension lines and all my tree straps too. Once my Jeep was chalked and tied into trees behind me to keep the heavy truck from pulling my Jeep down the hill I started winching him up.
The winching went well and the F250 was also able to make some rearward progress himself most of the time with the help from my winch. Had to re-rig a few times and remove the extensions so the winch was pulling at the most efficient it could.
Thomas arrived as we had the F250 halfway up the hill and has much more knowledge about modern Ford’s traction control than I do so he was able ti coach the F250 driver on how to manipulate the traction control and he was able to drive himself out the rest of the way. While we were winching the F250 up, Javier, the original caller was able to use my shovels and traction boards to get his Ford Escape moving. Had to use the traction boards a couple more time to get Javier back up the hill. Once everyone was back up the hill we were able to drive everyone else out under their own power.“
Here are some photos of this recovery also Clayton submitted. We thank both our volunteers, Clayton Shaddox and Thomas Cutler for helping with this multi-vehicle recovery. Awesome job guys!.
