Friday, March 28th, 2025, at 11:12 a.m. (PT), we received a request for help with an offroad recovery in Oregon. The requester, Shawn Woods, submitted the following information: “99 Ford f350 dually bottomed out in mud about 120-150 ft to solid ground my winch ain’t strong enough orlong enough for a strait pull can only reach a side ways anchor point only have 20 cash for gas but have about 80 gallons of road diesel in my auxiliary tank to give rescuer to cover fuel / I’m with the vehicle / I can help cover the cost of fuel.”
Our administrator, Al Fontan, contacted the requester and verified the contact information provided, GPS location, and current situation before sending the request to local volunteers. In this particular recovery, we contacted volunteers within a 60-mile radius.
From the contacted volunteers we had Mike Eicher taking over the request, marking himself as engaging and contacting the requester to coordinate. We also had Mike Haviland offering help.
Mike Eicher took care of the request and 9:30 p.m. the request was closed. He later sent us a quick note we share below.
From Mike
Sorry for not getting a pictures, I felt a little rushed since it was getting dark and raining.
This was my first recovery with ORP and it went as follows.
From MIke
Shawn’s pictures showed his truck’s situation very well, a 1-ton truck buried to the frame in lake bottom mud. This time of year, the lake is low, and much of the “dry ground” above the water line turns to a slimy mess with the slightest bit of rain. I brought my F350 so I would be in the same weight class as Shawn’s truck, though there were plenty of anchor points to boulders along the edge of the flat. We determined that a backward pull would be best since the bed of Shawn’s truck was the lightest, and the front was dug in the deepest. The hope was that we could get the back winched around, and the front would come up out of the mud if the back wheels packed a track for it. I set an anchor to a boulder and ran out my winch line with a 150′ extension. After a few pulls and resets, the front wheels of my truck were starting to work down into the mud. We attempted to reposition my F350 and found that it couldn’t move under its own power either at this point. Shawn had a receiver hitch winch on his truck, and we put it on the back of mine to pull it back to where we started at the anchor. I anchored back in place and continued pulling Shawn’s truck backwards. Once we were about 50′ from each other, I disconnected the anchor and used Shawn’s truck to pull mine out of the holes it was in. We then rigged my winch to another boulder in front of my truck to winch it up onto the gravel at the edge of the mud flat. Once on the gravel, I was able to move again and pulled forward to become the anchor point for Shawn to winch himself to. After a couple of pulls, we had Shawn’s truck on the gravel as well and were able to drive both rigs out. Shawn was well prepared and really only needed a good anchor point and enough extensions to reach it.
We want to thank Mike for taking care of this offroad recovery in Oregon and all other volunteers who responded to this request.
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