Sunday, April 12, 2026, at 3:40 p.m. (PT), we received a request for help with an offroad recovery in Washington. The requester, Jared Garcia, submitted the following information: “1999 Subaru Impreza wagon rolled off embankment off of forestry road. Approx. 16 feet down. Car rested on its wheels, no flats, might possibly run/drive once winched out. / I’m not with the vehicle / I can help cover the cost of fuel.”
I was the administrator for this recovery. We contacted the requester and verified the contact information provided, GPS location, and current situation before processing this request. The requester left the vehicle the night before after the vehicle was rolled from the main trail to a bank 30 feet below. He also needed a ride back to the car from Vancouver, a city around 15 miles from where the vehicle was.
Since this recovery was quite extensive and conveniently located near my home, I decided to take a closer look and actively participate after reaching out to other local volunteers. I informed them that I would be waiting for an hour until another volunteer joined me. However, after an hour, and with no one else available, I decided to drive over and personally take care of the recovery.
After picking up Jared, we drove for a while toward the vehicle. On arrival, we found the vehicle has rolled after hitting a large pothole on the road, he flipped once and landed on its wheels. I parked my jeep a few feet from a large tree across the road we could use to anchor to pull the Subaru up. The Subaru, for everyone’s surprise, was still running, so we moved it on its own power to a better position for the Jeep to start pulling it up. I also set up my two red fuel containers, which are quite visible along the road, to prevent anyone from driving through the winch lines.
The plan was to first move the vehicle, from its parallel position to the road, to a perpendicular position, so we could reset and pull straight up after that. We used the tree, we also luckily had a Tacoma passing by who saw what we were trying to do and decided to help by parking behind my jeep and anchoring the vehicle while I was pulling up. Jared helped me setup the tree saver and winch lines to the Subaru.
Even though the Subaru was lighter than my Jeep JK, probably by 2000 pounds, by the time I finished rotating the vehicle 90 degrees, and when it was now setup straight to be pulled up the embarkment, the angle and weight of the vehicle far exceded what my vehicle weight was, so having the extra anchor helped a lot. I was able to pull the Subaru all the way to the border of the road, and when the two front wheels were about a foot from reaching the flat area my winch ran out of power.
I was in a pretty precarious situation, my options were to try and setup a set of straps to keep the vehicle from rolling back, while trying to reposition my winch line, and possibly try to use a 2:1 reduction with a polly to reconnect to the Subaru and finish polling… but thats when two other jeeps from the other side of the road arrive, by coincidence, and they right away jumped into action! Those guys truly saved the day.
They connected another jeep and with two jeeps pulling we got the Subaru back in all fours in the main road in no time.
Lessons learned
I learned that sometimes it is better to stop and try to imagine the entire process of a recovery from beginning to end, in order to find the weak spots in a plan. I jumped into action after a short, brief evaluation of the situation, but right at the middle point of this recovery, I found issues I never thought I would have…
Now I think I will try to run the recovery in my head all the way through (easier said than done) before I decide what approach might work. If, like I was, you are by yourself in a situation like this one. First of all, I would recommend waiting for extra help. It was ridiculous of me to pretend I can pull this off by myself. I’m not afraid to say I screwed up when I do; it is the only way I know I can learn from my mistakes. I wasn’t born with a winch under my arm and a kinetic rope on the other one 🙂 so I’m always learning.
Secondly, if you have no option but to do this by yourself, try to imagine the entire length of your line moving and try to think of the areas where you might end up in a pickle. In this case, before the card was going to be on the road, I was running out of room in my winch to keep pulling. So from the beginning it would’ve made more sense to start this with a 2:1 to a secondary polly and use a winch line extension to get to the vehicle. Also, set up a secondary line with straps just to allow it to be reset freely when needed. I’m sure I can probably think of a few more things I would’ve done differently, but luckily it all worked out. Thanks for all the folks who showed up ready to help! Special thanks to Bill and Brandon on their jeeps for their amazing help.
I made a short video I share down below. Hope this helps other volunteers in similar situations.
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