Stuck in mud at the bottom of a sandy hill

Sunday, July 20th, 2025, at 8:20 p.m. (PT), we received a request for help with an offroad recovery in Washington. The requester, Liam Canniff, submitted the following information: “Stuck in mud at the bottom of a sandy hill. Ford ranger 2010. Not damaged. Need to bring long straps. Need decent ground clearance and not oversized width to access area. / 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 40-mile radius.

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From the contacted local volunteers we had Hunter Hughes taking over the request. We later got a full report from Hunter sharing all the details of this recovery.

From Hunter

On Sunday July 20th 2025 I received a message about a ford ranger stuck in the mud of a lake bed sent by Liam Canniff of Seattle Washington around 7 in the evening, I waited almost two hours to see if anyone closer to the recovery was able to help and did not see any efforts from anyone this is when i ultimately deciding to engage in the recovery mission.

I geared up and left my home around 10:30pm with my wife mad I was leaving that late of course. Upon arrival near the sent gps coordinates I discovered the truck and owner were only accessible by near single track conditions which posed a huge obstacle for the efforts of the recovery. I than spent close to an hour crawling down this narrow trail for roughly two miles weaving between pine trees and making hairpin turns before coming out onto the lake bed where I met with the owner and his two friends who were also stranded with him.

We quickly came together and formed a flawless plan that was only possible because of the owner and his friends rigging everything up instead of me doing it due to me currently have a severally broken femur in my right leg. We used kinetic recovery lines and a 12k winch to recover and the owner friends rigged everything the way I wanted and we had the owners vehicle out of the mud and up a steep sand bank that was about forty feet tall within 15 minutes. We than worked together to get back to pavement before going separate ways.

We want to express our deepest gratitude to Hunter for their exceptional work. As always, our volunteers and all the local groups have consistently amazed us by saving countless stuck folks.

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