Saturday, April 27th, 2024, at 9:01 p.m. (PT), we received a request for help with an offroad recovery in Oregon. The requester, Zachary Shirtum, submitted the following information: “NF 4610 near Abbott Road. North of Lookout Springs trailhead. Near La Dee flats OHV area. Red 01 Toyota Tacoma, high centered in snow. / I’m with the vehicle.”
We received this request pretty late, around 9 p.m., and since we were close to the area with my daughter, we decided to head their way to help after dinner.
We left from the city around 10 p.m., and constantly communicated with Zachary. I also left Myrian and David, following the recovery online on our chatroom, just in case I needed extra help, so they could take over the request and invite more volunteers.
Luckily, the recovery was very simple; we deflated the tires before getting Zachary down to 12 psi. Once we arrived, we went through maybe 200 feet of snow until we found a good dry patch to stop, and from there, we connected our winch to the rear of his vehicle.
Initially, we used the winch, but since it was pulling me forward because Zachary’s vehicle was pretty stuck in the front, I ended up repositioning the jeep a bit backward and then simply pulling the vehicle just slightly going in reverse. We disconnected the line and turned around, and just like that, the recovery was over. We were back down around 12:15 a.m.
Zachary was very happy, and we had a new fun adventure with my daughter. All good!
We made a quick video of this using our dashboard camera, don’t expect anything fancy!.
If you would like to receive a text message when we get a request near you, create your account here: offroadportal.org/signup