Well, I really enjoy bringing our ATVs up to camp in Montana and I really enjoy letting other people use them while we are there, but I guess I'm going to have to start requiring a proficiency test before I allow people to ride them!
Thankfully this time both the ATV and the operator only sustained minor injuries compared to the last time I had to rescue one of my ATVs off the mountain.
One of my sisters was riding it and somehow got the front tire off the side of the trail and it was all over pretty quickly. She was going very slow when it happened, but either leaned the wrong way or got it too far off the side or something, but it went over with her and a passenger going over with it. They both fell off the side and the ATV rolled right over top of them. Thankfully the small sapling trees helped hold most of the weight of the ATV off them and it rolled over once and landed on it's wheels still running. Also, this is one of the few areas on the trail where there is only a 10 or 15 foot drop off the trail to a relatively flat area so that was a big help as well. Some areas the ATV would have rolled end over end down the side of the mountain for several hundred feet.
Here's a picture of where the ATV ended up. The guy in the picture is my nephew who was helping me get it out.
Pictures never do justice on telling how steep things are. Here's another angle of it.
We tried our best to get it out with the tools we had, but that last bit of slope was nearly straight up and the rachet straps that I had just weren't going to get it out. Here is Duncan sitting on the front end of the ATV trying to get it to power up the slope. We had it in 4X4 with the differential lock, but all it was doing was digging some big holes with the front tires.
At one point I was pushing and he was sitting on it normally, but it felt like it was going to tip over backwards. I also tried to pull it out with the other ATV, but that ended up getting it too far sideways and it was going to roll over sideways. We ended up having to go back to camp and borrow a come along.
Even with the come along things were pretty iffy. The front end of the ATV was pushing into the top of the hill and the back wheels were actually off the ground. Things were creaking and straps were straining and we ended up breaking one of the smaller straps trying to pull with the other ATV at the same time we were winching with the come along.
My brother Frank was helping by this time.
Finally we just went for broke and had Frank ride the ATV and got all it's wheels spinning at the same time Duncan was tightening the come along. I had another rope tied up to a tree with the thought that if another strap broke at least the ATV wouldn't go all the way to the bottom again.
Thankfully with the ATV helping we got it back up on level ground!
You can see a little better how steep the slope it came up was by looking at the small tree that we were using to help keep the strap from digging in. We ended up trying to use it as a pry bar to keep the front end of the ATV from digging in and it is laying to the left of the ATV in this picture and does a decent job of actually showing the angle of the slope.
Thankfully the ATV seemed relatively unharmed except for some areas that the plastic has pulled away from the main body. Hopefully with just a little tweaking we can get it back in the proper place. It seems to run and handle fine though.
I'll be updating the blog with some of the other things we did on vacation over the next few days.
That's it for now. Nathan
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