I've been completely swamped at work, so I haven't had any time for Betty since the rally. I drove her to the office last Saturday (yep, we're working 7 days a week) but that was about it until yesterday.
About 9:00 Friday night, one of our crews was headed up to a site on the top of a small mountain near Chatsworth, GA,. They were climbing a 28 degree incline in a Chevy 2500 and deck-over tandem-axle flatbed loaded with tools and equipment. My guess is they were grossing about 15,000 pounds.
About halfway up the 200 foot long climb, they lost traction and started sliding backwards. The driver managed to keep the truck straight, and somehow steer it off to the right side of the road into an embankment. The left side is a deep gulley that is about 100 feet deep. They were lucky.
They couldn't get enough traction to start moving forward again and going further back in the direction the trailer was pointed, would put them in a deep hole. They chained the truck to a couple of trees for safety and left it for the night.
I found out about this late on Saturday morning after they tried again to get out on their own. After a few other options were explored,one suggested that I take Betty out there and drag them up the hill.
After waiting a bit to see if any other options were available, I went home and checked Betty over, and got on the way.
My brother also headed that way in his modified Jeep Wrangler. We arrived at almost the same time, about 3:00 pm. The climb to get to the stuck truck was really steep and I engaged the front axle after feeling the rear slip a few times.
We pretty quickly figured out that I couldn't get past him to hook up and drag him up the hill behind me. There was just not enough room to wiggle the deuce between the nose of his truck and the deep gulley on the left.
My brother was able to get his jeep up there, though. I didn't think he would have enough weight or power to do the job, but he did. I measured the incline of the road/trail at 28 degrees, plus the truck and trailer were off of the road at an angle down in a wide ditch. The truck and trailer would have to come up a 5 degree slope running parallel to the 28 degree climb to get straight and headed up hill.
We put the trailers spare tires between the trailer and Betty's front bumper and secured them there with straps. Daniel hooked up the jeep to the front of the Chevy. With every thing secured, and everyone clear of the path, I started pushing, while they both pulled and within a few feet they were outrunning me going up the hill! I was in low range, low gear so I just kept pace 10 feet or so back as a safety in case they started sliding backwards again, or needed another push.
Even though I would have liked to do the pulling, we rescued them with no damage and no injuries and I got an afternoon of driving the deuce instead of sitting at desk.
One of the guys was taking video and pictures and I hope to have copies later today. I'll post some up when I get them.
