CA4WDC Sierra Trek: Be Prepared... and Stay Prepared

Be Prepared... and Check Your Preparation

Sierra Trek, CA - August 2000

Short Cuts

by: Randy Burleson


Ascending Winch Hill Four during Sierra Trek. Randy Wheeler

If you've ever 'wheeled with me, you know that I pack hundreds of pounds of crap in the back of my rig. You say you need a 9/16-inch socket? Deep well or shallow? 6-point or 12-point? You need to top off your oil? 30, 40, or 90 weight? Multi-grade? Limited-slip additive? Got 'em. You need air? Fine -- I run a SCUBA tank as an air source... that's more than 2000 psi of air, good for running my air lockers, reseating tire beads, and airing up when I hit the pavement.

So I was a bit surprised recently to find myself on Fordyce Trail, contemplating hiking out for help.

Let me rewind -- a recent Rubicon trip left me with a moderately trashed aluminum wheel, missing a small part of the rim's edge. This held air fine except when a rock pressed directly against what used to be rim. No big deal -- my SCUBA tank only had one day's use on it. Besides, I have a spare tire. A new cargo area arrangement also allowed Gozar (130 pounds worth of Newfoundland dog) to rest his head and paws between the seats... with the side effect that his feet could reach the ARB switches. The air fittings weren't up to the abuse of his weight on them and started to leak air. No big deal -- my SCUBA tank only had one day's use on it. Besides, I have a spare air pump.

I drove the 12-mile trail on Saturday, intermittently re-inflating the tire on the chipped rim, hissing a bit of air near-continuously from the ARB switches. Sunday, I retreated back the way I'd entered, driving by myself. I was moving along at a pretty decent clip, driving conservatively, since I was on my own, and didn't expect to be crossing paths with traffic, late on a Sunday afternoon. I noticed that the chipped rim started leaking with increasing frequency, and just as I was pondering hopping out to once again put more air into it, I crossed a rock and... PFFFFsssshhhht! Great. I whipped out the SCUBA-powered air chuck to restore life to the tire, but the air just whistled past the bead. I crept the rig to the side of the trail, out of the way in case traffic came, and deployed my bottle jack under the axle. With a few more shots of air, I determined that the bead would not reseat. In retrospect, I should have noticed the low pressure -- that's likely why the bead wouldn't reseat.

I swapped on my spare in place of the chipped rim and aired it down to match the others. I kept moving down the trail, but climbing out of the water at the next creek crossing, I hit a protruding root. PFFFFsssshhhht... this time from the front left tire. Great - that left me with 3 good tires, and two flat ones. I selected a slightly different line out of the creek, past the root, and steered to the side of the trail. I hi-lifted the front of the truck up, then fetched the air chuck. This time I noticed a definite lack in pressure, and the bead definitely did not seat. I cussed, then went around to the back to get the alternate bead seating tools... starting fluid and matches. I dug through the glove box for the lighter... to no avail.

I almost had the choicest campsite to myself... involuntarily.

No big deal, I plan ahead. I rifled through the cook duffel and pulled out the box of kitchen matches. They were damp, showing evidence of recent friendliness with the bio-suds kitchen soap. No big deal, I plan ahead... so I pulled out my toolkit and dug out the butane soldering torch and its set of matches. These matches weren't looking too good, either, victims of a flux spill. On my third set of redundancies, I was starting to get concerned, but I checked the lantern bag and found five reasonably healthy-looking matches. I pulled the valve core out of the tire stem, screwed a metal valve stem cap on a few threads, and squirted a two-second blast of ether into the tire. I struck the first match, only to be rewarded with a fizzle -- no flame. I cast my eyes skyward, wondering what I had done to deserve this... I'll admit that I was also checking for a sudden-onset localized cloudburst, which would have been in keeping with my luck that day.

Shielding the match from the breeze with my body, I squirted a bit more ether, struck another match, got a good flame, and stepped back as the contained explosion seated the tire. I immediately unscrewed the valve stem cap to keep the rapidly cooling air from sucking the bead right back off, then grabbed for the air chuck.

The empty air chuck. It seems that the sound of the leak at the front ARB switches had covered the sound of a leak at the tank. What little air I had left when I tried to seat the bead earlier, had dissipated entirely. After only one day's use, my SCUBA tank was empty. After another look skyward, I dug through my breakdown box for the little takes-an-hour-to-fill-a-tricycle-tire backup air pump. I plugged it in and promptly toasted a fuse. This bottom-of-the-breakdown-box spare was seized solid. Great. I dug through the breakdown box yet again, and pulled out two cans of fix-a-flat, but no hose. After kicking the nearest rock into the underbrush, and hopping around in a small circle, noting that my Tevas lacked a steel safety toe, I stopped, chilled out, and had a drink. With full camping gear, and plenty of food and water, I wasn't in imminent danger of anything past being late to work the next day. I was running out of dog food, but like his owner, Gozar carries more than a few days' reserve of food... besides, I suspect he'd willingly switch over from dried kibble to canned pork-n-beans.

The truck wasn't mobile -- I wouldn't get too far on three tires through the rocky rubble of Fordyce Trail. Normally I run CB, cellular, and amateur (HAM) radio as a means of trail communication and a life-link to the outside world. This trip, I'd left the HAM equipment at home, but I still had CB and cellular. I set the CB to scan, and hoofed a quarter of a mile to the nearest relative peak. At the top of Winch Hill #2, you can see the cluster of radio, telecommunications, and CB antennas atop Signal Peak. Sadly, my snazzy new Qualcomm digital phone does not support analog service. Even though I could see the antennae, I couldn't open a channel to them. My CB was equally ineffective, either through its rubber ducky portable antenna, or back at the truck, when I plugged it into the truck-mounted CB antenna.

Had I brought my HAM equipment, I'm sure I could have raised the repeater from the water crossing with the truck transceiver, or from the hilltop with the micro-mini transceiver. Had any of these radio efforts succeeded, I could have dialed up a buddy with on-board air, and paid whatever beer was necessary to obtain an evening mid-trail visit. As it was, I was limited to shouting or smoke signals. With the Forest Service's restrictions on ground burning, and the fact that nobody had come running earlier when I'd sworn at the top of my lungs to the Teva corporation, it looked like I was on my own.

I was almost smack dab in the middle of Fordyce Trail, near the waterfall, and less than five miles hiking distance to the end of the trail, where my club was camped. I could abandon the rig, and hike out. I weighed the possibilities of doing this as I searched through my entire rig, turning it completely inside out, looking for a fix-a-flat hose. Finally, at the bottom of the bag of spare nuts and bolts, I found it.

My savior: Fix-a-Flat

Cautiously, all-too-aware of the string of coincidences that had piled up, I mounted the can to the tire, said a small prayer, and pushed the button. The first can emptied into the tire with little drama, and also, with little impact on the tire. With nothing to lose, I emptied the second can into the tire, and was slightly relieved to see the tire visibly inflate. I lowered the jack and the rim stayed off the ground, but still far from even the lowest non-beadlock trail pressure. I tossed all the containers I'd torn through back into the truck, and skedaddled back the way I had come, headed for the shortcut out of Fordyce Trail, up past Lake Spaulding. I didn't really think that the tire would last in its badly deflated state, and listening to it hiss intermittently to me gave me even less confidence. Still, I figured that if I broke down, heading out to the shortcut, I'd be close to where my club was camped.

Through extra-careful tire placement and judicious use of my crawler gears, I made it back to the shortcut and its deep water crossing. I didn't know the line across this fast-moving water crossing, so I waded across and pulled winch cable across as a vehicle-belay. The fast-moving cold water rinsed any grit I may have had out of my belly button, and ensured that I won't be friendly with members of the opposite sex until after spring thaw, but I made it across.

Right after the crossing, there's a fairly steep climb up a narrow, bouldery chute. I crawled as much of it as I could, but I was very apprehensive about that low tire. With every redundant air source exhausted, losing a bead would mean I would have to wade back across the river and then walk into camp. Anything that I couldn't climb in two tries, and on a route that favored my low left front tire, I winched. Luckily, after that first steep chute, I was able to wind in the cable and leave it spooled. After a few miles of high-clearance forest roads, and five miles of graded gravel, I pulled into a Cisco Grove gas station and aired up. There was only 6 pounds of pressure in that tire. After a quick call and several profuse apologies to my wife, I followed the freeway home.

So what's the moral to this story? Well, not traveling by oneself is a clear lesson. As much gear as I pack, though, and as hard as it is to make plans with other people, I know I'll be out on the trail by myself again in the future. I would have had a travelling companion for this trip, but we'd spent the previous day welding his front driveshaft after three separate failures. He took the pavement back, and perhaps I should have gone with him. I also should have just swapped the chipped rim out in exchange for a good one.

Climbing out with no air in the ARBs.

The big moral that I have is this: check your gear. I've repacked my truck at least 20-30 times in the last few years, but I haven't ever pulled all the gear out and gone through it to check its function. Had I done that, I would have noticed the wet matches, the lost lighter, the missing fix-a-flat hose, and the frozen air pump. I was well-prepared, IMHO... and failure to make annual or more frequent checks damn near made me leave my rig and resort to self-powered shoe leather travel.

So folks, I ask you... have YOU checked the contents of YOUR breakdown box in a while?