Well, with more leapfrogging of ramps, digging, and all of us pushing Scooby, we finally get him past me. Keep in mind one of his chains busted, so we took the other one off. Hardly any traction for him with his snow tires, looked more like performance oriented all seasons to me by the tread pattern. Needless to say, he makes it to about the first turn and he's stuck again. Kurt and his trooper head past me to help Scooby out, the scout comes to give me a quick tug out of the muck I'm in. Well, me and the scout driver and passenger realize Scooby is stuck, so we walk down to give them a hand. At this point, Scooby got a bit farther, and got stuck trying to turn around!
Snow is falling harder, temp dropped to about 21, but we're all in fantastic spirits. It's beautiful up there, and with good company and laid back attitudes, getting stuck this much can be seriously fun!
We decide to get the trooper turned around first, using the offshoot. Get scooby unstuck enough to move him, Kurt's gonna need a bit of a run as the snow is deep. A couple of tries, things are going well, then I hear this little *pop. Insert curse word, there goes the trooper's front right hub!
So he's down to rear wheel drive, and stuck. NEW PLAN! The scout will get turned around and help me up the hill, then come back for Scooby, then back again for the trooper. Thankfully we're not far from the crest, once we get to that all of us will be able to get out. Alrighty, so I'm first. Tugs me out of the hole with the tree branches
, unhooks me. We'll hook me back up if I get stuck running up the hill, but will follow him under my own power as long as I can. Hehe, had a good time opening his eyes to the power of subaru on that hill! Followed him right up, no issues. You shoulda seen his face!!
So he turns around, I get up to the crest. I figured this was gonna take a while, so I'm about to fall asleep when these two guys coming walking up from the other side of the crest.
Evidently they've got a '90 F150 4x4 completely stuck just around the corner! Doh! I'd been sitting there, about to fall asleep, for 20 minutes and had no idea they were there. So I drive down, and again behold the power of the subaru! Actually towed that behemouth forward about a foot. I couldn't believe it, this guy was really really really stuck (on terrible tires). Levi was the driver and sam (i think) was his passenger, had just come up to get to the crest and hike around a bit. He was completely high centered. I realize I'm not gonna get him unstuck, so we just hang out waiting for everyone else. And here comes the scout FLYING up the hill with the trooper in tow, bouncing back and forth in the ruts. "
Well, Kurt's got a wench, so he comes down to try and get the ford out. Yeah, that's not happening, it just pulls the trooper towards the ford no matter how we work the cable. time to wait for the scout! More bsing, chatting, laughing, telling stories of the day. at this point the snow's coming down hard enough to cover us and the cars very quickly. Up comes Scooby! Who I guess got up most of the hill under his own power!! WOOT! Scout comes down, yanks out the ford like it's nothing.
We all head up to the crest so we can get facing the same direction and head back down.
Heading back down the hill is wonderfully uneventful. Everything's getting blanketed in a fresh layer of snow. No wind (we were lucky!), temps hanging in there in the low 20's, absolutely perfect. Once we hit 44H, Scooby and I head up a little further to the stone hut for sandwiches, beer, chit chat and the obligatory photo shoot!! (had to attach one of the images, i can't seem to get it to host correctly)
Got back down just fine, in foggy and blizzard conditions most of the way. Woke up this morning to about 5-6 inches of fresh snow on the ground!
Trail damage: more scratches for me and a little less clutch disk, at some point Scooby lost his rear wiper arm (he'll have to chime in with how that happened).
Scooby's cherry has been busted, I had a blast, we met some great people. Oh, and Scooby wants to go up again! Albeit once some snow melts...
...until next time... Smash out!