I was on a forest service road some weekend ago and ended up stuck halfway off the road. The place I got stuck was a fairly straight stretch of road, slightly downhill. It was off-camber to the right, then had a ridge (about a foot wide, and 8" higher than the lowest point of the road surface) before a steep side-slope further to the right.

That ridge had a lot of semi-loose shale and other smaller rocks on top. I was driving with my right wheels on it, to keep the truck level, but at one point the right wheels slipped over the edge, and I got partially high-centered on the shale. "Partially" because my diffs could plow through it forwards or backwards, but I couldn't recover sideways. Forwards, backwards, left, right, no matter; every move sent me sliding further down the slope to the right and leaning over more.

I was getting nervous about a rollover so I got out and tried to dig myself level again. By the time I got anywhere, two ATV riders showed up and with a little more digging, some tugging, and a big gash in my camper shell, I got out intact. (Days later I found the tierod was bent, but I don't remember ever landing on anything like that.)

They, I, a National Forest Service (I think) cop wearing body armor, and a few others had all just come from an impromptu cleaning party of an abandoned (?) junky illegal (?) campsite thing. They were all ATVs and motorcycles, mine was the only truck. I didn't have much stuff with me so I volunteered to be the dump truck if they helped load. I was hauling all that trash back to the police dumpster when the, ah... Unintended Lateral Displacement Event occurred.

Apart from having better recovery gear and not going solo as a newbie, what should I have done instead?

 

I am not sure I understand the question as far as trying not to roll over or did the Forest Service ticket you for digging up some shale?

 

How should I have gotten out of there?

 

I'm not sure I'm picturing it correctly but I think a couple of 6' boards under your tires might have helped where it was slipping. Your experience shows why it's good to always wheel with someone else to pull you out.


I only go on the beach but a couple of boards have been useful at times.

 

It is hard for any of us to say if one could do something better or more correctly. A highlift jack may have helped, but not knowing the situation for what it really was, who is to say.

Damage or no damage, in the end you must have done the recovery correctly as you did get the truck recovered. We all learn this through our experience with the hobby.

 

Yeah, I wish I had my camera...

Let's make this a more general question: when you're on a sideslope and start sliding sidways down the slope, how do you recover? The only thing I can think of is to turn into the slide so that you're facing directly down the slope, then reversing straight up out of there and trying again. Is that proper recovery technique?

 

there isn't any straight answer really. how steep was the hill if you ended up going down it?

if you know you're for sure going to keep sliding down the slope, then I'd think the ideal thing is to turn downhill like you thought so you can hopefully steer your rig through a clear path even though you may have to change your pants afterward, lol. at least that's what I tend to do with my RC crawlers --- which btw help a TON when it comes to learning about how vehicles behave offroad and in precarious/tippy situations, and you don't have to worry about rolling your actual rig not exactly a "cheap" hobby though....

sometimes people will put a winch line/strap on their rock sliders to keep from going over the edge too, then you can kinda power it through and use the "swivel" from the anchor point to help get you back up on the road. requires either a 2nd vehicle or a big tree/anchor point.

if it were me and I was solo, I'd likely have tried to do some rock stacking or add a log under the side losing traction - that or use boards/max-tracks. I've even heard of some people use a hi-lift jack's instability as a helper in cases like this - basically jack up the front of the truck, then push it over to get the wheels to land in a new spot, hopefully that made sense. hi-lift jacks are pretty scary IMO for stuff like this.

 

I fully agree, Pottery.