We met up at Muchea as planned except that Jim and Sandra were not there. Jim was unwell so asked me to lead the trip for him.
We set off with 5 members and 2 visitors. All went to plan until the main road, which was closed due to bridge repairs. I quickly checked the map and planned a route around the bridge. Unfortunately, the first track shown on my map was a dead end. Eventually we made it into the forest, letting our tyres down along the way. We first headed up the Western Boundary Track. It warmed everyone up with some reasonable holes, hill climbs and de-scents. We stopped for morning tea and then for lunch.
I then took us on more difficult tracks and Hamish made it interesting by falling into a deep rut. Rob was first on the scene and said it would be best to winch the Prado out to avoid damaging the side step and bumper further, which had made contact with the side of the rut. I decide to try out a technique I had seen being used by Matt’s Off Road Recovery on Youtube. Rob lay in the gravel and wrapped my winch equalisation strap around the chassis of the Prado in front of the rear wheel. I then connected my snatch block to a tree with the drag chain, so I could position the snatch block next to the Prado, and pull it sideways away from the edge of the rut as Hamish slowly crept forward. This worked well but the rut was so deep the Prado could not drive all the way out. So, we relocated the snatch block further forward and we were able to pull the Prado out without doing any further damage.
We completed the day tackling some steep descents before getting back to the road and pumping up the tyres. An interesting day!