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D6 cat. Threw both tracks on slippery frozen ground between big dirt piles. Burying a different D6 in deep clay mud was a piece of cake by comparison, just needed a couple of timbers, some chains and a few logs to get it out.

Worst I ever witnessed was a D8 tilted 30 degrees and buried to the top of the roll cage on the low side in a swamp.

T-54 is about the size of D8, isnt it? We had a t-55 recovery to help, but it was still hard work.

Nice

I rarely get stuck because I'm a chicken chit when it comes to taking stuff off road. However, in Feb 2007 my mom, dad, wife, another couple from Tenn. and myself took a snow coach tour into Yellowstone. Our guide and "driver" was a complete putz! He put us off the road so a pack of snowmobilers could go around us.


he didn't have a shovel in the vehicle, the sat phone wasn't charged and he didn't know how to use it. I'm pretty sure the 4wd wasn't working. A couple of park rangers came along on snow mobiles and helped dig. We tried to pull it out with a Park snow coach but no luck.



Eventually, another snow coach from the same company came by with a winch. Alas, neither driver knew how to operate the winch. I spent about 10min looking it all over and figured there was a remote control somewhere. It took driver #2 about 15min to figure out that we were looking for a wired remote. He says "you mean this thing?" AAAAAAAAARGH! I had the two drivers hook up the cable and then I operated the remote and pulled us out. Only took about two hours.







There are worse places to be stuck than Yellowstone, that's for sure

On night on Ft. Bragg, I was woke up by someone who said "We need your Gamma Goat to pull out a stuck jeep. Recon got a jeep stuck back in the swamp." I got up and got into the Goat, and drove it across the road and into the muck.

Recon platoon had a jeep STUCK, and another jeep STUCK, trying to drag the first one out. We hooked onto #2 with the Goat, and it wouldn't budge a bit. The Recon platoon sergeant gave me hell because I "wasn't trying hard enough". He got into my Goat and proceeded to get it stuck as well. I was trying NOT to break thru the crust, the platoon sergeant had no qualms about that.

We got hold of another driver, with a duece and a half, and he stuck IT trying to get me out. At about 4AM, we got hold of a five-ton wrecker, who hooked onto the duece and half, me, and both jeeps. He backed it up against a big pine tree, and started tugging. He pulled us ALL out at the same time .

He had the logo "Big Snatch" on the winch of his five-tonner.

drove a feed truck for one of the major hog and turkey producers in east nc. Saw some feed trucks stuck in some crazy places slid one into a ditch and the only thing keeping it from turning over was the pinetree it landed on. The local towtruck driver has a couple of places he called his 'thousand dollar mudholes" because the farmer would not fix the roads. He would get called sometimes 3 or 4 times a week to pull a load to the bin so the driver could unload then pull the rig to the road

Aaah... Gamma Goats. Don't miss them at all, though they would go almost anywhere.

Buried a RATT rig on a Dodge pickup pretty impressively in the middle of Fort Chaffee. Captain told me to move it over into a park for training, I said it looked pretty wet but he overrode me. Sank to the axles in the middle of a nice manicured park. Managed to get it out with pure manpower.. A lot of men, but it got moved.

Growing up part-time on my uncle's farm, I learned at a very young age that the solution to a stuck truck is NEVER another truck... just get the tractor.


My best stuck story wasn't actually mine... I was bird-hunting with a friend, and we were driving separate vehicles because his dog and mine couldn't get along in the same vehicle. They'd snarl and bark at each other something fierce, so we decided to hunt one dog at a time and take both vehicles. His was a jacked-up fancy GMC something-or-other, mine was a plain-jane Subaru Legacy wagon.

Long story short, he led us into a muddy bottom on the way to the grouse grounds and got himself stuck but good. The nearest tree to attach his winch to was too far for the winch cable. My Subaru had a much lighter footprint than his GMC, so I took a chance and was able to drive around him in the bottom, then park about 25 yards up the slope, then we attached his winch cable to the anchor ring under my rear bumper and we winched him out.

He had been ragging on me for driving a Subaru for a couple months prior to that day, but he never said an unkind word about the Sube again after that episode.

Went out with my college bud bandtail pigeon hunting outside Pozo Cal. It started raining hard and whilst driving up a well banked trail taking the high side we slid down to the hillside with my CJ5 rolling onto its side. Spent the night to be pulled out the next AM by a group of 4x4'ers.

When I was MUCH younger, I foolishly attempted to go a ways on the Medano Pass road in Great Sand Dunes NP with a non-4WD vehicle, despite the warning:





...it started out with hard, compacted sand but ended up like this:



Not my photo, but it looks like almost the same spot
Eventually a park ranger winched me back onto the hard sand. I didn't get a ticket, fortunately!
More recently, I hiked back into the same area and went much further and camped in one of the backcountry sites.

That road does get SOFT. Took my sister's 4Runner through there over summer and I don't think my foot ever came off the floor.

Haven't heard of a Gamma Goat for a long time. And it is possible to get one stuck. At least to get it articulated to the point where it won't go anywhere.

This is around December 1974 somewhere in the Hartz Mountains of FRG. We had just spent three days humping them for a little exercise and were waiting at the pickup point to load up in trucks for the ride back to West Berlin. While we were waiting the medic decided to see if he could cross that little gully in his goat. He didn't. Those guys in front of the deuce and a half are preparing to winch him out, which they did.

Got this 60ft boat stuck in the Gull River, Lake Nipigon. It only took 3 hours to pull it up--but it took 9 days with a feller-buncher--an 3400 linkbelt backhoe and a 848 Grapple Sidder to build 2 miles of road across a tamarack swamp.

1984
I was sporting a cast on my right leg,( torn acl) crotch to toes, and went out grouse hunting with 3 friends in a jeep cj5,with one shotgun, and a couple cases of beer.
Driver decided to try to make it down a flooded road, and didn't make it.
Had to walk back to civilization on mud roads(it was raining)
a few miles on crutches.
Cast was ruined.
no grouse.
at least I didn't have to carry the beer.
a few minutes with a winch,we were out.

One time I decided to go over the "state highway" from Medicine Bow valley over to Douglas, hunting prairie dogs and trains in 1993.
Beautiful April morning.
It had just snowed a skiff the day before, which had made for GREAT photography light, and blown.
So I'm clicking along about 45 on a dirt road across a white patch between the sage. Floop. I'd driven about 200 feet onto what turned out to be two feet of old snowpack blown in the road cut smooth as a baby's butt.
There was a farmstead down the road, so I walked down there, nobody home, but a nice round nose shovel.
Dig dig dig dig dig dig.
About halfway down, I see a PBY flying around. I walk out in the snow and write NO. He waggles and flies off.
Dig dig dig dig dig.
Now I have the 1965 unlimited slip differential Econoline down on frozen road surface.
Dig dig dig dig dig.
Now I have ramps. Dirt road is like 50 feet ahead of me.
By now, temps are a bit up and the snow is a little soft. The plan is to get onto the dirt road and then drive AROUND through the sage back to civilization, but the sage is slimy mud. Hmmm.
So, I pitched camp, had a nice fire and weenie roast, shot my rifles.
Next morning, crispy COLD, I took my flagging tape and set up a route back around the road cut. Fired up the unit, drove onto the roadway, turned around and drove the marked route back the other side of the cut. Picked up my ribbons, drove down to the farmstead to return the shovel "We wondered where you were!" and had a nice breakfast. I showed them my Wyoming official state highway map, with no CLOSED IN WINTER markings. They laughed their fannies off.
Went to Douglas the other way around, bought my own shovel and put it in the ski rack.
I took pictures but the snow fooled the light meter. Darn.

Reading all the episodes and when I read the one from 1 beaver shooter driving a commercial truck, it made me think of another one.

I was driving a 18 wheeler, hauling green oak lumber for a lumber mill, back in the early '70's. Got a load for Clarksville, Tx. and it was overweight. Scaler told me to bypass the scales at the state line, so I gave it a shot. I thought hwy 80 was on the north side of the interstate, so at the appropriate exit, I turned north. Drove a ways and took the first blacktop road to the left, which I thought would take me into Tx. I knew it wasnt hwy 80, but it had to go somewhere, or at least I thought it had to go somewhere.

It did go somewhere, about 3 miles to the end of the road, deadend! Well, I couldnt turn around, so I started backing up. 13 speed ranger, 411 rearend, doesnt backup very fast.

I passed this driveway and the house sat off the road about 100 yds, on a hill. I walked up the the man sitting on the porch, explained my situation, and asked if I could drive up his driveway, turn around on the hill and drive out again. He gave me permission, so I gave it a try.

Turned in the drive, drove up the hill, started turning around, but there was a low swampy spot between me and the road, so I was having to pull forward and back up, pull forward and back, etc., to get turned around. All I needed to do was backup one more time and I would have made it back out the drive, but my drivers started spinning. I wasnt stuck, just couldnt go backwards and didnt want to get off in the boggy mess in front of me.

Called the boss and he said to get a wrecker. I called a wrecker out of Shreveport and here he came. He looked the situation over and said he was going to pull me across the boggy area to the neighbors driveway, to get me out.

I called the boss, explained what was fixing to happen and he told me to have the wrecker driver sign a paper saying he was responsible if anything happen. Driver signed paper and away we went!

This wrecker had 3/4" cables and he managed to drag the rig into the muddy area and break both cables, 1 at a time. Now I'm really stuck. Mud was rolling onto the flatbed trailer!

This man then called Lloyds wrecker and told them to bring out the big wrecker. They showed up, after dark and hooked up to the pulling hooks on the rig. One cable over the boom and one cable straight line. This lifted the tractors front end out of the muck and he started pulling. Had to hook another smaller wrecker to the big wrecker, because the scotch-blocks wouldnt hold.

He finally got me pulled across the boggy spot and the 1st wrecker had to pay. The boss sent a dozer over to fill in the ruts when it dried up some and pay the land owner for the damages.

I didnt get fired because the scaler admitted that he had loaded me too heavy and told me to bypass the scales.

I hauled many overweight loads after that, for the company, but I learned the way around the scales!

I was in high school, young and stupid, and hauling azz around some back roads up around Lake Davis, CA in my truck. The logging roads would wind up through some trees on high ground, then through large, open meadows. I'd been flying around the forest all day, when I came to one meadow going probably 50 MPH.

This particular meadow was actually a low wetland. My speed carried me 100 feet or so out into the meadow, before the truck buried up to it's frame.

I was alone, miles from no where, and this was before cell phones.

I spent the rest of the day digging 2 tire tracks behind me back to solid ground out of the mud, using my Remington 870 buttstock as a shovel, and packing the newly dug ruts with bark from logging around the area for traction.

After about 8 hours of backbreaking work alone, I was finally able to get out.

Miserable day....

February 1983. Forest Service road, Black Hills SD. Me driving a Dodge 4x4 PU.

It had been warmer the day before and melted the snowpack, since frozen to ice. Road was too narrow to turn around, came to a straight stretch along a steep drop-off, road surface slightly canted, frozen smooth.

I inched forward hugging the hillside to my left away from the drop-off to my right. Half way along truck begins to ever so gently slide to the right

Time goes into slow-motion. Front end is heavier and slides faster, right front wheel drops off the edge. Truck tilts, and I can see down into the steep-sided gully 40 feet below, my thought at that very moment in time was "Crap, I'm not wearing my seatbelt".

Half-way over the truck stops, teetering on the edge.

I get out the driver's (uphill) door onto the road and immediately slip and fall, the ice is that slick. The left front tire had hung up on a small rock frozen in the ice, the tire was way deformed by the weight and was bulging out to one side but stayed on the rim. The right rear tire was on the road right at the edge of the drop-off, the left rear tire was hanging loose in the wheel well clear off of the ground.

Ten mile hike to the nearest convenience store, family owned. We drive back with a come-along. Truck was just as I had left it.

Winched it back off of the edge and back onto solid ground.

Asked the guy how much he wanted, he said "whatever its worth", so I gave him $100 (worth quite a lot in 1983 dollars). Not bad for an hour's work, but still way-cheap for a truck.

Birdwatcher

back in the 80s a couple of guys who were drunk got stuck near robstown tx. one of them got out to push and slipped and got pulled under the spinning tire. there was nothing left of his torso. the driver was convicted of manslaughter.

You win.