This is my log from a very interesting adventure yesterday. The rest of the logs for the day (night) are filled with scorpions, and a rattler I discovered coiled to strike under a rock I was going to search.
But this is the start of the day, and a very long one at that.
Thumb Mesa (by the seat of your pants)
GCEF4D
1018hrs (but my adventure in this began about 1:40PM)
Ok, so Scott did a pretty good job of telling the story, but I'll add my .50 to it as well.
I was getting ready to head to the Mesa Ranger office to modify my permit for a drive through Bulldog Canyon when my cell rang. Call 1. Normally, this is a fax message (I hate that spam crap), so I rejected the call. A few minutes later my heart sank when I listened to the voice mail. It was RTW calling for help. He said he'd try me back so I had phone in pocket while I started to prep for the drive up to BCC. He called about 10 minutes later, and I agreed to come up and help. About 30 minutes later, I had the truck ramps, floor jack, jack stands, water, GPS, PowerAde and was backing out of the driveway to begin Mission: Rescue RopingTheWind (or RRTW for short).
A little over 90 minutes later, and I pulled off the road to a waiting RTW. I drove him back to his truck, we unloaded my equipment and worked to get the u-bolt pieces out to get to a shop for matching. For 10 minutes he worked on the bolt, but the u-bolt itself kept spinning, giving him no bite to get everything loose. (light bulb). Scott realized that since he u-bolt was in two pieces, there was nothing to remove, so he just pulled the pieces out. Between his tiny hydraulic jack, my 2.5-ton and the ramp we used for added height, we just couldn't get the control arm in place. Off we head to BKC in search of another floor jack and some tow rope. In the process of trying to back down for a more secure place to work, he backed the rear tires into a wash and became stuck. Normally, this would suck, but it provided a perfect rest to keep the truck from sliding while underneath it working. The other jack, and second ramp worked in getting the control arm in place. Yay!
Scott had a pair of u-bolts in his truck, but they were significantly larger than the one that broke, and wouldn't fit. Sooooo, off to Phoenix we go in search of an auto parts store that had something we thought we didn't have. Autozone, Checker, Napa and even a wrecking yard didn't have the u-bolt to match up. We drove from I17/MP244 to 101/59th ave all the way to 7th ave/union hills. A mechanic kindly let Scott in after-hours to look for the part, but all the u-bolts were the exact same size as what we already had. Hmmmm....
Ok, one of the sides would slide into the hole, but the other wouldn't. It was just a hair shy. Off to HomeDepot for a 7/8 deep socket, socket wrench and a round file. After stopping for some refueling at the TacoBell/Pizza Hut, we headed the 35 miles back up to the truck, and Scott began filing the holes. About 10 minutes later, he was able to fit both side in, and hammer it in place for a perfect fit! Time? 2150hrs. It turned out that we had the right part afterall, but just needed to gap out the hole a hair for the threads to pass.
After torquing down the bolts, and put everything away, we hooked up the tow rope and I performed my first vehicle tow to pull a stuck vehicle out (only having the Jeep 36 hours, I'm certainly breaking it in....). We backed out vehicles to more level ground and Scott took another look at his suspension to make sure everything was ok, and we hiked/fell/hiked/fell our way to the cache. I slid 2 or 3 times, the most about 30' down the hill on my feet, but cutting up my hands pretty good from the rock contact. Guess that's what happens when you don't plan for such an adventure and only have one flashlight. My headlamp was in the Camelbak at home. But after being that close to the cache for 7 hours, I wasn't going away without a find.
10 minutes or so later, and Scott made the find, as only one of us could search with a single flashlight. The views were great, and I told my wife to have the search crews look for us at the bottom of the mesa on the west side in case we didn't make it home by morning.
Thankfully, I found a much easier way down, just a few feet away from where we found the cache. A couple foot shuffles later and we were down the hill and on the way back to the vehicles. Ironically, we found a wash that we followed out and ended up about 10' from the road, and only 180' from our vehicles.
This was certainly one my most interesting cache adventures, and not one I'll soon forget. It felt good being able to help out in a situation like that, and to now have a vehicle that would make it back there. My Nissan 4x2 had neither the power nor the clearance to get to his truck.
Brian
Team A.I.
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