[Az-Geocaching] RRTW

[Trisha]

I just had a chance to read thru this entire story (well written!)

Just so you know in the future, this location is barely in Maricopa
County (just south of the Yavapai Co line) but we are often called to
assist in searches here. You can contact either county for help!

Stay safe out there!
Trisha "Lightning"
Prescott


On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 15:43:33 -0700, "Brian - Team A.I." wrote:








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. 
BrianTeam A.I.