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Mudsicle: Four Wheeling & Ice Skating
How to Combine Four Wheeling and Ice Skating
story and photos by Jim Allen
Like a dinosaur rising from the primordial muck, Dave Young’s ’75 Scout is extracted from a frozen mud pit. This was still when things were pretty easy, if wading around in frozen mud could be called easy.
Ahh, a crisp winter day of wheeling... the perfect way to combat cabin fever. Four-wheeling clubs located anywhere near where snow falls usually schedule at least one winter snow trip. Snow is the “great neutralizer” and makes easy terrain hard and hard terrain almost impossible... even for built rigs. The Ranger Station’s annual Snowball Run was intended to provide this sort of entertainment to the owners of the 23 rigs that attended, but instead of layers of fluffy snow, they got sheets of ice and frozen mud. On top of that, the temps ranged from minus numbers to a high of about eight degrees.
What was intended as a few hours of busting snow in an east-central Ohio wheeling spot turned into a slog-for-survival that lasted until near midnight. Some rigs that had driven there under their own power went home on a trailer and almost everyone found out what it was like on the end of a snatch strap or a winch cable.
Slam-dunk! Perhaps dunk-slam is more accurate. Dipping into the creek, Jim Oaks slides down the icy slope, dunks into the water and slams into a big rock. Ouch!
Nothing like reseating the bead on a crisp 5-degree morning.
Ranger Station runs are normally Ford Ranger/ Bronco II/Explorer only, but Ranger Station founder, Jim Oaks, decided to open the run to a few other rigs that were friends of Ranger owners or former Ranger owners themselves. In addition to Rangers and Bronco IIs, a fullsized Bronco, a Scout II, three Jeeps, a Chevy S10, a GMC half-ton pickup, a Blazer chassis with an S-10 Body on it, and a Samurai were on hand.
The start was kinda ominous. One of the first areas encountered is a big, muddy pond. It was frozen solid. It took several rigs skating and sliding to bust through, and that only possible with the portly heft of a Scout II applied to make the initial breakthrough. The lesson learned there and elsewhere was that four-inch thick sheets of ice are an impediment to traction, even after you break through. Not only that, but the unfrozen mud churned up and sprayed around freezes onto the vehicles like sprayed-on bedliner material.
What do you do when your favorite mudhole is frozen over?...
... You get a couple of heavyweights to bust it up for you...
... Until the heaviest guy breaks through into the mud. But having two wheels in semi-frozen goo and two wheels on ice doesn’t make for easy driving.
Another lesson learned was that while going down an ice-slicked trail is hard on the upholstery, going up the other side is impossible without help from above. No, not from there, except perhaps indirectly, but a winch equipped rig stationed at the top of the steepest hills was needed in the toughest areas.
The big group had divided into several smaller run groups, one headed for the harder stuff, another went to the medium-duty stuff and the last headed for the easy stuff. In the end, the conditions made those divisions meaningless. It was hard for everybody. It wasn’t too long before the distress calls were making the CBs ring. The ice had turned everything into a frozen slip-and-slide. The groups that headed into the hills and gullies found themselves stranded at the bottom of ravines out of which they could not climb. The remainder of the run turned into a rescue mission. It was then that everyone saw the best of the four-wheeling spirit emerge.
Ever been stuck in a Slurpy? Matt Fleming has. The front end was in the Slurpy, the back on sheet ice and his red ’88 wasn’t goin’ anywhere!
“You ok in there?” Yep, Tony Eaonessa was OK, and so was his Sammy hardtop. Before your eyebrows climb higher in disbelief, bear in mind it always looks this beat up and this wasn’t the first time it’s assumed “the position.” This rig lives to play, but the tractor type tires aren’t much good when the mud is frozen solid. Tony got in trouble climbing out of the creek.
The four wheeling spirit decrees that nobody gets left behind, no matter how long it takes. If you’re stuck, you get assistance. If you break, you get as much help as is possible to give. If you need people to run winch cables endlessly up and down the hill, chop a fallen tree in half with a hatchet or run uphill to the end of the line to bring a tool, people will fight each other to volunteer. Once the group consciousness figured out the best course of action, it went like clockwork.
There were more than a few heroes on this run. People who put their rigs at risk to help others. One was Andy Worthuis and his fullsized Bronco. When his group found themselves at the bottom of a gully that many in the group couldn’t climb, his bigger, more powerful horse was able to tow a bunch of them uphill to where the winch rig could reach them. It was an amazing performance, but one that cost him a tranny. After maneuvering between trees with only millimeters to spare, Jim Oaks about wore out his winch dragging 13 rigs up a steep section of hill where the mud on the deeply rutted section of trail was frozen solid, with sheets of ice in places. Ditto for Matt Fleming and his winch equipped ’88 Ranger. Bob “Ozzy” Osborn and his K5 Blazer/S-10 hybrid, did sterling duty by dragging many rigs up the last section of slope above the winching rig. In some cases he had to drag them sideways.
Easy going in the creek just before it got dark and the rescue operations began. It’s pretty close to zero degrees at this point. Some folks parked too long in the creek and ended up with frozen brakes
The dinosaur climbing out of its ice cold bath. Dave Young’s ’75 Scout was everpresent and the oldest rig on the run. photo courtesy Dave Reichert
Though the Snowball run involved a lot more recovery and vehicle repair than it did ‘wheeling, that’s the nature of going out in the dead of winter. The Ranger group left with a few more notches on the pistol grip of experience and a few more tales to tell... hopefully around a campfire where it’s nice and warm. s
The mud coating on Will’s ’89 Bronco II is about as hard as the ice in the foreground and probably harder than the average spray-on bedliner. Will was another of the heroes of the event. His 4.0L powered BII, locked up at both ends, did yeoman duty dragging rigs out of frozen mud. |
No, it isn’t blood. Not human blood anyway. Those big chunks of ice can snap up to bite and one of Jim Oak’s tranny cooler lines fell victim. If this ever happens to you, be sure to clean up and haul out the spilled fluids. |
Eric Steinberg can attest that going down the Pole-Line trail was hairy as a gorilla’s backside and about as intimidating as his front. The trick was to start off slow, pick the least slippery spots and keep her going straight. Eric also got onto the “hero list” by dragging Andy Worthuis’s tranny-dead fullsized Bronco back to civilization after the late-night recovery marathon.
Source: The Ranger Station http://www.therangerstation.com