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Old 04-17-2021, 12:50 PM   #31
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Sadly, I suspect there will be more of this kind of incident. It seems that every truck / SUV commercial on TV these days is encouraging folks to hit the dirt roads and explore the back country wilderness. The folks I helped in Death Valley last month had probably $100K plus invested in the truck and trailer, but were stranded with a dead battery and had few resources to rescue them selves and no way to call for help. Fortunately, they did seem to have plenty of food, water and shelter and stayed with the vehicle. Folks new to off roading would do well to take one or more of Bob.Wohlers excellent classes or at a minimum, ordering his books.

https://discoveroffroading.com/about-bob-wohlers

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Old 04-18-2021, 10:14 PM   #32
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Just got back from a solo trip to death valley, just a couple of nights. First morning, camped out in the boonies, broke camp, got in, turned the key and...nothing...at all. Fortunately my SMB has a switch to bypass the battery isolator so all I had to do was press a button and my house battery became the starter battery. Turned the key and it fired up. Popped the hood and it turned out to be a loose negative cable, so not really a crisis but a good reminder of how vulnerable we all are out there alone.

A couple of years ago my wife and I came upon two guys...in Death Valley in a passenger car...on a dirt road with two flat tires. They slept in the car all night. Didn't know enough to put the spare on - that's bad. I helped them put the spare on, tried to fix the other tire but couldn't so I told them to drive slowly toward civilization. They made it.

We always carry a satellite communicator. Recently I was by myself, camping in the snow above Bishop. I parked way out there and went for a ski in unbroken snow all by myself. Beautiful, but it wouldn't have taken much of an injury or equipment failure to lead to real trouble but I was careful and had the Inreach communicator with me.

Since I'm usually alone, I drive with two spare tires plus a couple of repair kits. That way, if I lose one tire, I can stay on the trip. I've lost tires (and wheels) when I only carried one spare and had to break for home. Once, when I broke a wheel, I literally went to every tire shop in a town and they didn't have a wheel that fit our SMB's. Watch out for locking lug nuts - I gave my lug nut key to a tire shop and forgot to get it back and didn't realize it until I was in Death Valley with a bubble on my rear tire. Had to drive 100 miles on that tire, with a spare I couldn't put on, to get a replacement key.

Almost always have 5 to 10 days of water and food with me. Whenever you read about these tragedies, the car is almost always found first. So, yes, stay with the vehicle. If you're in a caravan of six off road vehicles with 10 guys, getting stuck or breaking down is the fun part you talk about around the campfire. Travelling alone changes the calculus enormously.
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