Pigeon House Mt 4WDing Weekend – Day 2
Pictures…
( Click Here for Day 1 of the Trip )
As we were heading off again at 9am we set the alarm for 6.30am again only to wake to..you guessed it ..more rain. David got things organised, out side, for breakfast while I started to pack up the sleeping bags & bedding with Brendan supervising from his sleeping bag which he refused to get out of! We had hot pancakes lathered with golden syrup while Brendan ended up eating sausages over at his friends Sam’s tent. We packed up the dripping wet tent and our gear, checked out the creek area near the campsite, took a few photo’s and were away on time.
In convoy we made our way on slippery muddy tracks towards Yadboro Flat, sometimes getting a sneak view of the Castle & Pigeon House mountains, we didn’t see any wildlife but the front car kept radioing about the abundant amount of animals they were seeing. We arrived at Yadboro Flat camp site which is a large grassy flat located on the banks of the Clyde River, well maintained & had toilets. We stopped for a coffee/ toilet break for 15minutes this also gave the kids another chance to play even if it was raining!. There was only 1 trailer camping there at the time & they told us that the next 10kms were pretty hard..something to look forward to.
On the road again we were radioed by Sam, Phillip & Janes son, for Brendan to play wireless DS games – every one thought this was cute, we manoeuvred in behind their car but were still to far apart to stay connected, but they made up for this every time we stopped.
The roads didn’t seem too bad, but then, we were going up hill not coming down with a trailer on the back. We had a couple of steep ascents made worse because of the mud – hard packed clay with a slippery top which stuck to your wheels leaving gouges in the road as you went by leaving no tread on your tyres, we slid a few times but nothing to serious, and a few steep down hill corners were interesting.
Julia in the first car radioed that a Hilux was coming & he was going very fast, as we past him he had slowed down but was sliding around in the mud a fair bit, we then heard Dave Mosses on the radio- 4 cars behind us – say that the Hilux had just rolled over the embankment, every one pulled over while we waited for the others to assist. Ken 3 cars behind us went back to lend assistance.
About 10 minutes later, Damien’s & our car were also needed, we gingerly turned around and made our way back to the others. The Hilux was over the side of the road on its side with the 2 occupants still inside ( for safety reasons, as it was feared the truck would roll over if they moved around, too much), only an old fallen tree was stopping it from fully going over & falling meters further down the hill, the guys had a winch extension strap going thru the windows of the car with 4 people hanging on to it so the car didn’t fall any further while winches were attached.
On the first attempt while we were there the Hilux recovery point snapped ( Apparently the bolts were not High Tensile, and so snapped off). They then tried a few different ways, Ken’s car kept sliding so they attached a snatch strap to Damien’s Toyota to anchor Ken, Damien was sliding as well, so they then attached
a snatch strap to our patrol for extra security, but guess what.. yep as they tried again we all were still sliding – and as I was in the drivers seat ( David was up in the thick of things) with the hand break on & my foot on the break as hard as I could feeling the car being pulled down the hill ( was probably only 1m or so but it felt more at the time !) was not a great experience, So with 3 cars not being able to pull the Hilux out safely they tried a few other tactics until around 3 hours later .success.. The Hilux was pulled out with only minor damage.congratulations on a job well done.
(For more recovery pictures Click Here )
After various photos, we turned around & continued on our way thru the mud with no other incidents. Our end destination was the Rainbow Pie shop in Milton, where we had a late lunch, said our goodbye’s and made our way to the nearby service station where David got thoroughly drenched putting air back in the tyres. We safely arrived back home at around 5pm. We had a good weekend, bad weather and all.
