Ahhh @#$%T Moment

This is not a normal event in my life, however, it does happen a lot and I often find myself in a precarious situation, especially when I am driving to a work location during or after a storm. These pics would be better if they were bigger.

I was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving day at home and eat turkey and pie mmmm -- this never happens when the rig is drilling, but we were waiting on cement and I headed for home. It rained the evening before and continued to rain during the day, so I knew it would be a challenge to get back to the rig. The road is carved through a clay formation (Colton or Wasatch Formation) with an occasional sandstone bed here or there that doesn't make the clay any less slick when wet. I got called out and left home at 6:00 am Friday morning and didn't think about getting any chains.

I was able to negotiate three quarters of the road in four-wheel- high, as always though, four wheel drive can get you into more trouble than two wheel drive. The only other choice would have been four low, but that would be too much power and gotten me no where. I didn’t want to get out and walk to the rig. I had too much stuff to carry. On past the drill camp -- a flat place where trailers were housing drill crews, air jammer crews, and the mud man -- I drove and I didn’t see the GMC Yukon partially blocking the road until it was too late. So seeing that there was a narrow path around the Yukon, I kept going hoping to ease around this object. Slip sliding along from one side of the road to the other, fish-tailing driving diagonally up the road, I tried to stay in the middle between the Yukon and the ditch. I didn’t want to end up in the right side ditch tagging the boulder along the side of the road. Been there, done that, and I have the rights to the tee shirt. I also did not want to tag the Yukon that would make a bad situation worse.

The boulder is in front of the suburban, you can’t see it but is along the side of the road and half as large as the suburban. Maybe it is green vehicles, but the Ford pickup became bruised and paint was left on the right side of the Wild Cat road above Emery during a fall storm. You can see that there is three inches of mud on the road and it was just like driving on ice.

As I started going around the Yukon, I powered out and started sliding down hill to the left toward the Yukon. Luckily, I was able to stop just inches from scraping his back fender and bumper with my front bumper. I was through! I couldn’t go forward or backward with out clipping the Yukon or sliding off down the canyon. As you will see in the picture below, there is probably two feet at the most from the rear left tire to the edge of the road; because of my position on the road and with the Yukon, my direction of travel could not be controlled with the steering wheel alone. The slick and sticky conditions of the clay would pull me to the left into a mess.

I did the only thing I could think of. I reluctantly got out into the mud, got my computer and walked to the drill leaving behind everything else praying that no one would try to come up the road slide into me. I soon as I got everything up and going, I would get help and get the green machine off the road.

To make a long and funny story short, I found a kind soul to help me slide down the road to the camp. Here is one more view for the fun of it: fun, fun, fun. As I walked to the drill, which was a mile more up the road, I slipped and slid just about falling three or four times.