MEMBER TRIP REPORT
wings ! OK , maybe it was only 1 kilo , but it looked like an awful lot . Meanwhile Henri managed to cook perfectly his steak , despite the fact he never cooks at home . Bellies well filled ; we were ready for the challenge : Trig Track night drive .
The drive to get to the start of Trig Track was no problem . As was the first part going down Trig Track . Peter and Mark made their way up half of the second part without to many problems . But looking at their powerful cars struggling to get up , we thought it would be another story with our small engine . At first all went well , and we managed to start up again each time we were stuck until the car slipped into a small rut and a solid rock in front of the right wheel manage to stop our progression . A few attempts to get over it , ended without success , and a key start in reverse to get out of the rut did not look safe at that time . Well something had to be done , and obviously calling the RACV was not an option . We were quite relieved to see Peter , Grant and Mark walking or should I say sliding toward us . Recovery wise I am worth nothing , and if it is very steep and dark , I get even worse . I was still sitting in the car when they reached us , and in one second flat , in Peter ’ s opinion I went from “ ideal wife ” to the status of useless female ! Any way , it was decided it was time to use the winch and it seems to work for 2 minutes and a half , when all of a sudden the battery went dead , the winch stopped and the CB went silent . The front wheel did manage to get over the rock but not the back wheel . At that stage , it was even impossible to restart the 4Runner . Henri noticed then that the declivity indicator on the dashboard of the car was outside the scale range ( 30o max ). Our rescuers managed to restart the car on the auxiliary battery , but every attempt at using the winch failed . Our back wheels being stuck against a step , it was necessary to reverse , to give us a chance to start the climb again . Unfortunately , the car could not be started on reverse . Finally we managed to back a little , but I am not too sure it was an improvement , as the car went to a stop in a very awkward position across the track , ready to roll on its side … By then even Peter looked at a loss with what to do and Henri was getting a sore leg for holding his foot on the brake . Peter was going to drive further up the track then drive down and winch us up , however he was having some difficulty getting further up the track and decided he could never reverse back up later on if he tried this approach . It was decided Alberto would winch us from behind with the help of a snatch block and some extensions . It worked but it was slow and hard work . After an enormous amount of sweating by the men , we finally made it to a place where the 4Runner could go up by itself . At that stage , Peter and Grant were running along the car in clouds of dust , to keep the winch cable out of the way as we could not rewind the winch in , and believe me , they do deserve a medal , as Trig Track is well known for being awfully steep . It took us an hour to reach the 2 other cars and 2 frozen teenagers waiting patiently . We then decided a coffee break was in order .
The 2nd half of the ascent went without a hitch and by midnight we were back around the campfire , for more coffee , some Port and a lot of comments about the evening . Next day saw us out of bed quite late and after Henri had the fire going to boil the kettle , we enjoyed a lazy breakfast . It was noon when we left the camp after packing , rewinding the winches and fixing what could be fixed on our car . We climbed Pheasant track , went down Beardmoore ’ s track admiring the Thomson Dam ’ s impressive wall on the way , and crossed the Thomson River before heading down to the Narrows for a quick lunch by the river .
We then made our way to Parker ’ s Corner for another nice river crossing , where Peter decided to play up a little bit by stalling his Maverick in the middle of the river , just to prove us he could get out of any situation without any help . ( Actually , the electric ’ s died mid-stream , thank god it wasn ’ t an auto and I could drive it out on the starter motor . Ed ) Then we followed the track in the direction of Walhalla for some ice cream and a quick look around that lovely little town . The weekend had come to its end , and it was time to head home . It was our last trip with our old 4Runner , and next time , hopefully we should perform better with a more powerful car , brand new battery and a more reliable winch … as for my recovery skills , well sorry Peter , I think I am a lost cause …