Attendees:
Ian and Nicole Toten Defender 130
Don Howard Defender 110
Simon and Etoy Nickson Land Cruiser 76
Matthew Jones Defender 110
Tony Spalding Perentie FFR
Eric and Paulette Rigter Landcruiser Prado
Russell Speldewinde Landcruiser 200
On a cloudy Saturday morning we met up at Bungendore sports ground for the trip down the Clyde. The weather got progressively more damp and most of the Clyde was covered in misty rain. After a small delay caused by an overturned Navara we all made it safely to Black Flat Road where we regrouped and did a U turn to the start of Downfall Fire Trail where most of us aired down. The weather stayed cool and cloudy for most of the day, but it was a wet trip back up the Clyde.
We climbed the initial ascent one at a time, calling the next vehicle through as each of us made it to the top safely and had morning tea when we were all up. From there we ventured along the track until Tony encountered an obstacle on a short uphill section that was quite rutted with the rear diff pumpkin on the Perentie sitting on a rock. After a bit of reorganisation we got to practice some recovery techniques which included joining two snatch straps together for an unsuccessful (gentle) snatch recovery. We then decided to attempt a single line winch pull to recover the vehicle, however it was stuck solidly enough that the winch nearly stalled so we inserted a snatch block in the rig and that gave us enough power to get the Perentie back on track to where it could be driven out.
A recovery such as this is a very valuable learning experience as it is very difficult to simulate real recoveries on a training day, so thank you for getting stuck Tony. The convoy then travelled along the rest of the track and descended the loose rocky slope on the other side of the ridge with no incident and travelled back to the Apiary site where we aired up and headed home at around 14:30 which was about 4 and a half hours spent on the track. Simon commented that the track was similarly challenging to descending the Mt Pinnibar track a few weeks prior so participants should be comfortable that they have achieved quite a high level of offroad experience on the day.
