I never considered doing a video of a stuck until I knew there were others out there who dig getting stuck. So the first time I got real stuck on my own, I saw opportunity.
It was my first trip into the Northwest Territories. For those unfamiliar, the NWT is about 1.1 million km square of land ranging from forest to tundra, and there are only 40,000 people living here. The highways are all gravel, except for about 500 km between the southern border and Yellowknife, the capital city. As I was driving through mostly pristine wilderness, I marvelled at how much fun I could have up here; gravel pits, lakes, rivers, and goat paths everywhere, begging to be explored. I was about 200 km into a 350 km gravel stretch when it happened. During meltoff in the spring, the road crews run up and down the highways with a gravel truck filling all the potholes that form in -50C. Being new up here, I probably should have obeyed the speed limit of 90 km/hr, instead of trying to drive like a local doing a buck ten or better. Might not have spun into the ditch when I hit the line of freshly filled car killer holes running alongside the ditch. The front end of my RWD F-150 pulled to the right, into the muskeg. I tried to keep momentum up, hoping to shoot back up and out after I spun it around, knowing that if it sunk, I was gonna need a tug... or two. But the soft, wet mud sapped just enough forward motion to make that idea a fail. Got halfway back up, but lost traction just as the fronts got up onto the road. Backed down to try to take another run at getting out, and the mud got me. The drives sunk in to the axle when I tried to go forward. Sunk even deeper when I tried to rock it out. I heard the slick, wet sound of the mud caking on the tires and spinning off into the wheel wells, cracked a hardon, and decided to try taking a video. I figured, it’s isolated, probably going to be a while before I see anyone, and now I was 7 inches of leaking steel in grey sweats.
It was an accidental stuck. I’m lucky I didn’t break the truck, considering that I was 200 km from cell service on a road that doesn’t see traffic every day. Wasn’t so lucky getting the video though. I climbed up out of the ditch to take a few stills and set up the phone to film some spinning, and of course, it was my”lucky” day. A group heading to the campground 50km up the road happened to come around just as I was snapping the first picture. I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong, but it was the story of my life: timing is EVERYTHING, and I have none.
They had me pulled out and back moving in time to make the last ferry into town at the end of the highway. I even had time to stop at a nearby gravel pit to look after unfinished business- busting a nut on the steering wheel while spinning holes into the loose gravel.
