I wound up leaving the Tacoma area after work on Friday, June 4th. Traffic heading East on SR18 was the usual Friday afternoon congestion. Yuck, but once I go on I-90 East, traffic broke up a bit. I decided to stop in Ellensburg for a quick bit to eat. I wound up at The Pearl and all I can say that I will probably never go back. The food and service was mediocre at best.
I hopped in the Jeep and made my way out of town to my camp spot for the night. It's a conspicuous put in to The Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area off Vantage Highway. It's a very remote spot off the track and I setup for the night.
I decided to go to bed early because the wind was kicking up something fierce. So, I headed up to the tent for cover. The wind howled all night long. I think I got about 2-3 hours of sleep. But, the sunrise was glorious!
After packing up the Jeep and securing the tent for transport mode, I headed into Vantage for gas and started my track Southeast for Beverly Dunes. A very scenic drive along the Eastern shore of the Columbia River on your way to Mattawa. I stopped in Mattawa to grab a few supplies and made my way to the dunes. The weather was spectacular!
I did some scouting around the Dunes for a spot to conduct class and struck gold! I found a large area that we could circle the wagons on which included a 15 foot sand birm we could use to "get stuck". 😁
Once I secured our training spot, I went back to the main parking lot and waited for my students to arrive.
They all started to trickle in one by one and we mounted our dunes flags, aired down, had our driver's meeting and proceeded into the sandy abyss.
I had the group arrange their vehicles to create a safety circle due to other motor vehicles buzzing around the area. The highly visible orange safety flags doing their jobs.
Our first task was the use of a kinetic or "Yanker" rope. THis rope is designed to stretch about 20% of its relaxed length to "Yank" a stuck vehicle out of a bad situation. Here, we see Ben Thompson's Expedition intentionally stuck to demonstrate the yanker rope's use.
Next was the use of traction boards. Once we got Georgie's JKU Rubicon stuck, we demonstrated the used of Max Trax to get her "unstuck".
We also got this Jeep suck on an incline to demonstrate an uphill winch pull in sand.
All in all, we had an amazing weekend with great people. Looking forward to the next big event!
More to come!
Dan