Does it ever! We had a kid at work years ago, who said that he was patrolling areas in a 4wd F150, that the rest of us used to patrol with dirt bikes. One of the other guys doubted him, and decided to ride shotgun, to see if he was really getting into those areas. When the driver stopped to shift into 4wd, the guy riding shotgun hopped out to lock the hub on the passenger side. The kid driving asked him what he was doing--he had no idea that he needed to lock the hubs for 4wd...

I heard about someone like that once that was doing 4x4 trails except his 4x4 was broke! He was going places others had to go into 4x4 but this guy had perfected driving so much he could do it without needing a strap most of the time... when he got 4x4 fixed he was an animal! (He never new it was broke until years later... haha)

(Sigh) Chop the tree up, put the branches under wheels. Drive yourself out.

If that is not practiable, green branches make a dinkum signal fire.

To do that: pile up branches, take your T-shirt off. dip in petrol tank and place under branches. Light. If you don't have a match or lighter, use the battery and your jump leads supply a spark.

Only problem you now face is that the smoke is white against a white background.

So put the spare tire on the fire. That should give you a nice big cloud of black smoke.

The mountain roads in WV are very steep and narrow and twisty, you have a state that hasn't been able to properly maintain for years. My cousin/friend owned a suburu for years, never got over 20mpg, my silverado hit 21. The roads there are so steep that smaller 4/6 cylinder engines just can't do it. Our Dodge minivan would drop from 25 highway to 15mpg in those mountains. I have several other friends and relatives who have had or currently have subursus who complain about how bad the MPG is in the mountains there

They were in a car, for heaven's sake. Cars can carry lots of weight, like food and nice warm sleeping bags and whatever luxuries you might wish to include, perhaps even a come along - the better to easily pull your vehicle out of a bad spot.

I can understand hikers being under equipped because of the inevitable weight involved, but if you are driving, unprearedness is inexcusable.

Interesting... my wife drives on a 2 lane, twisty road the whole 1hr to work and back. From point A to point B elevation change is 4000ft, however during the drive she goes up to 1500ft, down to 200, then up to 4k.

What kind of roads do you have there ?? I just can't imagine getting worse than 25mpg. On the highway we get 28mpg+.

-Todd

Roads that don't have center or edge lines painted, don't have any berm on the sides, blacktop crumbling along the sides which pulls you off the road if you get too close. Loaded coal trucks going up the mountain at 15-25mpg belching diesel smoke. A brake check pull over at the top and run away truck ramp at the bottom.

http://maps.google.com/maps?source=ig&am...sa=N&tab=wl

See where route 7 crosses the river at Cadel? Camp Dawson is actually slightly down the river and there is a golf course where google has the marker. See the sharp curve in the road right below the circled 7, years ago before the run away truck ramp was there an tractor trailer lost it brakes and went off the road right at that turn, the road is on the side of a mountain with a very deep drop off there, the truck went airborn and landed in the golf course. There wasn't a part of it too big for someone to pick up and carry with their hands, not a hollywood fire explosion but rather an impact explosion. right before that curve see the small spot where it looks like the road isn't aligned, thats where the abandoned coal mine under ground collapsed and the road sunk, first few people driving up the mountain hit the drop off and flattened all their tires. It took months for them to drive steel tubes in the ground to keep the land from sliding, they said at night when there was no traffic and it was quiet you could hear the ground sliding. Most of the roads there were paved over horse paths.

Thats the biggest complaint anyone has about the subs around there, that the gas mileage gets no where near what was advertised.

A similar thing happened to me about 30 years ago.

Three friends and I set out in a Ford Maverick to find a Christmas tree near our home town in Southern Ontario. We went to a large wooded valley and left the car on top of the hill because with a foot of snow on the ground it would never make it out of the valley. The area was dense conifer with firebreaks cut through it and we started walking without paying any real attention. I remember we had winter clothing on (boots, coats, hats, mitts) but probabaly only jackknives and maybe a lighter as survival equipment, plus a small hatchet to cutdown the tree. We got so far down the valley that we decided to walk out to the highway instead of backtracking through the snow, that is when we got lost. After a couple hours we found an old road which lead to a Scout Camp that we had been to a couple of years before. From there we walked out to the highway then the long walk around the valley on the county roads back to the car, we arrived just at dark, and still did not have a Christmas tree.

In the dark we went to another area to to look for a tree, we were now a lot less picky. We found a nice tree at the edge of a river and my partner started to cut it down with the hatchet. On the third strike the head came off the hatchet and fell into the river! I can still picture my buddy laying on the snowy riverbank with his bare arm in the water to retreive the hatchet head. We got the head back and because it was very dull it took a long time to chop through the 4 inch spruce tree.

This was one of those teenage adventures that you learn from, but how your children have the sense to avoid.

Mike