Beautiful sunshiny day. It was t-shirt weather up there.  We all met up at Marlene

and Glen’s ‘Dead Fly Inn’ in Plymouth. Don’t let the name put you off though. The

food is excellent. They’ve got the biggest pancakes I’ve ever seen. And the menu is so

vast, it takes a good while just to read over it. Me & Cindy, Eric & his daughter, Ken

Dean and his daughter, Bob Shield and Garrett had breakfast. We met up with James

Bryant and Dave & Laura Blake up where the snow started. We all aired down and

headed up the snow covered road… It was very bumpy from all the traffic that had

been on it already. We moved along slowly and the snow kept getting deeper but as

long as we stayed in the packed down areas, we were ok… Eric found a little side road

so he and James decided to try it out. It was deep and nobody had been on it yet. Well,

it wasn’t long before they were calling Bob for a pull cause they were both stuck. I

pulled off to the side in case anyone came along and immediately got stuck myself.

It was crusty on top and if you broke through that, it was just powder and you’d drop

like a rock. Laura and Dave (Laura driving their Unlimited) gave me a couple of yanks

with the strap and I was out. Then I noticed that Ken had done the same thing and his

’80 series Toyota’ was also stuck. That was a bad spot to pull over. Bob got Eric and

James going and they all three proceeded on up that trail and came back out a few

hundred yards above us. There were several vehicles behind us by now so we kinda

let them go by. One was an older Jeep pickup with no gears, lockers or lift. He was

running street tires that were Not aired down. Had a ton of camping gear in the back

too so he was very heavy. Kept breaking through even the packed down stuff in the

middle of the trail. His buddy literally pulled him all the way up past us cause he just

couldn’t go at all on his own…

So while waiting for that, we now had a whole string of vehicles behind us. Once the

road cleared, we all motored on up to where Bob was just sitting and watching all

the kaos. Everyone got past us so we drove on up to North/South road. I was surprised

to see nobody had tried to go that way so of course we had to try it. Bob and Eric both

got stuck good there and had to be tugged back out. It was one huge drift. James did

manage to get headed down the road and we all followed but it was sketchy. Ken got

a little nervous cause we were going slightly downhill and he wasn’t sure he could get

back up if we got stuck. There was another huge drift ahead. James and Bob managed

to get over it but I didn’t think Ken or Garrett would be able to make it so Eric started

working on a turnaround spot. I got turned around only to find that the others had opted

to reverse back up to Iron Mountain Rd. Eric went down to play a bit with James and

Bob. Pretty soon they were headed back. Ken got stuck right at the top and it took

some yanks on both directions to get him out. When we first started down, Laura said

there was a big full-size van that looked like it was gonna come with us but he backed

out and left.  We took a break at that point and had some lunch.

Sitting out on the main road was a Volkswagen bus. It was just parked… It was 4WD

and even had a locker in the rear. They were up there looking for an uncle’s false teeth.

Yep, you heard right. Apparently the uncle had suffered a heart attack up there last

week and while performing CPR on him, they took his teef out and forgot to pick em

up when he left. I hear they did CPR for about 3 hours. The guy survived but was

having some memory problems. But, he’s still kicking. Believe it or not, they did find

his teef, in all that snow… Then the VDub proceeded to get stuck. James came over

and snatched him back out and got him on his way. That thing was pretty cool. I got

some pics of James pulling him out…

After a the break, we headed farther up. About a mile up, we passed a group that were

camped right on the side of the road. Bunch of guys I know. ‘Outlaws’ is the name of

their little group. Most of em are Clampers. They drink and get kinda rowdy sometimes

but generally pretty nice guys. Camping in the snow… Brrrrrrr… They always go fully

prepared though…  We didn’t get much further. Bob and Garrett were up front. Bob got

up the next hill ok but Garrett was stuck. Bob snatched him on up the hill. Then I got

stuck in the same place. Eric pulled me back out and I kept trying it just a little bit at a

time till I finally got past that spot. Eric made it but everyone else decided they’d had

enough and didn’t want to dig out again… So Bob, Garrett, Eric and I came back down.

We were now stopped at a scenic outlook so we took some pictures and hung out there

for a bit, then headed back down the hill…

You’d think we were done but Oh Noo… I came upon this full-size van (remember)

that was stuck with his butt out in the packed area. So I lay on the horn and start yelling

out the window for him to get that piece of junk out of the road… I could do this cause

I know this guy. It’s Billybob (aka Scott Whitaker), one of the Pirates. When I say

‘full-size’ van, I mean ‘FULL-SIZE’.  It’s a 7400 lb 4x4 extended Ford van… So he

laughed when I offered to pull him out with my Jeep. But he really didn’t have much

of a choice so we hooked up his tow strap and I yanked that big ole tank right outta

there. He said ‘Thanks Hammack’ and proceeded to stick it again in nearly the same

place. So out comes the tow strap and we did it again. This time I kept pulling till he

was clear. Whadda clown. He then layed on his ‘train’ horn and scared the bejeebers out

of everyone… While this was going on, Bob had tried to drive around me and got

himself stuck pretty good too.  James yanked him out and we thought we were good

to go…

There was a Toyota pickup stuck in the ditch in front of us. He could go back and forth

but couldn’t get out of the ditch. Behind him there was a full-size pickup who was also

stuck from trying to get the Toy out. James likes a good challenge so I passed by and

let him have a go at getting the Toy freed up. I think he ended up using his winch with

a snatch block… Meanwhile just a little further down, one of their buddies was stuck

with a full-size Chevy pickup. He had pulled over to let someone by and his front end

was in the ditch. No lockers. Not aired down. Bone stock. Fully stuck. There was a

bone stock Toyota pickup behind him. I think he was gonna try and unstick the Chevy.

I waved him back and got behind the big truck. We hooked up my tow strap and after

a couple good yanks didn’t work, I gave him all I had. Wham!!!  It started moving but

the front end wouldn’t come out of the ditch. I drug him nearly sideways for about a

hundred feet before it finally popped out. Whew!  So after I get him out, I look up to

see the little Toyota had done the same thing while trying to back up out of the way.

So here we go again. I drive around him, hook up the strap and yank him nearly a

hundred feet also before finally getting his nose out of that ditch. While we were

getting these two dummies turned around, along comes some guy in a souped up

Landcruiser that decides he so bad, he’ll just drive around us in the deep stuff. Ha!

Well, that didn’t work… After getting the two pickups moving in the downhill

direction, I get to pull this dummy out of that big drift he’s buried in. No problem.

I get him out and he’s very grateful. Turns out he recognized me from the Pirate

bulletin board since I always were my USAF cap. So I made a new friend… J

James and rest of the gang got the others out and we all got moving again. I gotta

say, Laura and Dave did a great job of pulling and yanking nearly all of us out at

some point during the day. We’d just call on the radio, ‘Hey, Recovery Team’, and

they’d come take care of  us.

All in all a good day but there were just too many unprepared people up there. I’m

sure many of them had never even driven in the snow before. There is a real Need

for that ‘information station’ up there. Even with that, it’s just a little crazy. There

were a bunch of snowmobiles and while most of them were considerate, there were

a few that drove past us like their butts were on fire. Couple of 2-strokers that

smoked like crazy and stunk the place up so bad you could hardly breathe. Cough!

Talk about air pollution… Most of the 4wheelers were cool too but as usual, there

were a couple that acted like they had just been freed from prison and were on their

second or third hit of crack for the day. I saw one guy in a ‘rockcrawling’ buggy

that had somehow ripped the whole front wheel off that thing. Someone was draggin

him out of the woods on three wheels. It’s no wonder places get closed down…

A friend of mine was up there with his big ole Snow-cat. They returned to his tow

vehicle (Suburban) to find someone had shot a big hole in the door. It was parked

down near the dam where others were camped and where everyone airs down.

Looked to be at least a 40 cal… Vast majority of the people we met up there were

great however. At one point, Bob radioed us and said, ‘there’s a green Jeep coming

down. He has his girlfriend with him and man, is she a Dog’… I laughed. The guy

goes by me and his passenger is an English Setter. Ha! Good one, Bob…

There’s plenty of deep snow so I see more snow runs coming. Get ready and

watch for the emails… J

Glenn Hammack