Matt got a call for a $100,000 Jeep sunk in the river. So Matt from Matt's Off Road Recovery, Rory Irish with his Trail Mater, and Yankum Ropes came to the rescue. This video took place during Trail Hero 2021. Earlier that week, the Hurricane, UT area had experience a lot of rainfall and flooding in the slot canyons.
Behind the scenes, Andrea, Shane, and Alan were running the booth at the trail hero event when Matt came to visit, at that moment Matt got a call from for a Jeep stuck in the Toquerville Falls trail. He asked us if we could go and be a part of the recovery and called Rory to join the fun as well. This recovery ended up being quite the adventure.
The Toquerville trail is a difficult trail for many rock crawling rigs and to add to the dynamic it's in the bottom of a canyon with a creek running through it. several days earlier there was a rain storm in the area that brought the water level much higher making it impassable. When the off-roaders drove through the water was still too deep in some areas.
When we arrived to the rig the engine was deep enough in the water to have flooded and had hydro-locked, in other words the Jeep was "dead in the water." Right after we got there, Rudy from Rudy's Adventure and Design waded into the water and jumped in the Jeep, and the water was very VERY cold. Rory backed up to the Jeep with his buggy and Matt winched over the top of his roll cage in order to lift the dead Jeep out of the mud to break suction. After the "easy" part was finished we then had to get the rig back to the trail head. The hardest most nerve racking part was to keep the jeep between two rigs to keep it from ramming into the recovery rig all while Rudy fought hypothermia navigating a Jeep without power steering. The next scary obstacle was a tall hill that we had to drag a very heavy, waterlogged rig. Since it was too heavy for just one rig, the only way we could get it out to daisy chain several recovery rigs together.
A-lot happens in this clip, but the best part of the whole video is friends working together to help someone in need. We are honored to work with Matt, Rory and Rudy to help make recoveries easier and safer for themselves and creating awareness around these incredibly strong kinetic recovery ropes.
