Cairns Family Adventures : Stuck Skid Steer

Since we moved out to Frontier Lodge we have been surprised at how little snow was out here. We have had a few dumps of snow but they never seem to stick around for long. We were told that March is the month they get most of the snow, they were right! Over a foot of snow fell this last weekend, mostly on Saturday and on and off all day Sunday.

This provided lots of fun with the snow, on Sunday church was late by 30 min because someone got their van stuck on the hill outside of the church. Being from a small congregation (I think there was 7 brave souls that made it through the snow to come to church) all but 3 of us and the kids were out trying to get the van unstuck. They got the van free and then came inside to begin church, when we got home from church one of the staff came over and told us that the skid steer was stuck and they would need Troy to help get it out. It didn’t look like it was going to be that hard to pull it out; the skid steer was on the edge of a bank in the snow. One would think that it might take 5 min to hook it up and pull it out. After 2 ½ hours of trying to pull it out it ended up all the way in the bottom of the ditch. I would go out every once in a while to check on progress (it was stuck right behind our house which made it easy to do) I chuckled to myself because at one point it reminded me of a country song Truck got Stuck! The skid steer was hooked up to the Suburban and a pulley system through the trees to a red truck that stalled and they couldn’t get it going again so it was dead weight because all the tension was tied to the truck and then Troy got our Durango to pull in front of the red truck. Yep the Truck got Stuck song with a a few different vehicles and a skid steer. After it became dark and the skid steer was resting in the ditch they decided to call it a night and get it out in the morning.

Some of the vehicles uesd to pull out the skid steer

In the morning they spent a few hours cutting branches, setting up ropes and a pulley system I think it was a 15 to 1 pull ratio (not exactly the safest but very effective) they checked the system and then they were ready to try and pull the skid steer out. Troy put the suburban in drive and began to roll down the hill a bit and we began to cheer because the skid steer came right out of the ditch! There was a lot of cheering and laughing because it was almost effortless to get it out. Hurray for static climbing rope and climbing rescue knowledge being applied to get the skid steer out.