Walk in the park.....

[gelswick]

At OK RV in Moab for a couple of weeks. Since it is supposed to rain this afternoon thought we would take an easy and quick morning drive up Long Canyon since it is short and close to town, has an unexpected treat for Nancy at the end and than an easy drive back into town. We stopped and got some coffee to go and proceeded out Potash Road, found the turn to Long Canyon and off we went down the Canyon. Started out as hard packed red clay/sand, a beautiful drive with breath taking scenery.

After a mile or two we start climbing up and there is some snow on the road in the shady areas. Stop at the first patch of snow for another round of picture taking, go to take off again and the rear wheels spin a little. OK, to be on the safe side I put it into four wheel drive and we are off. Make it through several more shady snow covered patches and notice that there is only a half inch or so of snow over ice so stay on the areas no one had already driven on for the extra traction. Shortly we come around a corner and there it is. A huge house size boulder that has fallen over the road but it is so large we can still drive under it. Nancy is not happy since she knows my "treats" for her usually involves scaring her to death, which is fairly easy to do here since she is afraid of heights. Frequently on the way up she had closed her eyes or stared at me so she would not have to look at the cliff on her side.

We paused for another round of pictures of the rock and to let her get her nerve up to let me drive under it. I had wanted to stop under the rock but it looked slick and I decided to keep my momentum going to get to a little hump on the other side and stop on it. We did and took yet another round of pictures of the other side of the rock.

Starting up again I told Nancy don't be afraid but I am going to go a little faster now to get the momentum up to make it over the steep grade in front of us, the steepest yet. Took right off and was doing great, until suddenly just short of the top all four wheels are spinning. I quickly slammed on the brakes to keep from rolling back wards, but, the harder I pushed the faster back wards we slid. We are sliding back wards out of control towards a cliff......

I remember thinking if I don't let up on the brakes we are going to slide over the edge for sure. I think I let up on the brakes but can't really say for sure. I don't remember turning the steering wheel either however the steering wheel was up against the left stop and suddenly we hit the vertical wall on the left side because the front wheels had suddenly caught traction on something which jerked the front end around, put the rear wheels in the ditch and still had enough momentum going to swing the front end all the way around, over looking the down side cliff on the way by, and than come to a stop just above the hump we had left a minute before but facing the way we had come CENTERED in the road.

Only than did Nancy see my face and realize that I had not been driving but hanging on for dear life. Then she was really scared because she had thought I was backing up real fast to scare her, not knowing I had no control over the truck at all.

We calmed down and I got out of the truck to see the damage but could find none. So what did we hit that spun the truck around and stop the downhill momentum?

There was only one tire skid mark that went into the ditch, the left rear, the skid mark from the right rear stopped at the top of the ditch, rotated about 180° and than led to where the truck was resting on down the hill. The front tire skid marks made a neat half circle around the ditch impact point. There was no evidence of hitting the cliff wall, with the bumper or any of the under carriage.

I wish I could say it was my expert driving skills that got us out of that situation but I was hanging on hopeing the truck would slide into the ditch and not over the cliff.

Now it is time to consider our position, we are almost at the top of the cliff, nothing separates us from the top but a sheet of ice. We are facing back down hill and i certainly don't want to try turning the truck around and attempting going on up. But, there are known slick spots on the way down and now I realize it was about 32° when we left town and near 40° now so the snow covered ice is melting and getting slicker by the minute. Also the rain is expected in an hour or two so we need to get off this cliffside NOW before it is all wet ice and we are stuck here. Now is a fine time to think about the above, so much for the morning "walk in the park" drive.....

OK, we decide that Nancy will walk down the snow/ice covered areas and I will try to drive the truck down before it gets any slicker and if it gets too slick (and the unspoken I don't end up over the side) I'll park the truck and we will walk the several miles back to the highway. I manage to make it down past the snow covered areas with little problem, wait for Nancy and we head back to town.

On the way back we also realize no one knew where we were going and we had no water or food since it was a "walk in the park" drive. The lat and long of the house sized rock is: N 38°32'36.22" W 109°42'23.28". Google Earth shows about a 90' drop off the edge to the bottom and it is not a vertical drop but the truck wou