Yesterday we set off in the trusty Prado around 6:30 am for our snow trip to Mt Selma.  A quick stop at Pakenham to pick up the BushWinch, just in case, and we were soon mobile again.

We arrived at the Thompson Dam just after 8:30, had a quick pitstop and let our tyre pressures down to 24lbs with the aid of Staun tyre deflators.

Headed up the Walhalla Road, through Aberfeldy, then onto our first track, O’Keefes.  We were surprised that after a week of very cold wet weather, and really good snow reports that even around the 900 meter height of Aberfeldy there wasn’t any sign of snow.

O’Keefes Track is a great one, being pretty easy even though it was wet.  We eventually wound our way to McGuires Track which was very similar to O’Keefes with no really hard sections, just magnificent bush.  It was along McGuires that we stopped at the Aberfeldy river had morning tea.

A bit further on we turned left into Selma Track.  We new were starting to hot up as we had been up here a couple of months ago when it was dry and could remember a couple of orange clay climbs that we commented on at the time as being challenging in the wet.

We crossed the Aberfeldy river once again and started our climb, but soon realised that those clay climbs were really quite easy and gave us no trouble at all.  We kept climbing up Selma track, but still no snow.  It wasn’t until we reached 1200 meters that we finally hit the white stuff.

The excitement in the Prado was amazing as kept getting deeper as we climbed.  A couple of times it was so thick our forward motion was stopped.  We had to reverse back along our tracks and gun it to get through.  Eventually we reached the intersection at the top of Selma track which takes you to the summit.  We turned right and fought our way through the snow, finally reaching the trig point on the top.

What a great trip.  If it finished right now we were satisfied as it had been a great morning of 4WDing.  We decided to head back on the main Selma road to a little track called Fiddlers Green.  Coming back down from the summit, we turned right at a little track that would take us back to the main road, but a short way down there was a monster tree across it.  The snow was quite thick here and we had no option but to try to reverse back.

Well what a job this turned out to be.  After a number of attempts there was only one thing to do.  Put the Prado into high range reverse and rev the ring out of the motor.  Foot by foot we made progress, snow and mud went flying every where as the Maxxis BigHorn’s dug through the 300mm deep snow to the solid track below.  A point not remembered by a lot of people is to keep swinging the steering wheel from lock to lock while all the spinning is going on.  It was amazing the number of times that we were on full lock that the tyres finally bit through and got us moving again.

After that bit of excitement we headed for Fiddlers Green, the early part still snow covered.  Eventually we must have come down below the 1200 meter mark and we were back to just wet bush.  Fiddlers Green, despite the snow proved a relatively easy track and eventually we reached an intersection.  We decided to turn left down Lost Spur track.

This proved interesting as there are a number of old mine sites in the area.  Our aim was to get back down to the river where we would have lunch.

Things were going fine, that descent was getting steeper as we got closer to the river, in fact the steepest of the day, but the track was still pretty solid.  Until we crested one woopty doo, went about 20 meters, then all hell broke loose.

We started sliding out of control down the hill.  I was madly trying to get my poor mans hill descent into action as we started sliding off the side of the track.  Eventually for about the last 10 or so meters I had gained some sort of control and came to rest at the next woopty doo.  I had to sit for a minute just to catch my breath.

Boy, before going any further we decided to get out and walk down the track to see what the rest was like.  Well the rest was even worse than what we had just experienced.  It was steeper, orange clay as slippery as ice and not even one rut to help out, in fact about 100 meters down, that track had a bend, leaving a big gum tree right in your path.  Not a good idea to try this.

We staggered back to the Prado and decided to do a U turn on the woopty doo and try to get back the way we had just come.  The tyre pressures were lowered to 18lbs, I turned around, gunned it in second low range, got about 10 meters and started sliding back, even though I was still spinning the wheels in second low.

I slid straight back down to the woopty doo.  Only one thing for it, we were in a real predicament, so we would have to try the BushWinch for the first time for real.

Now the Bush winch is a fascinating piece of engineering (have a look here) with hubs that attach to specially fitted wheel nuts and high tech synthetic rope.

We fitted the two hubs to our back wheels, but for some reason, we could not fit the guides to the front nuts, they just wouldn’t go on.

So with the back units fitted we ran the ropes from each side to separate trees and started the winching.  Boy these things are really amazing, as the slack is taken up in the rope, the vehicle is slowly pulled up.  Three’s no mad wheel spinning as the heels are the actual winch.

Now it all wasn’t as easy as that.  One tree was closer than the other. so ew had to fiddle to get the shortest rope some slack, so we could undo it and reset it on the next tree.  Then ew had to do the same with the other side.

Without the front wheel guides, sometimes because of tree placement, the rope was at too much of an angle and after a couple of turns would stop winding on the drum.

In one spot there was no tree to attach to so we got out the BushWinch ground anchor.  This has got to be one of the best anchors going.  It’s just like a big cork screw that you screw into the ground and just before ot is fully in you place a heavy shovel unit under the lip of the screw and for the lsat 300mm the cork screw buries this shove like unit.  We did a single line pull of this ground anchor and it didn’t budge.  Removing it is even easier than installing it.

At one point we again had only one winch rope attached and as it started pulling the rear up, the front of the Prado slid perilously close to putting us in a rollover position on the track.  Luckily I always carry a drag chain and a little 1.5 ton hand winch.  We were able to get the front of the vehicle chained to a tree, get the second winch run off and attached to a tree and get ourselves going again.

All in all it took us 4 hours and about 6 complete pulls to get ourselves out of trouble.  If the front guides had have fitted it would have halved our time and not had the dangerous side slope situation.

This was an absolutely awesome trip, one that Matt and I will remember for many years to come.  I guess the moral to the whole story is you cannot have enough recovery gear when you venture out.

Related posts:

1. HHO Part 2