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What Not To Do With Your ATV
November 29, 2006. I took the dogteam training at Hill and at around 6
miles out I headed down the side trail towards the dam. A few days ago I had done this trail and after
having a lot of flooding and wind storms this fall the trail was rough. Tons of branches down,
logs in the trail, a washed out section of
trail with just enough room to drive your ATV around the upper side of the washout, and what used to
be a tiny stream had turned into a slightly more difficult crossing - someone tried to construct a
bridge there by placing two timbers across the stream, but the result is too narrow for the ATV
tires to cross on but makes it tough to go around it too. Then just beyond the stream I discovered
an enormous tree down across the trail and, having no way to cut it down, I turned around and headed
back.
© 2006 Jaye Foucher This morning I figured "what the hell, I did it the other day, we can do it again - at least I know what's out there now." So we headed down that section of trail. This time I anticipated where the fallen tree was and chose a wider and better spot prior to that to turn my team around at. On the return trip as we approached the washed out section of trail I slowed the team to a walk so the dogs could carefully pick their way across; the front end can easily avoid the washed out section but because the washout is in the middle of a tight S curve, as the front end swerves to the right to follow the trail the rear half of the team winds up in the washed out ditch. Now the other day there was no issue here; although the wheel dogs and swing dogs were crossing in the washed out ditch, I was able to gas the ATV and drive along the narrow strip of trail still remaining on the left side. No such luck today. I could see it coming. The dogs were cutting too close to the right side of the trail and despite my best efforts to steer the ATV and keep it on the trail, the dogs pulled the ATV into the washout. I had one last thought of "this isn't good" before the ATV tumbled over onto it's side, tossing me against the side of the embankment (picture a deep crater) where I hit my back hard as I landed. 
The minute I landed I got away from the ATV, fearing it would continue to roll and pin me
beneath it. I lay there on my back for a second, processing the pain and trying to assess the
damage to my body. I knew I had torn or pulled something pretty badly in my back, but I could still
move and so I put the pain out of my mind for the moment.
The ATV was laying on it's side, partly on the handlebars on it's way to being upside down. I tried giving it a shove to right it but it barely budged. I realized I was going to have to unhook the entire team in order to get the ATV back upright. So I started up the line: unhook tugline, detach it from the gangline, tie it around a tree, then attach the dog to the tree. One by one, up the entire 14 dog team. I left a few dogs in place, but most of them were removed from the line. Then I went back to the ATV to see if I could push it back upright. Without the pressure of the dogteam I could rock it, but no way did I have the strength to push it fully back on it's 4 wheels, especially since it was sloping downward (and particularly with my back screaming in pain). On to Plan B: use the dogs. First I needed to attach the gangline differently, because I needed the team to pull from the side instead of the front. I used a spare carabiner I had to attach the next loop up on the gangline to the bars on the side of the ATV that was resting in the mud, then wrapped the gangline around the handlebars. Then I took the gangline and laid it out at a 90 degree angle to the ATV, so that the dogs would be pulling from the side instead of the front. The gangline was stretching into the woods, and as I hooked dogs back up and reattached tuglines they were managing to tangle themselves around branches left and right... my bad, since I started hooking up from wheel forward, thinking that I didn't have enough room for an entire string in the woods and that I didn't need the entire string either. The dogs were a tad confused, but after undoing a bunch of tangles I came to my senses and put Anthem up near the front to keep the line straightened out. When I had 8 dogs hooked up I went back to the ATV, stood on the downhill side of it and gave the command to pull. The dogs surged forward and the ATV started to rock upright, but there just wasn't quite enough dog power. I told the team to halt and went back to hooking up more dogs. This time I hooked up 4 more, a total of 12 dogs on the line (since part of the wheel section was wrapped around the handlebars I couldn't hook up the last 2 dogs). I went back to the ATV and gave the command to pull. This time when the dogs surged forward they righted the ATV back up onto 4 wheels with ease! Yay! However now I had a new problem... they were continuing to pull and I had to sit on the ATV to keep it from tipping over the opposite direction. How to stop them? I couldn't get off the ATV because the instant I did it started to tip to the side. I needed to get them out of the woods so they were no longer pulling from a 90 degree angle. Thank god for obedience training. I called the leaders to come, and they turned around and came towards me. As soon as they did that it relieved the pressure on the ATV and I was able to get off and go grab them and line the team back out (not without a mess of tangles of course). But the fun wasn't over yet. Because the ATV was still resting precariously in the ditch I knew if I just had the dogs pull me straight out onto the trail it would wind up back where it started: on it's side. I needed the dogs to pull me at a 45 degree angle now, so I had some slight forward pressure on the ATV but they would be pulling in the opposite direction from the washout. In order to do this I had to line out the team back in the woods again, just in a different spot. My respect for my dogteam grew even greater today because these guys did exactly what I asked of them, even though what I was asking had to make no sense at all to them. When I gave the command to go ahead, the dogs were able to pull the ATV out of the washout and back onto flat ground. I got them out of the woods and back on the trail, had to unhook everyone's tuglines again in order to unwrap the gangline from around the handlebars, then hooked everyone back up. I decided this was a good time to reward the dogs with the meat snacks I'd brought today and gave everyone a drink and lots of praise and pats. The whole incident from start to finish had to have taken at least an hour. Once the crisis was over I realized that I was absolutely DRIPPING with sweat. I had never even noticed how hot I had become. I was literally soaked to the skin. Thank god it wasn't a colder day - have to admit I was chilled all the way back to the truck but that wasn't the worst of my problems. The adrenaline in my system while getting us out of the mess worked to keep the pain in my back at bay. But once we set off on the trail again and the adrenaline started to subside, the pain was intense. I gritted my teeth for the entire 7.5 miles back to the truck, and by the time I got home I could barely get myself out of the truck. Just another day on the training trail, right? << Back | |
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