The entrance to the climb out of the canyon looked way easier until I actually got the van to it.
LOL.
Second attempt...
This next segment was going to be the hardest. I wasn't sure if I should crawl it or throttle it. I decided to crawl it.
Crawling didn't work. I slid off but luckily was able to back up and get a faster run at it. When in doubt, throttle out...right?
This pic is a little out of order but you get the gist of it. She fixed the shelf for the speed run. Hahaha.
And here is what it looked like from the drivers seat...
Second attempt at the summit. That didn't work either. This time I slid too far off to the left and put the van in a bad spot. Did some more modifications to the body, unfortunately.
Because of where the trailer ended up, I was unable to back out. In fact, the trailer was leaning over enough to cause some concern.
Our only option was to dig the van out and unhook the trailer. One of the cool features about this trailer is it has parking brakes on it. We locked the brakes on, carefully lifted it off the van, and crawled the van up to the top. In hindsight, without the trailer, this would've been much easier.
I wasn't really sure how this was going to work, but our only option was to pull the trailer up with a strap! There was a slight issue with the huge drop off to the left of the trailer, so it had to be pulled straight up. Luckily there was an uphill that the van could make.
Getting the strap and shackles ready...kind of wondering if this was the best idea.
Got it!
Hitching up wasn't super easy just because there was another washout like 10 feet to the right, which is the direction we needed to go. I hitched up and then had to make a u-turn. We were finally back up on the trail, after 9 hours. We had only gone a mile and a half since the previous nights camp!!
This was the washout which started to give away as I drove over it. I tried to get high enough on the hill to avoid it but I think that actually loaded the right rear and the dirt gave away.
