by Markus
3. February 2010 11:10
This weekend we discovered how much work it really can be to actually get to a cache...
The decision was made to make an attempt to log "Gott och blandat". It is located in the "middle of nowhere" and the road was full of snow... (In all fairness i must admit that the decision was taken together with the cache owner). Tomalars had just gotten delivery of new snow chains for his car and we took out the Volkswagen Transporter Syncro from it's storage and off we went. After a short transport to the general area (about 120km from rEDdOG base) we took the plunge into the unknown.
After a couple of kilometers on the really snowy road (40cm+ on the road after it had been compacted by snow mobiles) we came to the steep hill that we expected to be the biggest problem of the day. Tomalars went first and got stuck after less than half the hill, after several attempts he made it up the hill, so I went to get the dreaded Syncro. We expected less problems with the Syncro since it is equipped with diff.locks both front and rear and indeed it seemed to go quite well until suddenly all drive just stopped. So stuck in a hill with deep snow on all sides, the possible tow vehicle in front and no way of passing to tow the Syncro back to the "main" road again... What to do?
Of course we took the 2km walk to the cache just to log it, I was not going to let it be a DNF as well the cache just had to be logged. After a walk that seemed much longer than it actually was we finally arrived at the cache and logged it.
The walk back seemed even longer (not very surprising perhaps that walking back to a car that doesn't work isn't the most joyful thing I can imagine). Back at the cars again I discovered that it was the clutch that had broken down on the Syncro (suppose it didn't like the big wheels and difflocks...). Tomalars then called for assistance and a few hours later it arrived. It got pretty cold during our wait (-22degrees C) so we were lucky that Tomalars had brought firewood with him. The tow out of the area was pretty uneventful (if being towed in complete darkness in a car without lights and frost on the in and outside of all windows on narrow snowy roads can be called uneventful). While this was happening Maria was driving towards us from rEDdOG base so I could get back home.
The day after it was time to go back and get the broken down car home again. A trailer was rented and the services of my cousin was summoned. This is what it looked like when the syncro was loaded on the trailer and we were ready to go (or so we thought)
2,5 hours later we were up the hill and finally on our way home.