Some trails are too narrow and horse tracks are the only ones that are left on it. This one is a narrow horse trail and I went up it to be able to take photos of the surroundings
The area has evident concentrations of iron sand.
Over there in the forest, there is a mine just to take advantage of such concentrations. I used to visit the area for some research.
This rip is not as sneaky as the others.
I went to another narrow trail and as soon as I turned, I noticed that there aren’t that much tracks and I was tilting almost all the way. The right hand side is the drainage and is very, very soft. This trail may be too narrow for a bigger vehicle.
It was OK until I slowed to a halt. I encountered the mushy part and my car is just 5cm away from the vegetation and compacted sand. I remained on the left-hand side but the car slid to the right. I could claw up using the vLSD but the rear-right wheel turns much faster than the rear-left. In this photo, both right wheels have the least resistance.
(Footprint of a recovery board)
I decided to use the recovery boards to make sure the moment the wheels turn, the car moves forward. These boards are a must to any modern-day off-roader. You can have a winch but recovery boards can be used anywhere, especially if there are no anchor points for the winch.
I forgot to turn off the recording on my phone and it captured my 7 minutes minute recovery.
With our previous 4x4s, I used to do sand recovery without boards. The boards just make everything much, much easier.
After getting out, I took a few more photos of the surroundings.
Then I am supposed to pass by Klondyke Road, which is somewhat less-maintained, tohave a look at some outcrops but while I was airing up my 2nd tyre, my 37 litres/min cheap tyre inflator started to make noise. On the third, It gave up at around 28 psi. The last tyre was still at 17 psi.
I felt OK because there was a dairy around 300m away which sold fuel so I assumed it would have air, as well. I was wrong. I had to travel at a really low speed. I encountered a 4x4 which looked like he does off-roading. He didn’t have a tyre inflator. The next gas station was just 30 km away but I had to tread slowly to preserve my tyres. I aired up at Tuakau and headed home.
Because of the tyre inflator blues, I bought a heavy duty 160 litre/min tyre inflator from a 4x4 shop. It is much more robust than anything I had used before.
