We turned off the dirt road down a steep rutted track that wound deeper into the scrub. We stopped and search in vain for a well hidden track that would take us to the Southern face of the mountain. Undeterred we turned around and took a different track back to the main road. We found another turn off that looked like it could take us where we wanted to be, but it soon turned away from our destination.
We decided to head to another part of the mountain that we knew we could find, but on the way there I decided to put the Patrol through its paces off road.
This is what happened.
In my hubris I decided to drive through the first mud pit I saw, which happened to be a lot deeper and rutted than I expected. Barely past the steep drop off the Patrol quickly became stuck on its axles, and even if the wheels reached the bottom of the ruts the tread was too caked in sticky clay to get any traction. Lucky I had the foresight to pack my hand winch, so I walked the frigid muddy waters and started looking for my recovery point.
I found what I was looking for, anchored my winch to a strong tree and very slowly started to pull her free. Eventually we dragged her out of the mud without any further problems. There was a long divot in the mud where we had dragged the diff all the way through the pit, I had no chance of getting through on my own!
Relieved to be out we set off further along the track to make it through to the main road. Once the tyres had shaken off their mud coating we had lot of fun driving the rest of the way, through some fairly steep, degraded and rutty section of track.
It doesn't look as difficult on video as it was in real life, but the Patrol handled the rest of it with ease.
We made it to Mt Beerwah without any further scares, and made our way to 'Mosquito Wall', a section of low graded climbs where we practised abseiling and setting up top-belays in preparation for some longer multi-pitch climbs.
We called it a day as the sun was setting, we headed back to our meeting spot nine hours earlier where we demolished a family sized pizza in a few minutes.
We left our separate ways, I stopped at a car wash on the way home and spent 1/2 and hour with a high pressure jet hose scouring the underside of the to remove the severe amounts of clay all through the suspension and chassis rails.
All in all a fantastic adventure, well worth the mud, sweat and fear (of the winch failing).
A couple more photos here
