Mission Reports: Nederland Vehicle Belaying down a mountain

Saturday July 2nd a team from Colorado 4×4 Rescue and Recovery spent the day outside of Nederland to recover a vehicle that ended up way too far up in the trees, de-beaded all 4 tires, and some how lost brakes in the process.

A couple weeks earlier another team attempted to get this out and just couldn’t get the tires to seat back on the wheels, so they had to be taken into town for a tire shop to do.

The work site sits about 8500 feet and was on a 35-40 degree slope. It complicated the process dramatically and quite literally makes your feet hurt from the steepness. Cameras tend to flatten out the images making things seem much less steep.

We ended up using the Safe Xtract X-locks pretty heavy on this one to manually belay this vehicle down the mountain.
It didn’t have functioning brakes, so that added to the complexity.

Video of this is at:

Colorado 4×4 Rescue and Recovery
We Recover the Rockies