Driving off-road into remote areas: how to equip the car?

It sounds like you have the basics covered.  I know some people that also carry lengths of board in addition to mats.

Let me suggest always having a good amount of water left in the car; I usually have a 5 gallon jug- drinking, washing, etc.  Good for emergencies.

Have a set of battery charger cables with you in case you need a jump start from another vehicle. Extra food and water is a good idea too, as well as a few extra tools. Also, know how to change your tire (and be sure that it has a full load of air when you have the oil changed).

I too drive a 4Runner. I have always gone with radial snow tires (since 1976), as they offer reasonably good side wall protection and they provide a smooth ride on the interstate.

Gary, are you saying that radial snow tires work well enough on-road that you use them most of the year, or even year-round?  Can you recommend a specific tire?

A sharp axe for clearing fallen trees.

On rare occasions I will carry a two-person cross cut saw.  That way I can cut my way out of trouble in recently burned forested areas after a windstorm.

A come along might be useful but would probably be considered too cautiously prepared for most purposes.

The ultimate tool is probably an Inreach communicator–call your friends for help :)

Check out http://expeditionportal.com

I swapped out the awful stock tyres on my Tundra within 9000 miles, because they were utterly hopeless on anything but dry tarmac. I wound up spending the extra to get BF Goodrich TA KO2s, which have about a 50% better wear rating than any other offroad tyre I could find. They also have a snow rating, although they aren’t snow tyres per se. I don’t do any serious offroading, because the Tundra is simply too large a vehicle for technical trails, but here are a few things that I always keep in a container in winter:

A tow strap or come-along rated for my vehicle’s GVW, along with D shackles and gloves to wear while fitting / using them. A fire extinguisher (replace every two years). A first aid kit. A heavier duty jack than the one supplied by Toyota (although you probably don’t need to spring for the 4×4 favourite, the Hi-Lift jack). A set of tools. A shovel. A blanket or old sleeping bag and a space blanket. A detailed enough map. Extra food and water. 3-5 gallons of fuel. Oh, and my InReach Explorer in case I’m out of mobile phone range.

“A sharp axe for clearing fallen trees.”

I was actually wondering about getting a small chainsaw.   I’d be skeptical about $100 battery-powered chainsaws for any kind of major job, but to clear deadfall enough to get through, maybe this?

Provided I have plenty of gas, I can recharge it from the car.

I live on 13 acres of spruce forest, so when a tree falls in the forest (and my wife needs to get to work), I hear about it.

Of course I’ve got a few chainsaws – medium gas-powered, large gas-powered and the most serious electric option Stihl makes which I really like if the tree is less than 8-inches in diameter and I’m within 200 feet of the house.

But for a serious off-road trip, I’d bring an axe = it’s the ultimate cordless-chainsaw.  You can eventually get through anything.  I get nervous clearing trails using a chainsaw without a second chainsaw or an axe along.  Although I do it less and less the more experience I’ve had, sometimes you misjudge how a tree will sag or twist and you install the chainsaw bar in the cut until you cut the trunk somewhere else.  That never happens with an axe.

In addition, I’d bring a come-along.  A wide range of trees can be cranked out of the way enough to get by and even if one needs to be cut, you can potentially do fewer cuts and come-along the larger pieces out of the way.  Plus all the other reasons you might need a come along.  While these are $20 and readily available:

you can only move something 12 feet at most, 6 feet when doubled-over for maximum capacity, and most of that 6 feet gets used taking up the slack of all the rope and sling you’ve used.  So instead get one of these Maasdam come along that endlessly pulls 1/2″ rope:

It’s the only kind bush pilots bother bringing and works far better for off-road use.  You should have 100 feet of 1/2″ rope with you anyway, because the large tree or rock you need to tie to is never just 5 feet away.  Plus a variety of slings and tow ropes to put a loop around a tree, attach to your vehicle and to position the come along somewhere you can crank away on it.

+1 on snow chains, carried in all seasons.  They convert all-weather radial into really chunky dirt/snow/ice tires and can be used as a chain for another vehicle to pull you out.

SECURE ALL THIS STUFF IN THE BACK OF YOUR VEHICLE!  Put it all in duffle bags and lash those duffle bags down to the tie-down in the back of your vehicle!  Or on the outside.  A come along, an axe, or 5 gallons of water hitting the back of your head at 35 mph can really ruin your day.  A routine traffic accident that results in such a sudden deceleration is more likely than any of this gear actually saving your life.  The gear is far more likely to simply keep you from missing work on Monday morning.

This is great, thanks all for the advice.

The website Andy linked above is excellent.

It looks like the come-along David pictured is the “Maasdam A-20 3/4 Ton Rope Puller”.

And as suggested, I will go for the failure-free axe rather than a chainsaw.   A puny chainsaw on a large log is probably a bigger risk to my health & safety than being stranded in the wilderness to live off the land until spring…   Any recommendations for a quality axe that’s substantial enough for the worst-case scenario of getting through a thick trunk?    I think I was about 12 years old when I last wielded an axe at some kids’ camp.

There is a phenomenon here known as “pinstriping”. A lot of the California Sierra Club Desert Peak people have off-road vehicles, and they all have these nasty long scrapes on the sides of their vehicles from sharp dry tundra, which may be fine if the vehicle is dedicated for off-road trips only but looks like hell as a daily town vehicle. I understand that there are mats you can find to protect the sides in those cases. Better to do it BEFORE you get your first stripes.

Gear is useful. Me, I carry a bow saw rather than an axe. It’s a LOT safer when you are cold and wet and in the dark. And don’t forget that you can use your car to pull things off the road.

But the most important thing to carry is a knowledge of what you can drive out of. If you come to something which looks chancy, stop, get out, and walk it first.

Or not, as the case may be. :-) (Out of season unexpected snowfall. Oh well.)

Cheers

As long as you are packing a dedicated duffel bag: add some burly leather gloves, shop towels, and Walmart blue tarp with bungee cords. I carry a bow saw because it really rips through deadfall. You can carry extra blades as well.  Have fun!

I mostly travel off road in deserts and typically carry two 8 foot boards to be used a sand ramps in deep soft sand, several platforms for emergency work, 14 gallons of emergency water, air compressor, shovels, and extra tools to include a good jack and a come-along.

As Roger said, knowledge is your best friend. Learn how to drive in soft sand and be aware of obstacles and the amount of ground clearance you have. One of the worst things that can happen is a rock puncturing your oil pan. Some people install special plates to protect oil pans. I can’t tell you how many times I have been walking along dirt roads and suddenly see traces of a long and continuous stream of oil, where someone hit an obstacle.

suddenly see traces of a long and continuous stream of oil, where someone hit an obstacle.

Found the sump plug at the start of the oil one time too! That was a worry.

Another time we stopped a car to point out that he was trailing a rear shock absorber. The upper bolt had been sheared off.

Cheers

I assume sump plug is an Oz translation of drain plug, but Ralph probably knows that being from the home of the “mother tongue.”

:-)

Bring a replacement air filter.

So, based on the advice above I am adding the following to my kit:

4 X Security Chain Company ZT747 Super Z LT Light Truck and SUV Tire Traction Chain
Maasdam Pow’R Pull A-100 3/4 Ton Capacitty Rope Puller with 100′ of 1/2″ dia. Rope
TGL 3″ x 8′ Tree Saver Winch Strap
Bahco® Bow Saw #9 All Purpose – 3/4″ x 36″ blade
Fiskars X15 Chopping Axe, 23.5-Inch
Giant duffel & straps to secure it in car

And I’m planning to upgrade my tires to those that Gary recommended, which look far more capable but will still work fine on tarmac:
BF Goodrich TA KO2

I’ve also been perusing the great site that Andy posted http://expeditionportal.com/
The other aspect I guess will be to take an off-road driving course.

Thanks to all for the advice.

I haven’t figured out what jack to get.   The Hi-Lift looks ridiculously huge.   Any ideas for something better than the OEM thing – foolproof, safe and a reasonable size?

But the ‘OEM thing’ is probably very close to ‘foolproof, safe and a reasonable size’ – corporate liability if nothing else.

take an off-road driving course
VERY wise. I find ‘softly softly’ often gets me a lot further than the teenagers.

Cheers

The fiskars is an excellent axe, the handle is nearly indestructible. The reason I recommended an axe is because an axe can chop through anything while a saw is limited to what it can cut unless you have a huge 2 person crosscut saw. Where I live we can get some BIG trees. You might have to spent a few hours chopping.

Smaller axes like that have a potential for injuring yourself. I always recommend chopping while kneeling, to eliminate the danger of the blade glancing and flying towards your leg.

First thing I recommend is to do a little research on your truck and see what parts will leave you stranded if they fail. On my truck there is no fallback in the ECU programming for the Crank Position Sensor. No CKPS, no run.. So a spare known good CKPS lives in my box o’ bits for the truck. A whole bunch of other sensors can fail, like the mass air flow sensor, and make the truck run like crap. But it will run and get you back to civilization.

Expo is a great site to search on vehicle based exploring. If you have a question, someone more than likely has already asked it, and much like here, have been given 10 different opinions as to what the correct answer is.

The main reason why I got my truck is to get further away from the crowds and to get to the end of that legal two track that ends right at the wilderness boundary. I also like exploring the multitude of two tracks and fire roads that are available out here in the mountains and deserts of CA.

+1, Roger, on walking a difficult stretch before attempting it.  Earlier this year, I was in NZ and got to a pass and doubted the road conditions ahead.  I parked, walked it, and had no doubts – there was no way could I make.  No way could anyone make it!  As I walked back to my compact 2WD back on the hard stuff, some yahoo in a rental 4WD barreled into it, full speed.  And got 40 feet in, and really stuck.

Since you’ll have the factory jack with you anyway, bring several 2″ x 6″ x 18″ chunks of lumber.  They make great supports for the jack on soft ground and serve as spacers to give you greater lift capacity.  While a floor jack and some 1-1/8″ sub flooring plywood is wonderful to have when you need it, a cheaper and more compact option is a simply bottle jack (about $12 at Harbor Freight) and those same pieces of wood.  Between the scissors jack that your car already has and that hydraulic bottle jack, you can eventually lift your car as much as you need to.

My BIL’s tour-de-force for a ski trip was four, count-em four, tires in the trunk with chains already mounted on them.  And not just mounted, but mounted very tightly on a deflated tire, and then the tire was inflated so those chains were embedded in the tire!  That, and a floor jack in the trunk, so you could quickly raise and lower the car as you replaced all four tires-on-rims.  This was all back in the day, but now I’d add a cordless impact wrench to quickly spin those lug nuts off and on.

More seriously, a VERY handy piece of kit in winter (and it only weighs 12 ounces) is a chunk of ensolite, Z-rest, etc.  When you’re putting on tire chains, it’s always in the slush zone with wet snow to lie in and ice-cold water pouring through your collar as you lay on the ground wrestling with the tire chains.

Hi David

some yahoo in a rental 4WD barreled into it, full speed.  And got 40 feet in, and really stuck.
I hope you quietly left him to it? After all, what can you do with a compact 2WD?

chunks of lumber.
Oh yes, very useful. Equally useful: enthusiastic novices willing to heave rocks around in the snow. :-) But we did not try to LIFT the (someone else’s) car: I got the enthusiasts to build a rock ramp so the driver (Landcruiser) could use all the power of his 4WD Lo-ratio to climb out.
For others: trying to ‘jack out’ is incredibly dangerous: as soon as the car moves the jack goes flying. Who will it hit?

then the tire was inflated so those chains were embedded in the tire! 
That sounds to me rather destructive of the tire. I have seen people driving around with chains just neatly fitted, and not stretched tight. I don’t make mine all that tight either. That works just as well.

For others: all you have to be careful about is that the chains NEVER come loose, and that you NEVER go fast. Softly softly. Or you get some interesting wheel arch panel beating.

When you’re putting on tire chains, it’s always in the slush zone with wet snow to lie in and ice-cold water pouring through your collar as you lay on the ground wrestling with the tire chains.
Right on! I carry several large feed sacks for this. And overalls and gum boots.

Cheers