Colorado 4x4 Rescue and Recovery - Rolled Xterra - Warden Gulch (Keystone, CO)

Sunday October 4th two teams spent the day at the very end of Warden Gulch Trail east of Keystone recovering a Xterra that rolled approximately 6 times off the trail. This was an extremely complicated pull. Due to the steep terrain and instability of the shelf road above the vehicle, the safest route to winch was just over 150 yards north to a wide stable flat spot. While we prefer to always stay on the trail, safety had to preside on this one and we took a handful of vehicles approximately 100 feet off trail to minimize further risk of injury to any of the team members. Team 1 arrived first and began assessing the pull, reseating beads on the driver side tires, and working to pull the vehicle down the boulder field and back up the final hill to the trail. Once up the hill, Team 2 took over rigging the vehicle for transport down to pavement where a tow truck could be arranged by the vehicle owner. This operation was just shy of 12,000 feet in elevation, and took 8 solid hours of rigging lines and winching to get it on the trail, as well as an additional 90 minutes to dead tow it off the mountain. Outstanding teamwork by both teams pushing through an extremely tiring day at elevation to make this a success!