01/20/2022
Sometimes, we get the opportunities to do appraisal work far away from anything. Yesterday was one of those days that turned sideways in a quick hurry. I Rhett, got on the road early yesterday morning and headed for the west desert to a property on the Utah/Nevada border about 38 miles down dirt roads to the property.
I was cruising right along nicely right until mile 20.3 when the road I was on that was snow packed but unknown to me had drifted the whole road in gave way and I was stuck 20 miles from my truck with absolutely no cell service.
I dug for about 1.5 hours and got the rzr back up on top of the snow just for it to sink after 2 or 3 feet ag*in, at that point I started doing the math in my head on how long it would take me to get back to my truck and decided I didn't want to be out in the cold dark empty desert for longer than I had to be so I gathered up some water and supplies and started heading for my pickup.
This is when it got crazy; a helicopter flew over head and saw me circled a few times and landed. The guy was super nice, took down my wife's number, and let me type out a text that he promised to send when he got service and told me he would radio his BLM counterpart to come and pick me up so I started walking out, at about mile 6 I got a sliver of service and got a call out and let my wife know I was stuck and walking towards the truck and she said she would load up and come pick me up and get me to the truck I started walking ag*in and around mile 6.5 I ran into the helicopter support crew and the offered to give me a ride to my truck.
After I made it home, my brother-in-law offered to run back out there in his built truck to retrieve my machine and equipment which went awesome his truck got us right to where we needed to be and whinched the rzr out in no time. Big thanks to him!
So what was supposed to be a quick trip out and back turned into two trips out and back with a long hike in between and getting home at 12:15 AM
Stay safe out there!
-Rhett
