Transversing the unique terrain the Pine Barrens has to offer in a vehicle.
The Pine Barrens Preserve of New Jersey has alot to offer from its extremeley rare eco-system to historical monuments to aweing views of scenery. There are many ways to observe all of this being hiking, canoeing, horseback, mountain biking or the most popular by vehicle. Using a vehicle to travel the hundreds if not thousands of miles of trails that the "pines" has to offer, can be handled by vehicles from stock cars to trucks to specially equipped vehicles built just for the unique terrain. This can be done with a little insight along with the most important role of common sense. The terrain for the most part consists of hard packed unimproved dirt/gravel roads that can be handled by pretty much any vehicle as long as the driver is aware of a few bumps here and there. However sometimes to get to the unique spots out there you will encounter poor road conditions ranging from sugar sand similar to beach, water crossings and mud puddles. This write up is for those who may be less experieneced in pushing their vehicles to their limits and making your exploration alot more safer and enjoyable without the help of a recovery truck from getting stuck. Those who are more experienced may also find this to be a useful reminder or even point out a few things that you didn't know. So sit back put on your reading glasses and prepare yourself to enjoy the back roads of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
Respect your surroundings!!! We all want our children to witness the beauty of the pines just as we do. driving over plants and blazing your own trails will not preserve the land and will get you a pretty hefty fine. In short just stay on the trails that exist and pay attention to all signage that is out there. There are some spots that are specifically off limits to motor vehicle use and those spots are posted as so. Tread Lightly. Don't go into a puddle and purposley rut it out sdo the next guy can't make it through. Not everyone has Thousands of dollars to specially equip their vehicle for deep ruts, nor is this an off road park. The trails are their for transportation from point A to point B however sometimes you may end up getting stuck, this is expected. take out what you take in, if you want to see trash or enjoy throwing trash please explore the trails of Camden City. If you see a spot that you really like and would like to come back, spray painting trees is not the way to due it. Todays space age technology offers GPS with way points just for this. If you are not a techy type person there's always the old paper and pen method as well. Now that you have been reminded on respect, lets start moving onto different types of terrain.
Sand: "Sugar Sand" is the most common difficult terrain that you will find. Some areas are probably worse than driving on the beach. You should be able to pick out a sandy area before getting to it, because it will look like a beach that has had a bunch of people driving on it. The more people drive through it the deeper the ruts will get. This is where you "straddle the ruts" by putting on side of your vehicle off to the side and the other between the two ruts. I prefer to put my passenger side inbetween the ruts and the drivers side close to the road side. This will allow you to hang your head out the window and observe whats going on with your tires.
With a 4x4 vehicle , put the vehicle in 4x4 low range (if applicable) and second gear BEFORE you get into the sand. If you go in 2 wheel drive chances are you are just going to rut it up for the next guy. Being in 4lo and second gear should give you the momentum to keep going but the grunt to keep your RPMs high. This should take you to the other side. Rememebr to keep your momentum up, don't stop, and stay steady on the throttle. If for some reason you do go in using two wheel drive and your vehicle does come to a stop, you will then engage 4x4 Low range, but do not go forward, go backwards. The only time I have seen 4x4s stuck in the sand is because of this move. if your back end gets stuck and you put it in 4x4 and try to go forwards, most of the time your front end will start to sink as well. If you put it in reverse and back up a foot, it will usually get you out with no problem. At this point you should be able to start forward progression again with a small bump from the ruts you created with your back tires. If you are straddling ruts and fall into them keep your momentum up. Do not stop, you may not start going forwards again, you may start going down. try to get yourself back out of the ryts but only for a split second. If you continue to steer trying to get out of the ruts, you may start a plowing effect causing your vehicle to get stuck.
In a 2wd vehicle, please keep in mind front wheel drive is better at pulling your vehicle through sand than rear wheel drive is at pushing your car through the sand. Once you come to a snady spot. Stop and evaluate the area before your tires get into the soft spot. Are you looking at a 50 foot section of road or are you looking at a 1/4 mile of road that is sandy? Are you comfortable trying to get across the whole 1/4 mile? If you get stuck an 1/8 of a mile into the 1/4 mile will you be able to get yourself out of what you already made it through? Alright, you decide, "hey my minivan can make this". First thing to do, is pick a line that you want to transverse. Ideally you want to be out of the ruts and the smoothest avaible line. Take out your air gauge and get your tires down to about 15 PSI, this will widen the foot print of the tires and keep your vehicle more afloat rather than skinny hard tires cutting down into the sand. At this point you will want to get some running room. You do not want to go slow in the sand. You have to keep your momentum up if you want to make it through. Keep in mind though that sand can take your vehicle places you don't intend for it to go, so be prepared to correct for this and keep saftey in mind. If all goes well you will be on the other side of your sandy obstacle probably with a little adrenalin. If all does not go well it may take some work to get through there. DO NOT STOP!!!!!. If you stop in the sand chances are you won't get out of your obstacle. If you are to fall into the ruts that you were straddling, try real quickly to steer back out of them. Don't do this to long nor oversteer, this can cause a plowing effect that will get you stuck. One thing to try if you are in a front wheel drive vehicle is to quickly turn your steering wheel from side to side while staying on the gas. What this does, is sometimes the sides of the tires will start riding up the walls of the ruts lifting your vehicle up so the undercarrige doesn't high center. Hopefully at this point you will be coming out the other side of your obstacle and your adreneline will be alot higher than usual. Now if you didn't make it and you became bogged down, STOP don't dig yourself in by excessive wheel spin. Refer to recovery section.
Mud/Water: Navigating through mud within the pines is different compared to a buddies property. Care for the terrain has to be taken into consideration. A mjority of the mud within the pines is nothing more than wet sand. If you found some ofd the real gooey stuff, chances are you are in an area you shouldn't be with a vehicle. 4x4 or 2wd you have to approach mud very similar to sand. Usually there is a set of ruts in most puddles that are the size of a vehicle. Object is to straddle these. To find them all you have to do is look at the shape of the puddle, if there are two sections of the puddle that stick out longer,then chances are these are your ruts. you want to place one of your two sides of your vehicle inbetween(preferrably passenger side). Always try to keep an eye on your front drivers side while inching into the puddle to keep an eye on depth. Another way is to probe around with a stick. Feel where the deep spots are and keep your tires out of them. Also feel the bottom. Is it mushy/slippery or is it pretty hard packed?Two things to keep in mind. Know your lowest level of clearance on your vehicle and know where your air intake is for your motor. Water does not compress (Hydrolocking). This can kill your motor. As for knowing minimal ground clearance, keep it away from the ground. Placing your tires on higher places will lift that low area of your vehicle up and over higher parts of terrain. Now you know your line of progression, it is time to know how you will hit the puddle. Going too fast may push water into your intake since when a vehicle hits water it forms a wall of water. You still want to keep momentum going though. If you are dealing with a soft sand bottom, you don't want to spin your tires at all, because your ground (which equals traction) will go away and you'll quickly be high centered. If there is a slipperry mud it may cause the voids of your tires to clog up. in order to get the mud off of the tires you usually have to spin them to clean the tread. Try not to spin too much for you will just dig ruts. A tire gets most traction just after a fresh spin of cleaning the tread and when you back off the throttle. Anotyher thing to keep in mind with water crossings is even if you can see the bottom and it ap[pears to be hard sand, sometimes there's 3 feet of the thick gooey stuff underneath of that. Now lets say you have came across a puddle where you think you'd be able to make it through but the water level is just too high and youre afraid of a hydrolock however you really want to get to the other side. This is where most people will look at me funny. Do it in reverse, this will push the water with the rear of your vehicle clearing the water for the fron t of your vehicle to get through, therefore lessoning the chance of hydrolocking your motor. The only thing I can specifically say about 4x4s and mud, is that obviously with more tires pulling and pushing the greater the ability will be and also if you do go into it in 2 wheel drive then put it in 4x4 back up, don't go forwards. You will dig your front end down.
If you are to get stuck: If you get stuck, always try backing out of the area you are stuck in, gradually get into the throttle to try to reduce abrupt spinning of the tires to avoid digging deeper. Some times you'll move backwards a few feet, then go forwards again without spinning the tires, keep doing this and you might get out. Another option, is to take floor mats or a peice of carpet or wood and put it where your tires are stopping when progressing forwards. This will give added traction. Once ontop of your tractyion device, take your other set of floormats or traction devices and place them directly in front of the tires. Hopefully at this point you can get moving again.
Now lets say your vehicle is not moving at all,or maybe not enough to add any traction gaining devices. At this point it is time to find the sweet spot within your vehicle,. What you do is leave your vehicle in drive and start blurping the throttle a little bit, just enough to get the vehicle to move but not really spoinning the tires. If you find the squence you can keep doing this and actually maybe get 6" further than what you where. At this point try backing up 7" without spinning the tires, then do the same throttle action that you just did in a foward gear. if you keep doing this you might have cleared enough area to get a ruinning start or to add traction adding devices.
Alright all else has failed and you are not moving no matter what. It is now time to explore your strategic alternatives
. Hopefully you have a cell phone. Verizon gets service in most areas of the pines, I can't speak for others. If you have a phone, hopefully you have a list of people that will come pull you out Now if you are not one to bother your freinds or you are one to go out at odd times of the day, you should probably carry a few tools to help yourself get unstuck. First the most common is a good jack to jack your vehicle up. Not the stupid one that came with your vehicle, it will just get in your way. You will also need a 1" thick peice of ply wood, this will spread the weight of the vehicle when jacking, if you don't have something to spread the weight, your jack will just sink. Once you jack your vehicle up, fill in the ruts with either small logs or any other solid hunks of whatever you may find. smooth out the surface infront and behind your tires so it will be easy to get out. let your vehicle down on your traction proving devices and wahlah!!!! you are no longer stuck. However if you just decide to drive off your manmade solid ground you will soon be stuck again. What I suggest is to pick out your route again. Are you going forwards? If so, take your floor mats or spare peice of carpet and put them infront of your powered tires, these will give you traction along with your manmade solid ground and hopefully givwe you enough running room to get started again. Be careful not to be too abusive on the gas pedal or you will spit the stuff out that you just put under your tires. Second tool would be a come a long. this is a hand winch that can be bought at most tool carrying stores. Buy the heaviest rated one that is available. Also get a 20 foot length of 3/8 good quality chain with hooks on both ends. and a strap with loops at the end about 1/4" thick 3" wide and 8' long. Make sure this is not a "snatch strap". What you do is find a tree in front of you that is pretty wide and will take quite a pull. wrap your strap around the tree and take the hook of the come along (stationary) and hook it to the two loops. Next you extend the cable out to reach a solid hooking point on your vehicle, if you can't reach your vehicle, this is where the length oif chain comes in handy as a cable lengthener. Take an old shirt or shoe and put it on the center of the cable to put some weight on it. While ratcheting in the cable it will become super tight, to wear you will be fighting the handle. At this point get into your vehicle, put in a forward gear and proceed with the gas pedal, only giving enough gas to allow the vehicle to move forwards. DON'T LET THE TIRES SPIN. At this point do it again, and keep doing this tioll you get to a solid area. You can also use your floor mats once again for traction. It is also handy to have a "snatch strap" with you. They are usually 20-30 feet long three inches wide and about a 1/4" inch or more thick. They have the ability to stretch causing a bungee effect when another vehicle tugs on you, usually resulting you coming out of your ruts and back on your way. If you have your own strap most people will try to give you a tug that you encounter. (I will go over saftey of "snatch straps" later on). Also a elecric winch is a great addition but I will get into that under the "modifications" section.
Part II for tommorrow.
Do you go out looking for scaley and slimey stuff anymore?