This video is for the new guy, the people that have the lust in their veins to travel the country and see places that most Americans will never lay eyes on. And their method of transportation is going to be some sort of a four wheel drive vehicle that’s decked out with certain amenities to allow them to travel and sustain themselves for several days or maybe even months at a time. For instance, I’ve been on the road for almost nine months right now, and everything you’re going to see in this video I filmed myself, and I’m going to explain to you why one of the most important things you can put on your truck, besides tires, suspension, is a winch.

And I’m going to prove it to you, and I’m going to explain what can happen if you decide to not use a winch like so many other YouTube channels are suggesting. So sit back, relax, buckle up, because here we go. So about a week ago, a YouTube channel that I followed put out a video saying that you didn’t need a winch to go over landing. Now, before I even watched the video, I knew what the video was going to be about. It was going to be some guy from out west, western United States right off the bat, Nevada, Arizona, someplace like that, where they don’t have a lot of water, trees, life.

You know, they live in the desert. And for the most part, you can pretty much get away with not running a winch in the desert, but you’re a fool not to. Overlanding is amazing, and since the pandemic occurred, more people than ever before are outdoors getting away from everybody else. And usually there’s really easy trails to get to most places. But the longer you overland, the further you go. The longer you overland, the longer you stay out there, and the further you go. And the longer you stay out there, the chances of getting stuck are drastically going up.

That’s all I’m going to say. In just like with anything else, when you’re new at overlanding, you’re going to find yourself in sticky situations because you made a rookie mistake. It happens to us all. For instance, here’s me using my winch for some guys that made a rookie mistake. Okay, here’s one reason to have a Winch. I’m in southern Texas. These boys work for the state of texas. They’re at a rest stop where they work, and they literally sink their truck into mud that YoU couldn’t walk on. Imagine them having to ask a dude from massachusetts.

They waved me down and asked me if I could pull them out. Imagine how embarrassed they were having a city boy pulling them out in their own home state. But that’s just one example. You see what I mean? Let’s go to a little. Let’s go to an example that’s a little more wild. How about this? Now, this example is a little more wild. This is my 97 fzj 80 on 37 inch mud tires that I was testing to see if I could actually make it through a specific mud pile. And I had to use my winch that day and then every other extrication device that I had because the winch alone just couldn’t do it.

And I had a 16,500 pound red winch on THat truck, but it still needed SOme help. The winch alone wasn’t capable of pulling me out because the suction from the mud was holding the truck down. So I had to break out the max tracks, I had to use the hi lift Jack, and I had to use a shovel. But eventually I made my way out. Okay, so maybe you don’t care about the Texas park workers that were stuck in the mud and somebody else they can call a tow truck. Or maybe you’re thinking to yourself, I’m never going to get myself stuck.

Like he had that 80 series stuck in that huge open field. Field. Well, let me tell you something. Recently, I did three regular trails in Missouri, and every single solitary one of them, I ended up having to winch, which is unusual, because almost always I never have to winch. It’s a rare thing, but this one was just day after day after day, and it was literally the day after I saw the video saying, you don’t need a winch. So I found it really, really unusual, ironic. So let me show you these examples, because you could run on, run into these on any given trail in the United States at any given time.

If you’re truly out there over landing and not just parking in parking lots, I’m talking to you guys, you guys that are actually going to go find the trails, the trails that are worth seeing, because this country is totally amazing. I hooked up with Ronnie Dahl in 2019 at the Overland Expo, and he loved my truck. He loved my 80 series. And I said, I can’t wait to come to Australia. And he said, dude, you guys have it better than anybody else in the world. You can go from coast to coast, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and you can go from the mountains to the prairies to the deserts to the sea.

We don’t have that. So keep that in mind because it’s astonishing how many people haven’t seen what the United States has to offer and you should take a look at it while you’re still allowed. Just my opinion. And who, who am I to give advice like this? Well, how about this? When the mainstream media needs somebody to talk about activities and events that happen off road, they call me. Don’t believe me? Well, here you go. Disaster on this scary stretch of road, popular with tourists and known as one of the most dangerous in America. Now it has claimed new victims.

Two nurses and their tour guide driver killed after their jeep plunged over a cliff along Camp Byrd Road in the Colorado mountains. How dangerous and treacherous are the roads in this area? There’s a million unforeseen things. This haunting photo of a jubilant Diana robles was snapped shortly before the deadly crash. The 28 year old and her aunt, Ophelia Figueroa Perez, both dedicated nurses from Yuma, Arizona, were on a vacation, taking in the breathtaking scenery. Ami Robles is Diana’s grieving sister. Did you know they would be on such a treacherous road? I didn’t have any idea. Off roading expert Richard Comito has driven the dangerous stretch.

These are one lane twisting, curving roads carved into the side of a mountain with 100 to 1000 foot drops on either side, no guardrails. It is probably one of the scariest things you’ll ever do. So there you go. There’s some of my credentials. Unlike many youtubers. A, I’m not sponsored by any of the winch companies, so I’m not doing this for profit because I get paid every time you buy a winch. B, I’ve been doing this for over a decade. And when I say I’ve been doing this, I overland at least eight months out of the year, every year for the last decade and three, I’m telling you this because every time some new guy or girl goes over, landing unprepared, gets themself into a jam, it threatens the trail, meaning they love to shut trails down.

They love to take away off roading and or overlanding. And that’s why I make these videos, because I love the trails and rookie mistakes can get them closed down. You see what I’m saying? At any rate, here’s three examples three days in a row where if I didn’t have a winch, I would have had to call a helicopter or spend the night hoping somebody showed up. Because most places you get stuck, you don’t have cell phone service in my experience. So here we go. Let me show you why I needed a winch. And then I’m going to show you the winches you should probably get if you’re going to get one.

So I’m at. I’m in the Ozarks. I’m staying in the town of west plains. I’m hooking up with the guys over at Ozark overland outfitters, friends of mine, jason, Matt, and eric, and I’m waiting on some parts to show up for my truck. So while I’m doing that, I take out the old Gaia map, and I start looking up trails, and I start going hit to hit some regular old trails that I’ve run numerous times. No big deal. But bear in mind it’s been rather rainy, so the trails, lots of water crossings, etcetera, no big deal.

But these are trails I’ve run numerous times, and I’ve never had an issue except for the time I sunk the 80 series to the frame. But this time around, things went a little different, and it was just really strange that I had just the night before watched a video saying, you don’t need a winch to overland. And I strongly disagreed, and it was like God was just backing me up on that, I guess we’ll say. So it’s 09:00 in the morning. I go hit a trail that I’ve run at least 610 times previously, and the trail is a little bit sloppy because it was pouring rain.

It’s springtime, so there’s lots of mud, all sorts of mud all over the place, lots of water holes, etcetera. But I’m heading to a beachhead type thing, and there’s a river crossing, and I believe I’m following the track of Jason and Eric from Ozark overland outfitters because they ran this trail two nights prior. But I didn’t realize that they didn’t take the same exact route that I did. So I ended up crossing the river, which they didn’t do. Now, this trail was slicker than I had ever seen before. In the words of Jason Harris, it was slicker than snot, and I’m still believing I’m following their tracks from the night before.

And as you can see, there’s tracks right in front of me. So I set up a camera, I put it in four wheel drive, and I plan on heading up this, following these tracks right here. But as soon as I try to ascend this thing, I realize the truck won’t go straight. It keeps sliding off into a ditch on the passenger side. You can see the break in the grass right there. And I gave it a couple of shots and then eventually just said, this ain’t worth it. And I headed back over to the other side.

No big deal. Bunch of mud holes, bunch of cool crawls, this, that, and the other thing. But I didn’t think anything bad was going to happen because I had already gone through all the toughest stuff there was also, it appeared. So I’m rolling along here. I’ve already come in this way, so I know the trail. And I’ve done this trail a bunch of times. And everything is going really fine until this incline. You see this, how this is all sideways? I roll into this, and the truck simply slides all the way down. Doesn’t look as bad as it was, but it was bad.

And it was. At this point, I knew that if you fuck around, you’re gonna find out. And that was my first one for the day. Bam. Break out the winch. Now maybe you can, or maybe you can’t see how bad of a spot that I’m in. The truck doesn’t. The truck is sliding sideways like I’m on ice, even though I’m in four wheel front and rear locker are engaged. Not right this second. But I don’t engage my front locker unless my tires are pointing straight. I have a thing with that. Even though I’ve got rcv axles, I don’t want to snap them.

At any rate, it was like I was in an ice bowl. So, I mean, look at how she’s swimming around like this. No amount of shoveling or Max tracks was gonna help me out whatsoever at all. The only thing I could use was either another truck pulling me and I’m rolling solo, or a winch. Now, bear in mind, I don’t think I’ve used this winch ever. Ever. And on my 80 series, I probably used my winch four times in seven years. This time right here, it got me out in less than 15 minutes. That was with setting it up, tree saver and everything else.

And I had just driven down this road. So I did not see this coming whatsoever at all. But it was what it was. So let’s move on to later the same day. I’m gonna go run another trail that you’ve seen in numerous videos. Numerous videos. I’ve run this trail a million times. It’s not a big deal. I’ve never had to winch out here. Even when I was on the devil’s backbone, I didn’t have to winch. I’m going down a trail that I’ve run a dozen times, if not 20 times. And, well, you know what? I’ll let the video do the talking.

How’s that? Now, this trail I’ve done four separate times since I’ve been here just this month. So I know this trail really well. What could possibly go wrong at this point? This trail is basically just sightseeing for me, an opportunity to get good footage, doing really cool stuff in a pretty safe environment. Because I know this trail. I know the water levels, I know where trees are down, etcetera. I know this trail. I just cleared this trail the other day with a chainsaw. I know this trail. What could go wrong? It. So I’m getting ready to head back to the shop, and I’m taking the exit out of here, which is a pretty uneventful trail.

Couple of twisties, a little bit of bumps here and there, but no big deal. Nothing that’s going to stop anybody. You know what I mean? Easy peasy. I’ve done this trail a dozen times. Front tire is not touching the ground. The straps are actually holding it. She stuffed all the way in the back. She’s stuck. So this trail that I’ve done numerous times is no big deal, except I’ve never actually run it uphill. I always come down. Down. And I’m going in the opposite direction. And I put my front tire and my rear tire into two huge opposing ditches.

So if you can see from the camera, the truck is bouncing because my front tires aren’t touching the ground. I got her stuck on the easiest trail I could think of. But when I get out and look at it, the trail is really bad. But fortunately, I pulled out my winch, and in less than five minutes, I was out of there. It was crazy. My Dana 60, my 37s were stuffed all the way up into the fenders, and everything was maxed out. Without a winch, I would have been a shoveling all night. Mfer, for real. Now, this last one was the very next day, and it was an easy one, but without it, I would have absolutely trashed the front end of the truck.

So check this out. This is in glade top. Glade top is a nice piece of forest out in, I believe it’s southern Missouri. And I’ve been out here before, but I went out here during the springtime. My goal was to hit the Ozarks in the springtime when everything was coming back to life, when it was going to be rainy, so there’d be a lot of moisture, a lot of mud, a lot of water, and a lot of life. That’s what I was looking for. After spending the winter out in the California, Nevada, New Mexico, area. There wasn’t very much life around.

Glade top gives you a good place to stretch out your suspension. And check out all sorts of different trails. Plus, you can camp pretty much wherever you want within reason. And they don’t charge you anything. It’s an awesome place to go to, but you can get in trouble. There’s tons and tons of water crossings this time of the year. I’m sure in June and July they’ll start to dry up a bit. But as of right now, it’s awesome out there. And I definitely found some trails that were worth filming. So much so that I went back the second day.

Because the film I got the first day wasn’t good enough. Because trying to show you what we see. Standing on the dirt. Looking at the trucks. And getting that on film. Is super, super difficult. But I really tried. And at one point, something I thought I had no problem. 37 inch tires, 4.0 supercharged motor, King Springs and shocks all the way around. Dana, 60 in the rear. Dual transfer cases. And 488s on thirty seven s. I didn’t think I’d need to use my winch. But Glade top prove me wrong. It was just unbelievable. Because simply two nights before that, I saw a video where someone’s telling people.

You don’t need a winch. If you’re gonna try any of this stuff, you’re a fool not to bring a winch. The trails at Glade Top are. They’re awesome. There’s something for everybody. Basically, you can roll through there. And there’s incredibly tight trails. That don’t have a lot of traffic on them. As a matter of fact, I didn’t see anybody else out there at all. Both the days that I was out there. Except for a couple of side by side guys. But there is a lot of rock ledges to climb. There’s a lot of regular trails. With stream crossings.

And lots of vegetation, things of that nature. And lots and lots of water crossings. It all. These trails have a bypass, as you can see right here. But these ditches were just way too much fun. And it gave me a real good chance. To stretch out the suspension. And just make sure everything was up to snuff. Before I head to Colorado. Moab and the Rubicon with the forerunner. Being able to walk right through these gullies. Pretty much no problem at all. You’re basically straddling the gully. And then climbing over large rocks that are in the center.

It’s hard to see from this footage. But, I mean, I really tried my hardest to get this on film, I’m flying a drone in the woods. Do you know how hard that is to do? And I mean, seriously, what could possibly go wrong, right? You know what I’m saying? Yeah, the drone went down several times, but the drone definitely made out much better than my Gopros did. The last few days, my gopros have taken a beaten, as you may or may not have noticed in this particular video. It. Before we wrap this up and I show you where I had to actually winch myself out of danger, listen to this.

This was crazy, because when I got to glade top while I’m airing my tires down, I was positive that there was either a. An enormous electrical device of some sort running and humming, or there was a UFO. Listen to this and tell me if you can’t hear it. It’s insane. Never heard such a thing. Listen to the bugs. It sounds like there’s a UFO out there. I’ve never heard this in the Rockies. I’ve never heard this in Virginia. I’ve never heard it in California, Washington, New Mexico, Mexico, Texas. It’s just odd. Listen to that. So after running these trails down, I decided to go all the way to the bottom and try to do these all coming up, which.

These were gnarly trails. I don’t know if you can see how much the truck is rocking and rolling. And I have. I have a lot of suspension, a lot of clearance, and a lot of tire under that thing, not to mention a lot of gearing and a lot of horsepower. And I thought I was good to go, you know what I mean? What could possibly go wrong? The only downside is between the. On the trails, the trees are rather tight. The trees are very close by, much like every place else in the Ozarks and in the northeast, in Virginia, etcetera, etcetera.

A couple of places I’d get a little bit stuck. Nothing to write home about. No big deal. Back it up, throw it in four wheel low, low, and roll over it. And now we are in four wheel low. After dumping the drone one more time, I reset it, set up the drone in tripod mode, and was just going to weaved through these couple of trees, and I was home free, baby. No big deal. Nothing to see here, folks. Keep it moving. Here we go. After the short commercial break. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. When you’re driving and setting up two and three, four cameras, it gets ugly.

So a tree root hooks my back tire. And if you notice, the driver side rear tire has fallen into a ditch. This is almost identical to what happened to me at the other location. So back it up a little bit, give her a little skinny pedal, and apply the proverbial berries, and surely she’ll pop right out. And she did. Now the four tires are stuck in two ditches, and I can’t turn the truck. The transmission is under exter extreme strain. Trying to back up in low while on an incline. While in a ditch with the brakes on.

It’s starting to get zesty here. You see what I’m saying? So, for the third time in two days, I had to get out, pull my winch cable all the way out to a tree, which fortunately, wasn’t all that far away. And what I did was backed her up so that the front tires hung in the air because the Dana 60 and the rear tires are now in a ditch. And when it was in the air, I used the winch to pull me away from the tree because I couldn’t back up or I’d hit the tree, and I couldn’t go forward because I would hit the tree.

So, fortunately, the winch helped me. I wasn’t stuck as so much as I was pinned. Do you see what I’m saying? And fortunately, I recognized that before I smashed one of my headlights or bent a fender or anything to that effect. So the winch didn’t actually recover me. It just moved me like a chess piece on a really shitty board. Do you see what I’m saying? And sadly, because of the pickle that I was in, I only had one camera set up for this because stress makes it hard to record. And the best things you want to record is when you’re under a lot of stress.

She was giving me a hard time. She didn’t want to go easy. This thing was stuck for real in a serious ditch. If you ever go there, then you’ll understand. The road is right there to the right. The road is the thing that I’m not on. The ditch is the thing that I’m pulling out of right now, awesomely enough. Okay, so. So now that I’ve shown you how many times I needed to use a winch in just two days, not to mention the last video that I did that we started off winching for 3 hours. Sometimes you never use your winch.

Sometimes you don’t stop using your winch. And if you’re going to get a winch, don’t go to harbor freight and buy one of those crappy hencho in China steel cabled abominations, okay? Because here’s the deal. A winch isn’t something that you skimp on. This isn’t where you try to save money. If you’re using a winch, your ass is on that line. No pun intended. The last thing you want to do is use something made by a poor little five year old in China with an AK 47 to their head. When you can go right over to warn and get a Zeon eight that’s made by a 15 year old Chinaman with a 14 with an AK 47 to his head, they hold them to a higher standard.

You see what I mean? Get one and then get yourself some synthetic cable. Or get the warn Xeon S. I have no affiliation to warn. I happen to run this particular winch because it fit my application. You can go right on here. They’ll tell you what size you need to get for your particular vehicle. Yep, they’re 1200 bucks. Buy once, cry once. But if you really want to buy something that lasts forever. This is what I ran on my eighties series because she was such a heavy truck. This is made from one block of billet aluminum and they make a winch out of it.

It’s not only a work of art, but it is the most hardcore winch you can possibly get. It has an air brake on it that ties into your compressor. These are no joking around. And you can take out the planetary gears and make your winch larger just by taking out the gears and putting in bigger ones. 16,500 pounds. That laughs at this little worn winch right here. And this is made in Britain. Not by poor people with guns to their heads. Do you see what I’m saying? This is the best winch that money can buy. I think I pay like 2200 for mine.

And if I could gold plate it and wear it around my neck I would have. Do you see what I’m saying? But you don’t want to harbor freight. Don’t listen to the ass clowns that go four wheeling once in a while and they bring their four wheeler on a trailer. If you’re an overlander and you plan on exploring trails and you think you might get stuck, especially if you’re solo, make sure you’ve got your recovery gear in check because I always do. Remember the time I was stuck at the top of NORAD with two little kids, 280 series.

And I was the only one that had recovery gear that got us down. Yeah, that happens. So be that guy when it comes to safety. Be safe. At any rate, if you enjoyed this video, make sure you hit that like share and subscribe leave a comment below and I will return the favor. But also, next to the subscribe button, click the little bell so you’re notified. Because unless you’re talking about LGBTQ and giving illegals free things, YouTube does not promote the creators that helped build their platform because they’re all part of the machine. At any rate, I’m out.
[tr:tra].

See more of JailBreak Overlander on their Public Channel and the MPN JailBreak Overlander channel.