AIRY SITUATION

PETER Larsen and his mate were at Cape Flattery in Far North Queensland on the top of a sand dune, in pursuit of a great fishing spot they’d heard about at the south end of the beach. They’d dropped the tyre pressures – as you should always do when driving on sand – but, as they were carrying a fair bit of load, they didn’t want to air down too much.

“We really under-estimated how soft the sand was,” Peter told 4X4 Australia. “My mate was in the lead with a quad bike on his ute and too much weight and too much air in tyres; he got stuck first and I tried to go around him to pull him out, but as soon as I got off the old tyre tracks, I went down to the belly. ”

They unloaded all of the gear from the vehicles and managed to dig Peter’s mate’s ute free, but Peter’s fairly stock BT-50 on 265x70/16 BFGS was a bit harder to extract.

“I aired my tyres down to about 10psi, but I was already on the belly pan. But with a bit of a pull with a snatch strap, we got my ute out as well,” said Peter.

Not surprisingly, they gave up on fishing at this point and spent the rest of the day lugging the gear to a relatively firm track, which took a little bit at a time.

“Air down early if you are going in to soft sand, and know what you are getting in to – walk the track a decent distance before heading in to the unknown,” said Peter, when asked what advice he’d give to fellow travellers.

PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Larsen