Chaos, Rains Supreme - Part 3

Remember, this is a journal entry. You have to read the first two entries to make any sense of today's continuation. I suggest you also read this archived story The Deadly Nature of the Creek Rising to appreciate the implications before reading this new installment. Today's photo is another view of that earlier incident.
Click on image to enlarge

So .... Saturday morning, we both get up at dawn to make our exploratory trip down to the crossing. Mark heads out in the big Ram and I follow in my Dakota. The Virgil Catcher wash was pleasantly passable for a change but the Roller Coaster (a series of five or six small rolling hills in succession) now had a deep keyway etched into the bottom of each conjunction. I like to drop into these at a diagonal to keep from banging the Dakota's plastic chin head on but I still cringe in the process. The rest of the road had definitely seen more erosive abuse from the last few downpours and the run-off crevices were showing off the thirty foot drop to the creek even more boldly now as we squeaked by, tight up against the solid rock wall beside us. Over my right shoulder, I could already see far more running water in the creek than I would be comfortable crossing. We were both able to skirt around a two foot tall boulder which had washed down from the canyon wall before we headed into the traditionally boggy patches before the long sandy run down to the creek.

Remembering that the road was never wide enough to turn around down by the creek and wanting to avoid the neck and spine pain of driving in reverse as much as possible, I decided to park at the top of the sand run. That would leave only about a quarter of a mile to navigate the twisties in reverse. Mark obviously didn't mind backing up the extra eighth of a mile since he had already dropped down and disappeared around the corner. As I got out of the truck, I heard the rush of the creek. Then I heard a roar of a big Diesel ... once ... then one more time ... and then silence. Nooooo, he didn't. No, please say he didn't.

My rubber boots beat their way through the deep and damp sand. I rounded the corner and then my knees screamed at the over-the-lock agony as I scrubbed off inertia in a sudden broken gait of despair. I dropped to my knees and let my open palms slam into the grit, too discouraged to even make fists as I looked across the creek. I lowered my head to join my hands as my heart pounded furiously and unevenly. For only a moment, I wanted to scoop out the sand and bury my head completely as though it would banish not just this but all the previous disasters of the past week.

The remembrance of an old off color joke suddenly had me realize that having my buttocks sticking out of the ground unguarded was not a solution. I am not sure if being able to remember thousands of punch lines is generally a blessing but it did help spur me into constructive action now.

I stood up and surveyed the scene with resignation. There was the Ram, sitting at a diagonal to the far shore. The left front wheel had made it up onto solid ground and the poor beast looked like a ship wreck victim with one hand desperately latched on to a life boat. The right front wheel was mired in the mud half way up the bank and the rear wheels were immersed in the raging liquid sand and the muddy waters were coursing over the rear bumper. How long before the undermining waters dragged even the solidly placed wheel off the bank and consumed the truck? How long did we have to plan and execute a rescue?

To be continued in a day or two