When Scott Fields offered us the opportunity to head down to the Uwharrie Off-Road Training Center (UORTC) to attend their 4WD-202 Class, we cleared our calendars and headed south to beautiful Uwharrie, North Carolina.
UORTC’s 4WD-202 is an in-depth and hands-on class that further expands on all of the lessons taught in their introductory 4WD-101 class. They cover everything from Rollover Recovery to Field Expedient Repair, and there’s a lesson that involves pantyhose somewhere in between.
We started the day with a safety brief at UORTC’s military training facility. This training facility contains dozens of hand cut trails that have been specifically designed to test your driving abilities, and intentionally put you into positions that force a recovery.
After the detailed safety brief we were all escorted up a hill where we found a Dodge Durango that had been flipped on it’s side. Just to give you an idea of how hands on this class is, in the first 30 minutes of the day the instructors gave us some pointers, and then turned us loose to safely recover a rolled SUV. Needless to say they spent a lot of time correcting our technique and setups while giving us gentle pushes into the right direction.
During this whole process they laid out 3 main points that we were constantly reminded of throughout the day, Personal Preservation, Environmental Preservation, and Vehicle Preservation. These 3 guidelines are the core of all of their training, and it’s reflected in everything that is taught. If your idea of recovering a rolled vehicle is hooking up a strap and hitting the skinny pedal of your Jeep, you’re in the wrong place (but you definitely need some help…).
The most informative part of the day for myself was the Hi-Lift training. Mike, Ron, and Scott are big fans of the Hi-Lift, and if you told them they could have a tow truck or a Hi-Lift they would probably take that jack every time. They demonstrated how to use it safely for jacking but also for how to turn it into a come-along and tire mounter (starter fluid may be required to set the bead).
It really was an eye opening experience for me, I had always considered the Hi-Lift to be for guys that didn’t have a winch or for someone looking for a quick trip to the hospital. Lo-and-behold with proper technique, it’s really the Swiss Army Knife of off road recovery tools.
I could go on for days on the merits of the Hi-Lift but we’re not even 25% of the way through the class, so stay tuned for Part 2!
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