Recently I managed to get myself bogged on
the beach while solo and after letting tyres down to 12psi and digging with a small shovel for an hour in hot weather, I had to send SWMBO to ask a local fisherman for help to get out. As I never wanted to get caught like this again, the first thing I purchased was a long handled shovel and then a set of Maxtrax. While I knew the long handled shovel would work (with a lot of sweat!), the Maxtrax purchase was more a leap of untested faith.
Now as "luck" would have it, my BIL kindly managed to get himself stuck on a recent trip down to the south of WA. On a particularly soft section of beach sand, he ground to a halt. After letting his tyres down to 14 psi and with a token amount of digging, he was still going nowhere. Normally this is where the snatch strap would come out, but this particular bogging had a side slope between me on the "high" road and him on the "low" road and it wouldn't be the easiest snatch recovery. Besides, I had a new set of Maxtrax to
test :)
Out with the Maxtrax and after using them a shovel for a few minutes to clear sand under all tyres (as per the instructions), it was a simple matter to put them under the front wheels. And here is the video of the Maxtrax easily extracting the bogged GU.
What the video doesn't really show is just how soft the sand is. The GU only managed another ~50 meters up
the beach before it was bogged again, see how it crabs once it became mobile. Any beach that gets you bogged when at 14psi is a
soft beach! But a simple repeat using the Maxtrax and the GU found firmer ground this time around.
Maxtrax in second recovery - LHS in process of spearing under the sand
The hardest part of the second recovery was finding the Maxtrax!!! They had managed to spear themselves down over a foot deep - it was comical looking at two grown men looking firstly under the vehicle to see if they had got stuck and then digging in the sand trying to find them. No wonder the instructions recommend tying a bit of rope on them. if you look closely at the start of the video you will see the LHS one spearing deep into the sand.
So, while Maxtrax are not the be all and end all of recovery equipment, it is a great tool to add to the arsenal. When I was looking at buying the Maxtrax, I was skeptical of their advertising and couldn't find an unbiased video of them in action. Now while I haven't used them under all conditions, I bought them to get me out of soft sand when solo and I am now very happy they can comfortably do that job. The Maxtrax now live in my vehicle behind the cargo barrier - they fit nicely into the curve of the barrier and fill the void that is normally not used.
While there are bound to be other similar alternatives to the Maxtrax, most likely at a cheaper price, I reckon they are a product that actually meets its advertising claims. And I would have paid almost any price for a set the day I was stuck solo.
Cheers
Captain
PS. the usual disclaimer, no affiliation to Maxtrax, just a satisfied customer.