Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I was clicking around the announcements and this was a shock to me. Jared was a great guy and helped out a young, dumb me around 2007-2008.
I was in my first year at CWU and had a black 92 Pathfinder that I put all-terrains on so I thought I was a badass offroader. There were some great trails north of Ellensburg that I would frequent, and one particular outing I got stuck in super deep snow. I had to walk out about 5 miles with a friend (learned a lesson not to wheel with only one car!). I had no idea what to do. After some brainstorming I thought to look into local offroad forums, seeing if anyone around the area could help salvage it. I pleaded my case to some central Washington offroad forum, Jared responded and offered to help. Even though his pathfinder was way more built than mine, deep snow is nothing to mess with - luckily Jared had a backup plan.
He picked me up and we started off towards the mountains - got to know him a bit, cool laid back guy. We got to my car and luckily no one else had discovered it/messed with it, it had been sitting in a deep gully off of the trail for a good 2 weeks. Jared got stuck as well trying to get closer and attempt a tow, but didn't panic at all. He had been talking to someone on CB, a friend of his. He was giving updates on location and it turns out this friend of his was the actual planned rescue the whole time, he was in a trailered single-seat Toyota on 40" swampers - a fully built crawler. When the Toyota arrived Jared and I stood back in wonder as this thing tooled in and out of the gully with ease just to show how capable it was, then lined up to winch us both out.
Found some pictures on my old photobucket
Me stuck:
Jared stuck:
Rescue:
I'm sure they both thought I was a dumbass kid (which I was) but they were both super cool about it and helped me out immensely. My parents would have been pissed had they known. Afterwards I would wave any time I saw him driving the pathfinder around, unfortunately didn't keep in touch/hang out due to being different ages and cliques. I'll never forget the time he saved my ass though, taught me a love for offroading at the same time. RIP Jared!