Oops! Wayward Trucker Gets Stuck Attempting Shortcut Through Wyoming's Big Horn Mountains

An 18-wheeler got jacked up on a scraggly dirt road high up in the national forest of the Big Horn Mountains in northern Wyoming. The trucker said he was following his GPS.

JN
Jake Nichols

May 16, 20235 min read

Experts Towing handles a tricky extraction in Crazy Woman Canyon in this composite image showing the stuck truck from opposite angles. It wasn't their first, nor last.
Experts Towing handles a tricky extraction in Crazy Woman Canyon in this composite image showing the stuck truck from opposite angles. It wasn't their first, nor last. (Composite Photo Courtesy Experts Towing)

When the call came into dispatch Monday afternoon, Johnson County Sheriff Rod Odenbach said he had one initial thought: “Again?”

Law enforcement alerted the Powder River Ranger District of the Bighorn National Forest that it had a semitrailer stuck up Crazy Woman Canyon Road. The Forest Service issued the standard “road closed” notice.

Experts Towing was called to assist.

“Again?” Paxton Weber said, echoing the sheriff’s reaction, before dispatching Wes to come with him. It’s a two-man job.

GPS (General Pickle Situation)

“His GPS took him that way,” Sheriff Odenbach said. “Despite an abundance of signs stating no commercial traffic and one-lane road ahead, he traveled on until the point of no return.”

Odenbach said it wasn’t the first time and likely not the last his office has responded to wayward truckers shoved so far up the narrow canyon they couldn’t proceed any further and could not back out.

The problem is some people put way too much trust in mapping software and not enough in common sense.

“This happens to us a lot, whether it’s Slip Road out of Kaycee or Crazy Woman. We’ve tried to bring it to someone’s attention, but you can't ever get a person,” Odenbach said. “Road and Bridge [Department] made a spectacular sign there at the mouth of the canyon for all the good it did.”

Google Maps suggests two shortcut options for this route from Kaycee to Ten Sleep. (Note, this doesn't apply to 18-wheelers.)
Google Maps suggests two shortcut options for this route from Kaycee to Ten Sleep. (Note, this doesn't apply to 18-wheelers.) (Google)

SOS (Save Our Shipment)

When big rigs get stuck, Experts Towing often gets the call. Weber and his team can handle just about any sticky situation, even those involving 18-wheelers jacked up on a scraggly dirt road in a national forest.

“We’ve been in there quite a few times,” Weber admitted. “This one wasn’t too bad. The driver had unhooked from his trailer and left it there.”

Driving his bobtail, Weber arrived on scene from the north using Highway 16. His partner Wes came at the stuck trailer from the east, the same way the trucker was headed.

Making some of the tight corners in the canyon with a long trailer requires both a tower and someone attached to the other end to act as a “tillerman,” swinging the end of the load clear on each turn.

In this case, Wes hooked onto the tail end of the trailer and pulled it eastward back out the canyon as Paxton — attached to the trailer bed using the fifth-wheel mount — skillfully backed out with him.

Not their first rodeo.

AI (Another Idiot)

The lack of local knowledge is clearly at the heart of trucks getting stuck on Crazy Woman or Slip Road.

Pretty much every Buffalo resident who has ever headed out for an afternoon of rock climbing over Ten Sleep way knows the drill. There are days when even four-wheel drive isn’t going to cut it.

Then there’s technology.

Mankind’s advancement into the digital age was supposed to relieve us from all that pesky business of thinking so we concentrate on our books-on-tape stories while commandeering 40-ton vehicles down the road.

The problem with software mapping is it can tell you where you are, not necessarily how you are — as in FUBAR.

A path through the Bighorn Mountains makes a tempting cutoff when looking to go from, say, Kaycee to Ten Sleep.

Cowboy State asked Google Maps how to do it and, sure enough, it recommended the two afore-mentioned, less-than-ideal options for anyone driving a vehicle longer than a school bus. Or anyone driving in January. Or anyone driving after a hard rain. Or ... just drive around, already!

This sign makes appear as if a paved and trusted highway (U.S. 16) awaits if only the next 5 miles can be navigated. Does this look like an inviting road for a semi?
This sign makes appear as if a paved and trusted highway (U.S. 16) awaits if only the next 5 miles can be navigated. Does this look like an inviting road for a semi? (Via Pinterest)

COD (Cash On Dilemma)

“He’ll be issued a citation. Maybe property damage if he scraped the bridges that were just worked on last fall,” Odenbach said of the unidentified truck driver. “This will end up costing him or his company, and it is a lot of wasted resources for us. It takes almost a whole day to deal with these.”

Tow drivers said there appeared to be a little bit of damage to a guardrail and the trailer bed. The driver was apparently trying to get from Casper to Worland without having to drive north all the way to Buffalo. He got to visit Buffalo anyway.

“They put them signs up a few years back and that has cut down on the incidents some,” Weber said. “Still, there’s that 5-mile stretch where everyone gets stuck.”

A headache for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office is the sweet sound of a ringing cash register at Experts Towing. Mother Nature formed the mountains and canyons eons ago. Like a Venus flytrap, wreckers have nothing to do but wait patiently for their next customer.

Jake Nichols can be reached at: Jake@CowboyStateDaily.com

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Jake Nichols

Features Reporter