Before we got to our campground last night, there were lights flashing near the entrance of the canyon about some kind of a weather warning and possibly pass closure– something like that, at least.
When we woke up in the morning, after getting ready for the day, when we pulled out of the road that leads to the campground to get back on the highway to go up the pass, the gate was closed with the lights flashing.
The past had closed at 6:00 a.m. because of winter storm was moving in.
😬
I looked at the map to see what it would take to get to where we were going, our next stops being devil’s Tower, the crazy horse monument, Mount Rushmore, and Jewel cave, before heading to my sister’s in Hot springs.
The short story is that it was going to be a very significant detour. Multiple hours retracing our steps, only to turn around and go east again.
As I was looking at the map, though, I noticed that there was a road that ran somewhat parallel to the highway that went just about to the top of the pass before reconnecting with highway 16.
I thought about giving that road a try, wondering if maybe we might be able to bypass the blocked highway by taking that road and coming out on highway 16 further up.
My interest in taking that route turned into a full-blown decision to choose that route when I watched a male carrier SUV fly by us on to the campground road that turned into that road that paralleled the highway.
So I flipped the van around and tried to chase after the mail carrier vehicle in an effort to find a way through the pass that wasn’t closed to us.
We passed the mail carrier SUV delivering mail to ranger station, or something like that. And I just kept following the road, which was a dirt road, winding its way up the side of the mountain and east across the path.
As we were driving, I started catching faint whiffs of coolant. I asked my mom if she smelled it as well, and she said she did. So I pulled the van to a stop, and steam came billowing out the front of the van.
Did I mention it was wet and rainy?
😅
So there we were, perched on a dirt road, on the hillside above the main road and far far far from any help.
With zero reception. 😅
Being wet outside, and extremely cold, and having no way of warming ourselves up other than to put on more clothes, I had to make sure that I kept the clothes that I was wearing dry. So I took off All my warm clothes and went outside in just a pair of shorts and nothing else, popped the hood, and tried to find the coolant leak.
We knew that the water pump had been leaking just a tiny bit, so that seemed like it could be the cause, but when I saw where all the coolant was, high up in the engine bay, puddled on top of the AC evaporator housing, I realized it had to be something else.
I crawled underneath the van, my bare skin against the wet, muddy, cold rocks of the dirt road.
But I couldn’t pinpoint any leak down there. With the coolant having squirted way high, I figured the leak had to be from the top. Either a split radiator, or a split hose or something.
Eventually, I blew into the radiator to see if I could force the leak out, and it did squirt out, but because my face was down, I couldn’t see where it came out of. So I asked my mom to come out into the nasty weather to see if she could see where the coolant was coming out while I blew into the radiator. So I did it again, and she was able to point me to exactly where the leak was coming out.
Yay for teamwork!
What it turned out to be was the tee pipe that splits off to one of the heater hoses into the heater core, but also goes back into the engine.
My brain searched for possible ways that I could Jimmy rig a fix. There had to be some way. The tee had just split, the top end somehow breaking as though somebody had forced it into a position and split the top from the rest of it. It was a really weird break, as They go on plastic coolant parts.
But it’s what we were dealing with. I tried to come up with ways to manufacture a tee pipe out of other parts on the van or things we had with us, but there was nothing.
I figured my best option was going to be to try and compress the cracked part back together and hold it back together at least enough to hold in enough coolant for us to get back to civilization.
I had thought that I had put some clamps in one of my tool bags when we were leaving Utah, so I searched through all my bags, but I couldn’t find them. That was a bit of a surprise. I could have sworn that I had some clamps in there. But there was nothing that I could find.
So I started looking around the van for clamps that I could steal from other less essential parts and use to clamp that split part closed.
I thought I had it all figured out when I found the clamps to the fuel inlet filler hose and the fuel inlet vent hose. I pulled off the clamp for the fuel vent hose, but it was the kind of clamp that oftentimes you can only use once because the metal is so weak that it deforms when you take it apart.
Unfortunately, such was the case with this clamp. I tried and tried to make it work, but I couldn’t. So I went and took the other one off, the same type of clamp, and much bigger, but it was the same issue. Both clams were ruined when I took them off.
That was a bit frustrating.
So I went to start looking for zip ties because I was pretty sure that I brought some zip ties as well, but I couldn’t find any either. I was starting to get pretty frustrated because I had thought that I was prepared more than I was. Gratefully, I found some zip ties in the rear doors. I think that actually might be where I stashed them when I was loading up to go.
So I grabbed a couple of zip ties, and I zip tied the cracked pipe back together. It wasn’t super secure, and it certainly didn’t stop the leaking, but it stopped the leaking enough so that it wasn’t spraying out, just oozing out.
So I put on two zip ties, and then I turned on the van just long enough to turn it around and get it pointed down the canyon. I wasn’t sure how much of the road was going to be downhill and how much was uphill, but I pointed the nose downhill, put the van in neutral with the engine off, relying on the strength of my legs to get the van to stop since I wouldn’t have power brakes.
It’s a heavy van, by the way. Especially with the hundreds and hundreds of pounds of cargo that we’re carrying with us.
Anyway, I pointed the nose downhill, and tried to keep the speed in check while not losing too much speed, in case there were some uphill parts. The van started rolling and picking up the speed fairly quickly, so I kept tamping down the brakes to make it safe for us as we came around sharp corners on the hillside as we wound back down toward the paved road that the campground was on.
I could have stopped at the ranger station, but we were going and had momentum, and I didn’t want to stop. No matter what, we were either going to need to have someone give us a ride down the mountain to civilization, or we were going to have to get there ourselves, so I decided to try and let the van roll as far as I could possibly get it to roll.
I also didn’t want to add coolant right away because the engine was hot, and the extra water and coolant that I brought with us was super cold from having been out and near freezing temperatures.
So I wanted to let the van roll as long as possible also to give more time for the engine to cool down.
Gratefully, as we barreled downhill, I was pleasantly surprised that the little road that led to the campground was also an entirely downhill road. The grade wasn’t super steep, but the van was going probably 45 mph down that road. The only uphill portion that we ran into on the way back from our perch high up on the hillside was the last little bit where the road goes up to the main highway at the top.
There were other vehicles parked at the top sort of all talking I think about what they were going to do since the pass was closed and they needed to get to the other side. We, not wanting to stop the van, barreled right on past them, across the eastbound lane, and on to the highway headed west back down the mountain.
We rolled and rolled and rolled, probably rolling 10 miles or so? Before finally rolling to a stop. Once we rolled to a stop, I checked the temperature of the engine, and then I put in a gallon of water to get it to a safe point.
Then I fired up the van, and we drove to the nearest gas station, which gratefully, was not very far away at all.
At the gas station, we filled up every gallon jug that we had, including our drinking jugs, with water from the outdoor spigot that the kind gas station attendant person let us use.
I put in another gallon or so of water at that gas station, and then we pointed our van’s nose Southwest to the town of Worland, where there was both an O’Reilly’s and a NAPA Auto parts.
I stopped the van every 8 miles or so and added another gallon of water to try and keep it topped off. Gratefully, the zip ties managed to keep enough coolant in the system to keep it from overheating immediately.
We pulled into the O’Reilly’s, and I was grateful that they had the tea pipe that I needed. Gratefully again, it was a fairly easy part to replace. There was a vacuum line in the way that was a bit challenging, and someone who had worked on it before had put the hose clamp facing the wrong direction, so that was a little annoying, but all in all, it went back together pretty easily.
I bought a few extra supplies as insurance just in case we ran into any other issues, more coolant, more zip ties, etc.
I checked in on the weather report for the pass and found that it was going to be closed for who knows how long. The storm was projected to dump 10 to 20 inches of snow in the past, so it was pretty clear that if we wanted to go east, we were either going to have to wait on one side of the mountains for The storm to pass and for the roads to be cleared.
So it came time to make some decisions. The north route was also closed to us, requiring chains, I should say. The main attraction to taking the central route was to visit Jewel Cave, crazy horse monument, and Mount Rushmore, oh, and devil’s Tower. But both my mom and I had been to all of those before, so we decided to cut that part of our trip out and just go straight to my sister’s place in South Dakota.
Going straight to my sister’s place would only be like 15 minutes longer going the south way then going the Central route, and we would be able to bypass the tallest mountains, thus skirting the worst of the storm conditions.
So we let my sister Heather and her husband Hans know that we were headed straight to their place, and we pointed our vans nose south heading from worland down to Casper and then Northeast from there.
It started snowing on the drive from worland to Casper, and by the time we got to Casper, there were gigantic flakes coming down. If it weren’t for the fact that we were starting to have issues with our heater, I would have enjoyed it more, but on the drive, the blower started to blow less powerfully and less powerfully and less powerfully.
Fortunately, it was blowing enough hot air to at least keep us mostly warm, so that was good.
Across the Wyoming rolling hills and planes, the snowstorm intensified, and we had to significantly reduce our speed in order to stay safe, as the van at least two or three times slid sideways in ways that were a little scary.
But as we headed east, the temperature dropped, and the snow turned back into rain, so we were able to make it into South Dakota without harm nor hazard.
It was dark by the time we got there, but we got there in time too greet Heather and Hans and chat a good little bit before crashing into bed.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 