Jeep Grand Cherokee Was Airlifted Out of Trouble
This Jeep Grand Cherokee needed a different kind of lift after a dangerous joyride in Alaska.
In Alaska, America’s last frontier, there are dangerous mud pits that are so sticky, even a car can’t be towed from them. For this first-gen Jeep Cherokee, that’s the exact fate it met a few days ago. During the fourth of July, a careless joyride near Butte, Alaska turned into an expensive airlift mission after rescuers couldn’t tow it from deep, sticky mud. This Jeep became stranded on the Knik Glacier Trail after the vehicle had slid from the trail into a mud pit. Due to other challenges presented by the trail, like flooded sections and new mud pits, the only viable option to retrieve the vehicle was to call in a chopper.
According to Elite Towing & Recovery on the original Facebook post, this Grand Cherokee was stolen from its original owners and taken for a joyride the night of the fourth. The business’ page responded to the post saying:
“[The] Department of Natural Resources got in involved after a few days of it being stuck there. The vehicle was stolen from the owner and dumped at this location when they got stuck. The insurance company involved approved all charges for the extrication of the vehicle. The place it got stuck at has a lot of under water pits and is very dangerous to travel on. We still don’t quite understand why or how they even got that far in there… It was a very expensive recovery but not near as expensive as it would have been on the owner and insurance company had it just been left there.”
If anything, the fact that the bone stock first-gen Jeep Grand Cherokee even made it to that spot in the first place speaks to the vehicle’s insane capability. The Knik Glacier Trail is a 20.3 mile trail, and before the Grand Cherokee was unfortunately dumped, it had done about 16 miles of it. Being rated a 6/10 trail, it isn’t recommended for stock vehicles — but this one did it fine.
