4WD EXPEDITIONS · Expedition Command
DEEP WATER AND TIDAL CROSSINGS
13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production
The point
After this lesson you can assess, prepare for and drive a deep crossing with a plan for the stall, and get out the far side without quietly ruining a drivetrain.
Half the answer, free
The Technique
- Decide how you are allowed to assess this particular water, before anyone gets wet. In northern Australia the assessment method is dictated by what lives in the water. Assume estuarine crocodiles in anything tidal, brackish, coastal-plain or connected to a river system that reaches the sea, and that includes freshwater-looking holes a long way inland. In that country you do not wade. You assess from the bank with a long pole, from the roof of a vehicle with polarised sunglasses, from the record of the vehicle that just crossed, and from local knowledge that is measured in seasons rather than internet posts. Look for slide marks in the mud, disturbed bank vegetation and anything sitting still in the shallows. Where wading is genuinely acceptable, cold clear inland water with visibility to the bottom, you still send one person on a line held from the bank, never alone, never in current above the knee.
- Learn what you are actually reading when you can get in. Depth is only one of four variables and the least important of them. Bottom composition decides whether you drive or swim: rock shelf and coarse gravel hold, firm sand is workable, and fine silt or bull dust that has drowned in a creek bed will let a vehicle down to the chassis with no warning. Walk it with a pole and probe every step, because the bad ground is usually a narrow band. Current matters more than people expect, since moving water pushes on a large flat vehicle side and will walk you off your line: throw a stick in and time it over a measured distance so you have something real rather than a guess. And understand that a vehicle floats sooner than you think, because as water rises up the body the vehicle displaces more and the tyres lose the weight that gives them grip, so the moment water is up around the sills you have lost traction you have not spent yet.
- Choose the entry line and the exit line as two separate problems, then prepare the exit. They are rarely the same line, and current means you will often enter upstream and cross on a diagonal so the flow works with you rather than against your steering. The exit is where the crossing is won or lost. A steep clay ramp that four vehicles have already climbed is a polished slide, and the scour hole that always forms at the base of an exit is exactly where your front wheels drop and your bumper meets the bank. So work the exit before you enter: knock the lip down with a shovel, lay rocks or timber in the scour hole, and if it is at all marginal, walk a winch line across and rig to the far bank first, so the vehicle in the water is already connected to something before it needs to be. Nobody should ever have to swim a strap out to a stalled vehicle.
Still under the glass
- Water blind prep, holding the bow wave, and exactly what to do when it stalls mid-river
- 5 more technique steps
- The 6 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
- The drill that builds the reflex
- The safety non-negotiables
It opens when you book a trip that runs 4wd expeditions - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.
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