Did I do the right thing? What would of you done?

[Yendor]

I have mixed feeling regarding this so what better way to resolve them then but on a public forum right??.... well it's cheaper then therapy . Sorry for the long post, I was trying to give a detailed explanation of events. Please feel free to skip to summary.

Some mates and I went for a wheeling session out at Glasshouse Mountains last night. For those of you that don't know the area, it has tracks ranging from easy to extreme, with most of the easy tracks being a clay like base that turns to mush after rain. It had been raining on and off for the past 3 days so our group had plotted out a rough course based on the track conditions, driver and vehicle capabilities (our group had 2x Patrols, a Great Wall and a Trition).

All was going well. After about 40 minutes we came to this hill climb. Those in our group that wanted to attempted it could and those that didn't would wait at the bottom for us to return.

I was first to go up. The hill climb was about 150 meters long steep and washed out in places but the base was firm so no real dramas. I get to the gates, that was the agreed place to turn around when I noticed a 4by sitting in the dark. All of a sudden this young guy walks up behind us and says "that's my vehicle, it has a busted CV and my mate is 30 meters over that way, hard up against a tree and can't move forward or backwards".

So I go over and have a look and they are trying to chop down this tree with a shovel. I lend them my axe, they chop down the tree and are able to drive the vehicle about another 5 meters before coming to a halt. I am unable to get my vehicle in a position to winch from the front and his vehicle has no recovery points on the rear. So we try to remove the towball so a shackle can through the hole. Once again I loan them tools, unfortunately the thread is damaged and we are unable to remove the towball.

From here the recovery became less then ideal and the risk/danger factor increased. Now, I won't going into details what we did to eventually get the vehicle out but I did try at all times to make sure everyone was safe and the risk to my vehicle was minimal.

In summary.

1. Our group gave up valuable time. (We're all old ...have family, work and life in general commitments. This makes it hard to get out 4bying). We made sure our route was suitable for our vehicles and the recovery equipment that we carried.

2. They had ill-prepared vehicles. Only had very basic recovery gear (strap and shovel) we ended up using our own axe, hand tools, electric winch, high lift jack and Max Traxs to get him out.

We lost about an hour and a half to two hours of our night helping these guys, basically because they weren't prepared for the conditions. Not to mention the unsafe recovery measures I had to use in the end to get him out.

Once again I'm sorry for the long post. Basically did I do the right thing? what would of you done?. We were split 50/50 in our group if we should of helped these guys or not.