Выходные в Карелии | Weekend in Karelia: A Recovery Mission

While performing site clearance work, a 20‑ton Caterpillar excavator sank into the ground and got stuck. Over a week of DIY recovery attempts only made things worse, leading the owner to call us in. Upon arrival, we found the machine in a severely tilted and immobilized position, with one track much deeper than the other, the cab rotated, and the boom fully extended sideways and lowered. To make matters more complex, the recovery site was a former lakebed, where layers of clay and silt were mixed and saturated with groundwater. This turned the task into a particularly intriguing puzzle. Under these conditions, any attempt to dig down to the more submerged side only caused the excavator to sink deeper. Consequently, our rigging setup became asymmetrical, not bad, but far from ideal. How did we manage to haul out this giant as it fought its way out of the mud, leaning stubbornly to one side? Catch all the details of this challenging recovery in our new video.