Hmmm. Unfortunately, I've only been driving my Tracker for a couple of years, and I don't do nearly as much "fun" stuff these days as I did years ago.
However, I do have a few good ones from my earlier days. They all happened in my first rig, a '93 Chevy S-10 Ext. Cab 4X4. It was all stock, as I never had enough money to mod. it.
The first one was heading out for a little wheeling in one of our local stomping grounds. It was springtime, and it had been raining A LOT (at least for the high desert). Me, and two of my buddies were all in my truck (sitting three across the front, since it never had any back jump seats). We had to cross what was usually a dry, sandy wash a few hundred yards off the pavement in order to get into the hills. When we got there, we were astonished to see that it was rushing with muddy water across its entire 20-yard width. The smart thing to do would have been to get out and try to figure out how deep it was and if the bottom was smooth. However, 17-year-olds are not famous for their smarts, and I was no exception.
I stuck it in 4-HI (figuring speed was better than torque), and gunned it. The truck shot down the bank, and abruptly SLAMMED into a deep channel that the water had cut into the sand, bouncing the front end back up, and stopping nearly all forward momentum. Neither of my buddies were wearing seatbelts, and both of their heads bashed the ceiling, leaving them yelling obscenities. Once out of the hole, the foot-deep rushing water immediately started sluicing the sand out from under my tires, causing a sort of quicksand "sucking" effect. I knew I couldn't stop to go into 4-LO, so I floored it and it was all the 4.3 V6 could do in 4-HI to keep the wheels turning in the sand. We slowly chugged our way across and started up the muddy bank on the far side. Then it was too slick, and it wouldn't go any more. Half in and half out of the water, I managed to get into 4-LO and rocked it a few times and finally made it back up on flat ground. After that ordeal, we ended up driving something like ten miles through the hills to get back to pavement WITHOUT crossing that creek again.
A year later, one of those same buddies tried to take his '71 Ford 2WD across that same spot when it was only MOIST (no flowing water), and sunk it to the axle. It took his dad's 3/4 ton and lots of handyman jacking to get him out.
Another few years later, I was headed back up to college in the rain, and tried to pass a semi on a 2-lane highway. When I was about halfway around, a full-size Chevy appeared in the oncoming lane. I didn't have time to finish the pass, nor did I think I could slow down enough to get back behind the semi. There were no shoulders, so I slammed on the brakes to take off a little speed and then veered left off the embankment. It was really muddy, so my front tires locked up and basically pushed mud down the hill sideways, bouncing off of rocks at 55+ mph. After careening diagonally down the embankment for at least fifty yards, I finally came to a stop on the steep sidehill, inches from the barbed wire fence separating the highway from the rangeland below. Everything I had in the cab had gone flying across to my side and down at my feet. With my heart still pounding, I got all of the stuff out from under my feet, put it in 4-LO, and scrawled it back up the embankment to the pavement. Amazingly, nothing was damaged, but I didn't try to pass anyone else on that drive. I'm convinced that a lower-clearance vehicle would have been severely damaged, and without 4WD, I wouldn't have been able to drive back up to the highway.
Okay, this is a really long post, so I'll save other stories for another day . . .
