As you say, the key is knowing when to quit. That means being able to guess the last turn-around you can back down to. Once when I was doing some survey work in the Elkhorn Range south of Baker City OR I saw smoke further up the canyon and decided to check it out. Almost immediately the road(?) went from not good to very bad, being quite steep with large and loose rocks and not more than 6 to 8 feet wide. The cut slope was verticle and there was no fill slope; all excess material was in the bottom of the canyon. At this point there was no turning around, and I was not about ready to go down that road backwards, so I had to keep going. My co-worker and I had to pile some rocks in the wheel track to avoid high centering on a large rock in the middle of a very sharp turn, but we did finally make it to the fire. (Did I mention that I was in a 4wd Ford Ranger?) We determined that the fire was not in immediate danger of spreading, so we called for a fire crew to come in on ATV's and started back down. At the big rock we found that we had kicked our makeshift ramp over the side comming up, and had no choice but to try to keep the right side wheels on the rock rather than straddling it. The front wheel was not a huge problem but the back wheel was. We had to go straight or it would have fallen off the rock, but the verticle bank was very close and we were in a very sharp turn. While my co-worker hung out watching the rear wheel I would inch ahead and ask "can I turn yet" to which she would reply " no, go some more". There could not have been an inch of clearance when she finally said I could turn. Anyway we finally made it back down without loosing any parts or putting visable dings in the government vehicle, but had I known what the road was like I would have turned it over to the fire crew from the start. In the course of the survey project I traversed some pretty hairy roads, but I have no desire to try that one again.
