What is the most stuck you have ever been in mud or quicksand and how long did it take for you to get unstuck.

[Sam1234567890]

Also where were you when it happened and what were you doing.

[PA Jack]

I am sure others here have way better stories. In my teens, I deliberately walked onto a stream bed in southern Rhode Island and started sinking into this very thick muddy clay. I pumped a bit to sink deeper and see how far I could go. I could only get thigh deep, but it was a good thing, because this stuff sucked back like a leech when I tried to pull my legs out. I laid down on my back and reached down and gradually, very slowly, was able to pull one at a time out bit by bit. It took about 15-20 minutes. I wasn’t ever in any real danger, but it was actually fun to imagine what it would have been like waist or chest deep - not sure I would have been able to get out by myself. It made some of the dramatic “help I’m stuck” scenes actually be more believable. Kind of a fun experience.

[Slugjaba1922]

I went during the winter to play in some quicksand (actual quicksand where it's floating on top and you have to break the surface) I went for the first time in a wetsuit and steel toes. I submerged both boots and was able to pull at one. Well it was warm outside during the day time but I got stuck out there for 3 hours and 2 hours in I was out there during the night. I can't tell you how loud I screamed for help. I was actually distressed like my life depended on it. With water constantly coming in over the spot I was sinking at it was like being stuck in a solid block of concrete. I eventually with my bare hands ripped the boot from the top down apart. Then once I got out I limped to my car about 2000 ft away. Ruined a knife to cut the steel toe off my food and brought everything home. It's bad enough when its just a bare foot getting stuck like that. Eventually you can get out. Shoes and footwear is a death sentence. I was recording it and recently deleted the footage. Everytime I see the thumbnail I instantly get some sort of ptsd episode from it where I make a face and feel fear. So long story short it took 2 hours to get out or maybe 4.

Yeah don't wear the wrong gear for quicksand. That can mess you up pretty bad. Whatever sounds fun in the moment but after you get a good sense of yeah that definitely sounds like I'd die. You probably shouldn't do it. I got off easy with a rash and a bit of sensitivity to warm and cold for a few days.

[Sinkman61]

Okay, I’ve never told anyone this story before, but it’s why I’ve always been so adamant about SAFETY. I know, all the backyard scientists all say that ITS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO INVOLUNTARILY SINK BELOW THE SURFACE OF QUICKSAND AND DROWN OR ASPHYXIATE. To that I have only one comment:

BULLSHIT!!!

All things being equal, they’re right. Quicksand is nearly twice as dense as the human body. So, based on that alone, yes, it’s impossible to sink down and be swallowed up by quicksand. And yet, we people who have been in various different degrees of quicksand know that there’s certain consistencies of mud that allow us to submerge AND STAY SUBMERGED WITHOUT FLOATING BACK TO THE SURFACE L. That too, SHOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE. After all, our bodies are so much lighter than unless we’re holding ourselves down with something, we SHOULD, by their calculations, simply pop back up to the surface. And yet we don’t. In certain consistencies of mud, when we submerge, WE STAY SUBMERGED until we push ourselves back up. Hence, my response to them has been and continues to be BULLSHIT.

You can in fact, find yourself involuntarily sinking below the surface of quicksand…just like in the movies, just somewhat slower. Of course, movies only have two to three hours to squeeze everything in, so they can have a pass on that. Here’s the one and only time that I nearly became an involuntary has been…because of my love of quicksand.


TRUE STORY…
On that particular day, I had set off to go sinking in one of my all time favorite sinking locations. The area is on a large mudflat that sits about 18 inches high during low tide in one of the salt water estuaries between Saint Augustine and Jacksonville, Florida. I’m extremely familiar with the area, as the amount of quicksand is enormous, and there’s never been a time when I couldn’t find a nice secluded spot well away from prying eyes. On this particular day, I had decided to wear a brand new pair of heavy leather hightop work boots with steel toes, and heavy duty puncture resistant soles for the bottoms. This was going to be the day that I was going to break them in. Only, they nearly did me in. Thankfully, like every other time before, I had a hard rule that sinking had to start at no later than an hour BEFORE low tide. That way, the mud banks would nearly all be freshly exposed, and I’d have nearly four hours before next incoming tide would wash over them. Little did I know, but I was going to need nearly every minute to make my escape. This was to turn out to be the one sink that changed my attitude towards safety for all time afterwards.

After getting to the small beach that runs along the Eastern side of the Intercostal Waterway , I hiked north to the opening area of a large tidal creek that went towards the east. Here there’s a large embankment of oyster shells. These shells were the entire reason for buying these boots. They’re like walking on razor blades. And they’re so efficient at slicing through your skin that you might not even realize that they’ve done it, until you look down and see blood gushing out through the side of your leg. The mud beneath the shells is just strong enough to keep you from punching through the shells and into the mud beneath, as these work boots only come up so high. Anyhow…moving on, I entered into the deeper side of the tidal creek where I already knew the mud was fairly shallow and the surface beneath to be somewhat firm. I headed east about 50 yards, where to my south there opened up a gorgeous, glimmering mud bank. It was a mud bank that I had ventured into before. I knew that it appeared to be bottomless, as every other time I entered, I never once reached the bottom. It was some of the slipperiest, smoothest mud I’d ever sunk into before. And today I had set off to make one of my deepest sinks yet. Little did I know just how true that was going to become. I decided to sink in one of the highest levels of the bank, in an area that had a nice, fairly thick consistency. That too, I’d soon regret. A few pumps of my legs and I slide down to the tops of my thighs. The mud was firm, very tight against the skin, and yet so welcoming that I slid further down into it with no effort on my part whatsoever. All I had done was to force my toes downward, and down I went. It was such a unique sensation. How could anything be squeezing me to tightly allow my body to continue sinking down down deeper and deeper? It felt amazing and yet, it was so mesmerizing to watch as the mud pulled me down deeper and deeper. I managed to slide down right to my armpits … in mud thick enough that it should have spit me right back out. Instead, it welcomed me as it ever so tightly held me deep in it’s grasp. Now down to my armpits, I pushed my arms down deep into the mud, where I was able to slip my hands into my pockets. The mud held my arms firmly against my sides. I decided to sink down deeper, as I had been this deep on multiple occasions before. As I pulled up with one leg, my other foot slipped down deeper…much deeper than I had anticipated. It hadn’t occurred to me, but when I had pulled up on that leg, that foot had barely moved at all. Interesting…let’s go deeper I thought. And with practically no effort at all, the mud had closed in over the tops of my shoulders and was nearly to my chin. It was at this point that I realized that I was deep enough. So I hung out and enjoyed the sensation for a bit, with my chin just barely above the surface. It was time to work myself out. Typically that was done by making small pumping motions with my legs, which twisting and turning each foot, one at a time, upwards. But here was a major problem…these were brand new boots, not broken in, so those small twisting motions with my feet weren’t going to be happening. So I decided to pull each foot upward, slowly, one at a time, like I was climbing up a ladder. But my feet weren’t moving. They were locked down solid as if in dried concrete. Only, they actually were moving. Just not in the direction I wanted them to be moving. With each small effort, they were being pushed down deeper and deeper, and soon I felt as the mud was rising higher and higher. For the first time EVER, REAL PANIC was rising up through my torso, and I tried to jerk my way upwards. Obviously I should have known better, but that’s what panicking does. But those sudden, firm movements cost me, and cost me a lot. The mud was at my nose. And yet panic was still running amoke. And deeper I went. The mud’s grip was immense. I could no longer even move. I was firmly locked tight in it’s grasp. Breathing was becoming difficult as the mud squeezed the air from my lungs. I pushed my head backwards trying to get my nose and mouth clear of the mud. I hadn’t realized just how deep I had sunk, until this very moment. Because it was finally at that moment that I saw that I was actually looking upwards through a tunnel of mud that hadn’t quite closed in over the top of my head. For all practical purposes, I was completely below the surface, the mud squeezing in on every surface of my body, including the sides of my head. It was eerily quiet, all except for the sound of my racing heart. I absolutely had to calm myself down. Even panic was no longer an option. So there I was, my 5 foot 3 inch body with my feet stuck down, locked tightly in place, along with everything else, at least six feet below the surface. I had to find a way out. Obviously by now, I was trying to make peace with my situation. They said that this was completely IMPOSSIBLE. BUT…YOU SIMPLY CAN’T SINK BENEATH QUICKSAND. And yet there I was… beneath quicksand, being squeezed by some of the thickest, tightest mud I had ever felt. Fortunately though, the panic had subsided. Making my peace with this untenable situation must have really helped. I slowly regained my composure and took inventory of what I still had working for me. The tunnel above had nearly closed over, but it hadn’t sealed over yet. If it did, that would have been the end. My arms were still being crushed up against my sides, but…I could still move my hands. So slowly I worked them up and out of my pockets. If I could work them up, I could start to make progress. Slow, by steady wins the race. I finally managed to get them upwards, towards the surface. Whether they broke the surface or not I couldn’t possibly tell. But they were at least up to where they could finally give me leverage. My feet still felt sealed down by concrete, but if I wiggled my toes up and down every so slightly, and pushed down against the mud surrounding me, I might just be able to get out of this mess. It was working. I had barely moved, but at least it was in the right direction. So again and again, I worked, gained ground in minuscule amounts, but always in the right direction. I remembered the saying on how to escape…small moves wins the race. I just hadn’t thought that the moves would be THIS small. I cleared our the area that was now just barely above my head, ensuring that it wouldn’t close completely over. To think that I would lose all that precious oxygen just before I could get back above the surface was running through my thoughts. But I didn’t. Despite the grip that the mud still had on me, I was winning.

Obviously I did. It took a further two long hours, but I was out. And I had never been more exhausted from sinking in my entire life. It was also the ONLY sink I had ever made that literally scared me. After a thorough cleaning to wash about 50 pounds of unwanted mud from all my pieces and parts, I head off and went home. The next day it became really clear just how much effort it took to make my hardest, most important escape. That’s because simple movements had my muscles screaming in agony. There wasn’t a part of my body that wasn’t in pain. So I stayed in bed except for dire needs as I allowed my body to recuperate. It took nearly a week, but the muscles settled themselves back down as I summed up that adventure with just two words.

CLOSE CALL

[cbqdbq]

Sinkman61, that is an incredible story. i think you proved that the sucking grip of quicksand/mud will allow you to pull yourself under. even against boyancy. if quicksand/mud was like water you would bounce back up easily. but the consistincy of soil keeps it from acting like water. it cant suck you downward, but it can suck to hold you in place and it held your lifting foot in place so the rest of you had to go down to let you bend that leg the way you wanted in order to raise it. then the quicksand/mud has a sucking hold on your body deeper down!

you could return to that spot and try it similarly but using a plastic mat or something to press down on while trying to lift out and it would allow you to keep at a safe depth, or speed up exit if you knew you were runing out of time.

[Mynock]

Being a settling pond my quarry spot gets thicker the deeper you sink in, which is awesome because once you're embedded in the thick stuff down below it makes submerging easy, but it also guarantees you're going to spend at least three times as long getting out as you did getting in.

There's been a few times when my buoyancy was......compromised shall we say......where it took me several hours of struggling to extricate. And just like Sinkman describes Aspirin will be your best friend the day after.

[bogbud]

Sinkmans story is pretty much the same like mine when my current avatar-pic was made (also my signature sums it up quite well).

Except my area is a thick bog with pure mud and not quicksand or tidal what makes it less lethal. On the other hand i sunk well over my head up to the rim of my snorkel without really noticing it. It was quite an experience when i did check the video!

[Duncan Edwards]

Okay, I’ve never told anyone this story before, but it’s why I’ve always been so adamant about SAFETY. I know, all the backyard scientists all say that ITS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO INVOLUNTARILY SINK BELOW THE SURFACE OF QUICKSAND AND DROWN OR ASPHYXIATE. To that I have only one comment:

BULLSHIT!!!

... we people who have been in various different degrees of quicksand know that there’s certain consistencies of mud that allow us to submerge AND STAY SUBMERGED WITHOUT FLOATING BACK TO THE SURFACE L. That too, SHOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE. After all, our bodies are so much lighter than unless we’re holding ourselves down with something, we SHOULD, by their calculations, simply pop back up to the surface. And yet we don’t. In certain consistencies of mud, when we submerge, WE STAY SUBMERGED until we push ourselves back up. Hence, my response to them has been and continues to be BULLSHIT.

You're very right about this one. The most outright stuck I've ever seen anyone was Brittany in the "stuck, stuck" moment she had. Petite dancer welded hip deep into place by real quicksand while wearing shoes. There was no removing her without 20 minutes of serious digging by myself and Buddy Weiser. Not a doubt in my mind she would have remained there if she'd been by herself. Over the years I've had several stuck moments where I was able to extricate myself with some effort. Most were no more than knee deep.

As for things more treacherous, I've had a couple of episodes very similar to Sinkman's description above. I get very exasperated by people who haven't been muddy since they were little kids in the back yard speaking with faux-authority about how inherently safe the deep stuff is. Once such instance involved my shoving Stormy Rose under to the length of my arm and instead of popping back up, she stayed put. She had no shoes on. She was wearing nothing at all for that matter. I managed to grab her and pull her back to the surface unaware of how bad things could have been. There's been other moments but that one always sticks out because I thought I knew so much. Don't ever underestimate nature. We all know this but we still forget it.

[Bird320]

I get very exasperated by people who haven't been muddy since they were little kids in the back yard speaking with faux-authority about how inherently safe the deep stuff is.

Hah! I see this kind of stuff mentioned by non-fetish people on Reddit and Facebook too. Lots of people undersell the danger of deep mud, usually under the guise of how to get out of regular (real) quicksand and that it's not "that dangerous". Like yes, the chances of randomly encountering it are low for your average person, but I've read stories of people in this community and of course elsewhere online who had encounters that did legit get them trapped completely. It can be dangerous and must be treated with respect.

...even if it is exciting for a stuck enthusiast like myself

Shoes increase the risk of getting stuck. I can't imagine how strong the suction might be with some muds and certain types of shoes/boots. Now mix that in with being beyond your waist.

[Sinkman61]

Here’s the problem with the notion that you’re going to just float back up to the surface. And please keep in mind, this isn’t meant to scare anyone. It’s just meant to make you think for a few seconds before you put something on your feet that’ll create that incredible amount of suction so many of us, INCLUDING MY SELF, so throughly enjoy. In 99.99% of your mud adventures, it’s still far more likely than not that you’ll just float right back up to the surface. And in most types of mud, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. In fact, in order to get down past that pesky buoyancy point, you’re going to have to push your arms down deep into the mud, kick with your feet while you strain to push yourself down further into the mud. And once you do, you’ll very slowly start coming right back up again. Unless…there’s enough friction between you and the mud to hold you at that depth. Then you’ll just stay put, but sinking further will require a lot more strength. That’s all because your buoyancy point is very real, with the thickness and stickiness of the mud playing a large role on if you staying put or float back to the surface. In all my adventures inland in swamp mud, the only way to get down deeper than the buoyancy point was to pull myself down. Tidal mud is a completely different experience.

On average, mud is twice as dense as the human body. Thus, we typically stop sinking at our halfway point. That means that if you weigh 200 pounds, 100 pounds of you will submerge below the surface, and the rest won’t. At that point you’re at equilibrium and you’re floating. So to sink completely under, you need to displace an additional 100 pounds of mud. And after you do, you’ll still have 100 pounds of positive buoyancy that’s trying to pull you back up. BUT…MUD ISN’T WATER. There’s another factor that has to be considered when in mud that doesn’t apply to water. Because mud is so much thicker, and depending on that thickness, as well as how well it sticks to your body, it moves far more slowly, if at all. If that cavity can’t easily be filled back in, suction is created. And it’s that suction that gives mud so much power to pull you back down. It’s enough power to hold a medium sized car down in it’s grasp. Suddenly your 100 pounds of buoyancy isn’t all that much anymore. It’s certainly not going to be enough for you to just “float” back to the surface. Really large soles can be dangerous simply because they create a larger cavity beneath your feet, holding them down. You can still push your feet further down. You just can’t pull them back up. Your body’s 100 pounds of upward force has been completely nullified by the quicksand’s 3000 pounds of suction that’s locking you down in place. To get back up requires breaking the suction. That’s typically done by wiggling your foot around while you pull upwards. The mud your foot sloshes around down there fills the gap you’re foot is leaving behind as you pull up. And up go come. Small moves always work better than large moves, because large moves tend to soften up the mud beneath your feet, making it easier for them to sink down deeper. But there’s a few types of mud that don’t fill that gap is so easily. That’s because that mud is thick enough to lock your foot into just one direction, making it nearly impossible to wiggle from side to side. And if you’re wiggling your feet up and down, chances are that your going to sink further down instead of rising up. Every time you push a foot further down, mud flows out from beneath it and goes over the top. Pulling that foot back up creates suction below it, making it much harder to lift your feet. That’s why you’re supposed to stay perfectly still…so you don’t inadvertently push your feet down further. If you don’t stay still, you’ll sink further down…but not fast.. It’s very slow. But it’s still happening. Panicking makes you sink faster…much faster. That’s where you get in real trouble. And ANYONE can panic. When you do, your going to start jerking around trying desperately to escape…and all those jerks make you sink down deeper and deeper. Either you’re going to continue panicking until you slide completely beneath the surface, or the mud will be locked so tightly against you that you can no longer move. If you’re lucky, it’ll be the latter, because it’ll force you to calm yourself back down long enough to examine your situation, so you try another approach to escaping. You can escape even if you go completely below the surface…AS LONG AS YOU CAN GET AIR. Moving your head around can open up a spot that air can get back down through…if you’re lucky and the mud is thick enough that it hasn’t completely closed in over the top of your head. Otherwise, you’re fucked and it’s light out. The chances are practically null…because most of us simply don’t have such mud nearby, don’t wear such heavy types of boots, or don’t go out by ourselves.

It’s ironic, because yesterday I went sinking in that same mud bank (this mud bank is about 200 feet long and 50 feet wide), wearing those exact same boots, only now they’re well broken in, so they’re no longer stiff on my feet (that was my mistake before). The experience was completely different. The mud up on the upper two feet of the surface was so thin that it created practically no pressure at all. It was more like gooey water than watery mud. I sank down completely vertical to the point where my nose was just above the surface. While there was pressure around my legs, (the mud got considerably thicker about 2 feet down) it wasn’t nearly to the point that I couldn’t move my legs and feet anymore. And I couldn’t feel the mud that was surrounding the sides and top of my head at all. Escaping was extremely tiring. But not escaping from the deep mud. That part wasn’t hard at all. But it got really hard when I was back up to my waist, because there was no longer any mud strong enough around me to get any leverage against. I was nearly trapped in this one spot. I wasn’t in any danger, because if the tide came in, I could just swim off the top of mud bank. That’s how I got on it in the first place. I swam onto the mud bank just as it was starting to get uncovered by the outgoing tide. And instead of staying near the edge of the bank, I went to the center, where I knew getting off the bank was going to be more difficult. As it was, the mud was just thick enough to keep me in one spot. Annoying…but eventually I was able to work over to where the mud was somewhat thicker so I could push myself out across the surface with my legs until I was back in the water again.

Yes, we love to sink because it’s so enormously satisfying. I don’t know about the women folks who sink, but for us guys, we have some of the deepest, most powerful spasms possible as we burst forth a nut until completely drained dry …and then some. Some of us just enjoy the challenge of the escape. And others…BOTH. And then we go and sink again…there’s another nut still screaming about being drained…