This is going to be a long post, but one hell of a story! Let’s just say that I don’t foresee myself going snow wheeling alone in the near future, unless it’s early or late season and the weather is decent. (For those of you that don’t know, Colorado got hammered with a huge snow storm last weekend.)
We are going to go back to last Friday, before the storm moved in. I had the day off and I went into town that morning to run some errands, in the process I treated myself to large breakfast burrito and headed home. I started working on the trailer and shortly thereafter it started snowing, just your normal day. They were calling for a large storm, feet not inches, and by mid-afternoon there was several inches of snow. My wife called to say the weather was horrible in town and she would be staying at her parents house in town with my daughter. I instantly decided to take the 4Runner out for a “quick trip” above my house to play in the the snow. What else was I going to do, watch TV or work in the garage? No, it was dumping snow and I wanted to play around a little bit! Against my wife’s advice, I rushed to get my stuff together and told myself that this was going to be a quick and easy trip, and that I should be back around dinner time.
Picture of the 4Runner just before I left
I made good time up the trail, and the snow was awesome! I got to the hill that broke my CV on my last trip out, and I was bound and determined to make it up; it took some work but I made it with out winching! In the process I lost track of time, and by the time I got to the top it was dark (It was snowing so hard that the difference between light and dark was minimal). I figured I would go just a little bit further then turn around. I gave it another 15-20 minutes and made it to another large hill, I gave it one shot and decided it was time to head home. I backed up to turn around and in the process fell into some deeper snow; nothing that a quick winch wouldn’t take care of, I just needed a little tug from the winch.
I hooked up the winch line (like any other snow wheeling trip) and got back in the truck to turn myself around. I hit the winch button to take up the slack and the 4Runner instantly died, “Oh, hell no!”. The 4Runner reluctantly restarted and I let the battery charge for a while. I tried again, this time with the engine revved up a little, but I got the same result and it *barely* started back up, so I let it charge yet again. One more try; this time I had the engine at moderate RPM, in gear, while winching. This went better, but once the winch began to pull hard the engine started to die, so I let off. In the process the tires had spun and dug myself into a larger hole, after some choice words I got out of the 4Runner and attempted to dig, but at this point it was a lost cause.
Normally I have basic cell phone service in this area, I tried to call my wife but with the storm I could only get one or two words in before it dropped the call. It took several calls and text messages to inform my wife of the situation. By this time it was getting late and I had to make the choice between hiking out and sleeping in the 4Runner. I was hungry (I skipped lunch because of my large breakfast) and in my haste to leave the house I forgot my snow wheeling tote that had extra food and supplies. Reality set in, and it sucked! Even if I dug for a couple hours and got out of my hole I would still be driving out in a blizzard with no lights. I was at least 6-8 miles from a major road, had no cell phone service, no food, and only melted snow for water. I did have my “Spot” emergency transponder (so “in theory" if things went from bad to worse I could send for Search and Rescue). Hiking out at this point would just be stupid, and in addition to the laundry list of problems above, the area has a large population of mountain lions! Luckily I had a sleeping bag in the 4Runner, so I pulled the lower seat cushion off the back seat and made a less than ideal bed for the night, knowing that it was going to be a long night.
To be continued...
opcorn:
How pissed off was your wife? haha
