I figure a little follow up is appropriate. Day started with a 3.5 mile walk to my car after sleeping on a friend's couch, decided it was a good idea to relax and see some scenery doing a trail I had done before, last summer.
Everything was good until I got up to about 12,000 feet on the shelf road and snowdrifts began blocking the trail. Went through the ones that others had gone through, but at a certain point it was just covering 90% of the trail. No problem, backed up, turned around, started heading down. My error: saw a side chute that I figured I'd hit just for fun, it was an interior trail away from the steep hillside. It was pretty rocky and I was suddenly faced with a 16 foot long section of snow. Decided I didn't want to have to back down the quarter of a mile to the main shelf road but there was a nice turn around spot/dead end at just across the show. Easily made it across, turned around, but coming back things went awry. I started sliding off where the road was and my passenger side started sinking rapidly in to the deep stuff.
Anyway, I had seen this little Toyota (pre tacoma I believe) putzing around on three separate occasions but he was like a speck, no way to yell to him, and figured he had probably left by the time I was posting this thread. Walked down to the main basin (about a mile) figuring I'd see some folks turning around there, but it started snowing again and getting windy, so I walked back up. Tried even more tricks, shoveled for 45 minutes, no dice. Once again walked down the hill and saw a Suburban, but knew he was a little too big to get down the trail to me. Told him if I'm still wandering around when he's leaving that I'd appreciate a ride down the mountain (10 miles) and we parted ways. I waited some more at the basin, once again walked up to 4runner only to find the Suburban on a separate side chute with a flat tire. This is when the little Toyota guy appeared, helped Suburban with tire, and saved me with some come alongs and a little towing. So I guess I walked about 7.5 miles today, two of the miles being up a steep trail, but I'm incredibly happy to have not slept up there and actually made it home in one piece. This post was way too long, so here are some photos.
On the way to the top, snowdrifts blocking more and more of the trail (I backed up and turned around here)
On the way back down, moments before going down the dreaded chute
Realizing I was starting to have a problem
Big problem, before I shoveled nearly the whole damn thing.
Finally freed and back to the main basin area that I kept walking down to. No pics of the epic recovery because I didn't want to be a jerk while this guy helped me, but he used a come along to pull me backwards a bit and get me on the opposite side of the snow. Then he shoveled in to the dirt quite a ways, a nice line for my drivers side tires. I proceeded across but the ass end started to fall back down in to the deep stuff. He used another come along on the front and helped me get my front wheels to where they needed to be, and the backed his truck up with me connected via strap until I was completely off of the snow. Incredibly awesome guy and the entire bed of his truck was filled with recovery stuff.
Anyway, tl;dr - thanks to all who chimed in, time to step up my game and do some shopping tonight
I was pretty confident in running this trail solo since I had done it before and it's pretty mild, but learned my lesson with this lingering summer snow.
