I learned a few important lessons that night, as well as reinforcement of some that still don’t seem to have stuck as well as they ought to.
The most important lessons from this misadventure seem to be…
- Even an “Easy” trail can be much more difficult and hazardous under snowy and/or muddy conditions. Don't assume that a trail that I could easily handle when it is dry, I can handle if it is snowy or muddy. (Really, that's how I ended up sinking the first Jeep, on a very short not-quite-a-road that I knew very well in dry condition, but not as well as I thought I knew it when it was muddy.)
- Don't go into a snowy or muddy area, unless I'm sure I can just keep going forward through it without having to make tight-multi-point turns to get back out.
- Don't go into any risky situation alone, without knowing that help is close by should I get into trouble.
…And, of course, the one that I keep failing to observe…
@Seanette and I actually started out with a group, stayed with them as far as Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I think the original plan was to continue from there to some of the roads beyond, but most of the group decided, instead to tackle the Signal Peak trail; a trail which @Seanette and I had tried once before, in much better weather, and gave up on after half a mile. Now, with a somewhat more capable vehicle than we had before, we •MIGHT• be able to take on that trail under very good conditions, but not under the conditions of that day.
We stayed with the group, to the trailhead, took some pictures there, and while they continued to that trail, @Seanette and I went off looking for much easier trails. As we separated, one of the group members gave us her phone number, and said to call if we got in trouble.
First, we took on a very easy, rather artificial trail. Out past Truckee, there’s exit 190 off of the I-80 has a big sign proclaiming “OVERLAND TRAIL”.
We’d been over that once before, not very long after we got the first Jeep, under dry conditions. This time, it was snowy and muddy, but still pretty easy. Kind of a nice, basic exercise in how the present Jeep handles itself in show and mud. not sure how @Seanette was feeling about it at the time, but I was having fun, but it left me wanting more.
So, I brought up OnX to look for a the nearest Easy” rated trail, and picked Crystal Peak Mine Loop. Like Overland Trail, it was muddy and snowy, somewhat more so. The Jeep handled itself well as long as we kept going forward, but it’s a long trail, and it we were running out of daylight, so about three miles in, we decided that perhaps it was time to turn back. That’s when we got in trouble. My big lesson for this trip is that even though this Jeep (and even its somewhat less-capable predecessor) handle snow and mud just fine, as long as you just keep going, trying to get turned around in a tight space, where you have to do a lot of backing and forwarding in such conditions, has a very good chance of getting it stuck.
It turns out that the rest of the group never made it up Signal Peak. More experienced drivers in more capable vehicles ended up taking turns pulling each other’s vehicles out of places they got stuck along the way, before they gave up. I guess in the snow, that trail turned out to be much harder than they anticipated. And then, as they are fighting their way back down that trail, the nice lady that gave us her phone number received a distressed call from me, stuck on a different trail, thirty miles away from where they were.
After roughly an hour or so after that call, four Wranglers showed up to rescue us. In no time at all, they had us pointed the right direction, with our wheels on solid ground so that we could proceed out. One of our rescuers managed to get stuck in almost the same exact way we had, but the rest of the group had little trouble getting him unstuck as well.
So, even for a much more capable vehicle than mine, with a much more skilled driver, trying to turn around that way in snow turns out to be much more hazardous and difficult than I previously would have expected it to be.
In wondering why I didn’t get stuck on my Texas Hill Road adventure, wherein I drove through about twenty or twenty-five miles of thicker snow than on this misadventure, without any problems, in a slightly-less capable vehicle; I think I realized it was because the only place I pulled off the trail was a nice big field where I had plenty of time to make a wide, gentle loop, to get off the road and into a position for my “This is what a Jeep is for.” picture, and then make another nice wide loop to get back on the road, without having to attempt any of the sort of maneuvers that got me stuck on this later occasion.
