Two weeks ago we had reservaitons to stay at a primitive cabin near Shenandoah National Park (SNP) in Western Virginia. It started to snow heavily half way through our stay which involved a half mile drive up a neighborhood road and then about a mile on a steep gravel windy mountain road. After about 4” of snow fell, we went back to the car and decided to drive it down the hill and top up the charge. The only other car in the lot was a Toyota FJ with chains on all four tires… The drive down the mountain road was a white-nuckle slide the entire way down.
When we got back from the charge there was 4-6” of snow and there was no way we were going to try it drive back up. We decided to ditch it in a parking lot at the bottom of the hill right off the state highway.
It was a hassle to hike back in to the cabin and back out the next day but it was the only option. We were also able to active the cabin defrost on the way down and the vehicle was ready for us and it easily crawled out of the 5-6” of snow around it.
I had my first thought about buying snow chains, but decided not to because I was worried it would embolden me to take even bigger risks in the future.
Cut to this weekend: we had reservations for another cabin, this time actually in the park. We had some snow forecasted and SNP decided to close Skyline Dr. meaning our only option was to park outside of the park and hike in a few miles. We followed the alternate instructions and drove into a smal town and up a mountain roads to access the trail into the park and our cabin. Our fist mountain road already had a RAV4 getting rescued so we decided to take a different road up. The Y was doing very good in about 2-3“ of snow so we pressed on.… As we accended what we thought would be a fairly even graded road it began to get steeper and as we rose in elevation. Bad decisions and poor-prior-planning led us to lose traction on a steep turn on a back road. The vehicle had worked hard to get as far up as it could but lost traction and slid sideways into a shallow ditch. We got out to assess the situition on what can only be described as a steep snow dusted iceskating rink.
After a few falls, my other half pulls on the car for balance and it begins to slide backward on it’s own—with our dogs in the back seat! Luckily it slid less than a foot; but, with hearts in mouths we got them out and tried to avoid touching the car until we could get something behind the tires. This was in the darkness of 8:45 pm . We lodge some rocks behind the tires and hope it won’t slide any further. This also prevented us from trying to drive it away as I was just too worried I would get into and unrolled backward slide. From that point I being to call local tow companies. Not 10min later we see another vehicle‘s lights cutting through the trees from below us. However, just as we can see it cresting the turn to look up at us, it gets stuck. A young-ish couple with a dog (like us) are in an old LR Discovery just joyriding in the snow. While I’m helping them to get dislodged they kindly offered to take us down the hill. I hadn’t gotten to the point where I had considered ditching the vehicle for the night but with no other real options we put a bag in their trunk and all pile into the back seat of the Disco (approximately
here). I didn’t have the heart to take a picture of it before we left. Felt like bad luck.
Getting down the mountain was harrowing experience constantly on the verge of an uncontrolled slide, including a number of them including full 180 rotations and sliding impacts into the mountain side berms—which were better than downslope. Eventually we were able to get down the mountain and they graciously took us 25min to a hotel—but not before allowing us to fill up their LR. Miraculously the Y still had cell service at that altitude so I was able to activate the Sentry Cam and use live view to check in on it.
The next morning before I was out of bed I received texts from someone at the vehicle. I left a sticky Sheetz receipt with my name and number on the window before we left the Y the night before (I also placed the reflective triangle from the
Tesla Roadside Safety Kit, up the hill a ways so anyone coming down the road would know there might be a reason to slow before taking the turn. I Ubered to a rent-a-car from the Charlottesville, VA airport, near where we’re staying. Went back to the hotel to get everyone and went to meet the people who contacted me. Earlier they indicated they had a tractor and a few of those UTV things and were just generally confident they could get me unstuck. (I was easily seduced by the idea of not having to pay a tow company to try to get me off the mountain.) The individual who contacted me also disclosed that he too had a Tesla (a very early MS) and he encouraged me to figure out how to mount the tow loop on the front bumper by the time I showed up bc he did not know of another way to tow. He also communicated something that I didn’t exactly know how to process at the time.
“We’ll just get some bleach on those tires and you should be fine.” I was in no real position, or mood, to question anything someone who was trying to help us said. We didn’t hesitate to pick up some bleach spray on the way. We also picked up two cases of beer before we meet them at the base of the mountain. They swooped down after I texted we had arrived and in no time they showed up in a cammo UTV with matching hunting onesies and with few niceties they whisked me up the mountain. Those ATV/UTV things are incredible.
We get to the car in the sobering light of the day and a bunch of his friends and wives were are there all observing my disaster. While the sun was out it was actually quite a bit colder than the night before. While still thinking through options the night before, we used the cheap ice scraper to dig out 12” in front of all the tires just in case we were going to give it another go but gave up at the risk of making things worse and also because the other people arrived.
First things first with these incredibly charitable people. I started by following instructions to spray the tires down with the bleach. I covered all the tires half waiting for them all to break out into laughter with the whole thing being a joke. The only reason I even let it get this far was the fact that everyone else, except for the Tesla owner trying to help, was ridiculing the idea. After finishing the spray down we identified a turning point up ahead that they wanted me to aim to drive up-hill to before trying to tow. And I wouldn’t have invested the time to tell this story if it didn’t work! I put the car in slip-start and at first it didn’t make much progress but then in crawled out of the shallow ditch got onto the narrow frozen snow-covered road and–with the accellerator floored—slowly climbed up and around the turn about 500-600 feet where I could turn into a driveway. It was incredible. They then admired the Y and expressed unrelated interest in getting one. After that the tires got another pray down and they said they would follow me down the mountain just to be safe. This is the only photo we have of me coming back down to the rental with escort.
All said and down we were lucky no one got hurt and the vehicle was not seriously damaged. We were lucky someone came up not long after we were stuck and was generous enough to get us down the moutain in one piece—to a hotel at a nearby town no-less. We were then incredibly fortunate someone came across the vehicle in the morning and agreed to organize and help us get it unstuck. We made mistakes in hindsight and I didn’t give nuanced details of our thinking for each decision for the sake of brevity but if you made it this far know that we did think about our decisions and were not just fearlessly looking for trouble/danger.
Needless to say I just ordered a pair of the Tesla snow chains for future insurance. All in, we probably spent close to $500 both in costs incurred trying to unf*ck the situation and also in opportunity costs of the cabin we never made it to. I could have bought two sets of chains had I just thought more about being prepared. I didn’t grow up driving where is snows often and had yet to really be humbled as a driver by winter elements like this. In the future I will have the snow chains, something to easily let pressure out of the front tires, and a bottle of bleach before heading out when I know conditions may call for snow or ice!
