After a long nights sleep after finally getting home around 1am last night, here is what happened. I wish I would have taken some pictures, but they wouldn't have been too exciting.
Here is a picture of his cherokee with my old MJ.
So i guess their trip started in Vancouver around noon, they left heading up to Lolo Pass Road, outside of Zigzag, OR, located just north of Mount Hood. Apparently they started at the Zigzag Mountain store going NE up Lolo Pass road, then continuing up until they ended up on what I believe was National Forest Development Road 1828. I believe they drove to the end of the road or someways down the road, about an estimated 10 miles or so from the Zigzag mountain store, when they turned around and started heading back.
The conditions on the road were not that bad until you got to about the last 3-4 miles. There was a solid base, with about 10-12" of wet powder on top. I think it snowed on Wednesday, thursday or friday.
The problem that they had is that the road has a slope going down, i don't know how far on one side, and the road is somewhat curvy, with some inclines and declines.
They came around one corner and didn't get the speed to make it up one of the inclines. they made it about a third of the way up, then started to back down, he wasn't able to stay in the previous trail, because it looks like a few people have had issues at this spot. So he started sliding towards the sloping side of the road. A little further every time he tried to pull forward and get back to the center of the road. He stopped trying as his back passenger tire began to get near the edge of the road. This happened at about 2pm. He anchored off the back of the jeep to a tree on the highside of the road, after trying to use branches and firewood to get traction.
At 4pm they decided to walk out since it started getting dark, they walked out between 2-3 miles, when some kids coming down off another side road picked them up and drove them out to Zigzag Mountain Store.
At around 5pm, he called me and told me he was stuck and at the Mountain store. I didn't know they had went up to the mountain so it took me awhile to get my wife's jeep packed up and ready to go, it doesn't have a winch but does have a few good towing points and BFG MT's, but i did have to switch out a tire before i left.
Wife's current jeep.
Well I got to about a mile from the house and had a small issue come up with the jeep....
So i turned around and went back to the house where I had just parked my new jeep after driving up to Tacoma, WA and picking it up that morning.
At around 7pm, I stopped by my parents house to pick up a com-a-long, then posted up my message on the board and got started on the drive up to Zigzag.
It took me about an hour and a half to make it to where i picked up my brother and his friends. I did text with Crazymoose at the time and went out of cell phone range shortly after, I wanted to at least see where his jeep was to see if I could get him out alone.
We made the drive up to his jeep pretty easily, but on my new jeep i do not yet have the tow points necessary to pull out, so I was able to get around his jeep and drive down and turn around, then came back to where the jeep was.
The road was in pretty slick shape, and in order to get back around him going back up hill, i did end up having to chain up for the first time ever! This did give me enough traction to get around him and back up the road, after digging out a good line for my tires in the snow.
From the time we got back to the jeep and then got it unstuck, it took about 2.5 hours.
Since i couldn't pull him out and the angle to do so was bad anyway, we ended up tieing off the rear of the jeep using tow lines(to keep it from sliding off the hill), chaining up the front of his rig, digging out all four tires down to the paved road(at least the wheels that were on the road) and about 15 feet path in front of each tire. We used a jack to lift the jeep and placed the fire wood under the two back tires.
With two of us pushing, i had him move the jeep about 8-10" at a time so we could move the firewood to keep him above the snow and keep traction to move.
We finally got back to the Zigzag mountain store at about 11:15pm.
Then I got home around 1:15am.
I believe he now knows how stupid it was in the first place to be taking off up into the snow with a single rig and with only snow clothes, flashlights, water and firewood. They would have been fine if they would have stayed with the jeep overnight, but I am glad that I was able to make it up and get them out.
If they would have had snow chains, a shovel, a jack and an additional tow strap i think they could have gotten themselves out, if they had a little more experience. But i made him promise they would at a minimum take two rigs and have the right equipment next time.
I guess I should have expected this when I talked half my family into buying jeeps! Between my parents, brother, sister and my family, we have a combined 7 jeeps(5 XJ's, 1 MJ and 1 ZJ).
Next time I will wait until i can get another jeep to go with me before i venture on another rescue run, there was a few minutes when i thought i may be spending a night in the woods because i was having a hard time getting around him on the road on the incline.
Anyway, Thank you for the text messages and offers to help last night. I have learned that I will keep the thread more updated next time, because i did lose cell coverage, I will post an additional contact and also show my wife how to post on here so she can update the post if she hasn't heard from me after a few hours.
Just because i love my new XJ, here is a picture of our current herd!
