Highway 395 runs along the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. Like most people, I’m more familiar with the Western slope of the mountain chain, with its gentle, gradual increase in elevation. The Eastern side is the opposite: There’s a plain, and then there are the mountains, and there is no transition.
While our family vacationing there last week, I got our car stuck in a snowy patch off highway 395. It was the first snow we had encountered on the little dirt road, and the tire marks going through it showed that crossing it was possible. I put the car into four-wheel drive and put my foot on the accelerator. The car immediately got stuck.
We got out to take a look. Because of the late afternoon sun, the snow had turned to slush, which tightly gripped the wheels. The car had sunk into the snow almost a foot deep. For the next 45 minutes, we tried to dig out the wheels using a kids’ ski and putting gravel and sticks under the tires to increase traction. Nothing worked.
Eventually, a family in a Honda Ridgeline pickup truck approached. The father was about my age and wore a tie-dyed sweatshirt. He inspected our car and the snow, asking questions that revealed he knew what he was talking about. I convinced him to use the tow rope I had in the back to try to get us out. He turned his truck around, then we connected our two vehicles and told our families to stand back. He accelerated, but once the rope was taut, his truck started spinning its wheels.
We disconnected the rope and I decided to call a tow truck for the first time in my life. After I had thanked him, the dad drove off on a perpendicular side road in his Honda Ridgeline. The tow truck arrived from the nearby town within 20 minutes and yanked me out within a minute. As the driver wrote me a receipt, I saw a man in a tie-dyed sweatshirt approach through the forest on foot. It was the dad who had earlier tried to help us without success, looking a little embarrassed. “Got stuck in a snow patch myself,” he said. Turning to the tow truck driver, he continued, “do you do a two-for-one discount for dumbasses?” The driver just laughed. “Never in this business!”
Related: Here is how I tried to help a troubled man who got his car stuck in the sand a few hundred miles south from where this story happened.
Nehaveigur 