If April Showers bring May Flowers, What do June Snows Bring?

You know that 10,000 ft above sea level, side of a mountain looking straight down a 300 ft cliff in your Saturn Ion after you had just driven past a sign that definitely didn't have a picture of your vehicle, "What the hell am I doing" feeling? Ok, well maybe it isn't as common as I might have perceived at first, but it really is quite the rush.  I felt this rush for most of my day on Saturday as I decided to go exploring in the vast Wyoming wilderness.

On my adventure last Saturday I encountered snow.  At first I was excited. For a kid from Oklahoma, the snow comes few and far between, so whenever I saw piles of snow in the mountains I instantly pulled over the car and started to play in it.  A little childish yes, but still fun.  Now if this were the end of my snow story, things would be great. Sadly though I must continue.  As my Saturn Ion and I both continued to try and be things we are not, on off road vehicle and a mountain man, we came upon a section of road covered in snow with tire tracks going through it.  The snow was fairly deep, but to turn around and go back would cost me an extra 25 miles of mountain terrain to cross.  I should have turned around.  About 10 ft into this snow my car came to a stop.  A complete stop that is, where it will go neither forward nor backward.  Hmm... After 30 minutes of trying to solve this problem I was faced with a dilemma. Do I call someone from work and open myself up to be ridiculed for another 10 weeks, or do I go Man vs Wild on the situation? You guessed right, I took on the mountain in a fierce battle.

Step 1: Identify the problem - I was stuck.

Step 2: Ration Food and Water. You never know how long you are going to be out there.

Step 3: Become Oriented with your Surrounding - There was snow all around.  

Step 4: Locate items that could be useful; hammer, sticks, baby pine trees, rocks, snow, 

Step 5: Go MacGyver and get out of the snow

So here is what I did.  I got the jack out of the back of my car and lifted the front end of my car.  I wandered around in the forest until I found a handful of branches and put them under my tires.  I then cut down a few small pine trees to lay down as a track to get the car backed out.  Guess what? It worked! I was free and took the long way back around and safely arrived back in Rawlins.  Crisis averted once again.

So I know there is one question that is still bugging you.  Did I go fishing? Yes.  I suck at fishing.