In mid-March of this year following our record winter in the Sierra Nevada and Pine Nut Mountains, I attempted to reach a parcel of land I was interested in buying in the Pine Nuts, so ventured out in the P1000 with my 7 year old son. I had a general idea of snow cover from looking at map layers in Gaia GPS, and upon reaching the snow line at around 6000', the estimates seemed deceivingly accurate when looking at what appeared to be only about 3-6" of snow on the sides of the road and sage brush melting out. We were moving along great and about 100 yards into a snow field following the road when all of a sudden the machine broke through the melt freeze crust and sunk down to the skid plates. Turns out drifted snow was actually 2-3 ft deep on the actual road despite looking shallower on the sloped edges. We were stuck bad.
Tried making a snow anchor to winch off of with some galvanized pipe I found nearby with no success. Also did a lot of digging out, stacking rocks and brush for traction with no success. Snow was getting softer fast. Messaged my wife for help with the inReach, and she got a hold of a friend/neighbor who headed out in an old basically stock CJ-6. He made it to the snow line and started having trouble making forward progress with the snow turning to slush and mud. So he walked the last 1/2 mile to where I was stuck. More digging and attempting to drive out didn't work. So we left the Honda there and would come back in the morning with my JK, hopefully after a refreeze of the snow overnight. Unfortunately, the weather forecast did not call for freezing temps and rain was actually expected for the afternoon.
I had a set of 4 tire chains from a previous set of 37" tires, but am now running 39" tires on the Jeep. So I lengthened 3 chains using cross links from 1 tire chain, and brought out several 30' tow straps. The same friend and I went out early the next morning and made it to where he turned around the day before. I chained up the Jeep on 3 tires and locked front and rear axles the rest of the way. It was a struggle, and lost a chain a couple times spinning tires in spots with about 2 ft of snow and a flowing spring in one area. There were some new vehicle tracks that made it to about 75 yards from the buggy where they had turned around. I proceeded slightly past that turn around point to where I figured I could reach the buggy with my Jeep winch line. Spooled out everything I could, about 100' of line, then linked up 4 tow straps, so over 200' away. My friend got in the buggy to reverse out, and I started to winch him out. Success!
Once pulled out of the stuck spot and closer to me, he managed to turn the buggy around. I turned the Jeep around on the uphill side, and put a tow strap from my rear Jeep bumper to the buggy and we started driving out together. Made it back down to the shallow snow line where I could remove the tire chains and it was smooth sailing from there.
Wish I had pictures from the actual recovery. Below are pics of me stuck and my Jeep used for the recovery. Almost exactly 1 month later I made it out to the property in the Jeep, and on the way back in winched out a decked out Ford Raptor stuck after wanting to take a picture in a snow drift 20 yards off the road. That recovery took my winch with a snatch block, plus his rear winch simultaneously pulling off the Jeep to pull him out. He was stuck less than a mile further from where I had gotten stuck in the Honda.
