My latest recoveries are 2 cars and a diesel truck.
On MLK day Gunnison got a small snow storm. Not even an inch but because it had been around 10° on the highs and -20° as the lows. All the snow that hit the ground turned into a sheet of ice on highway 50. I got a call from another student saying that their significant other was off the side of the highway and needs a tow. As I was on my way out there we got word that a Park Service Range was attempting to get them out but I know that do to some legal reasons they are not allowed to pull with there vehicle without special permission. He was attempting to use Maxtrax to get the vehicle out with no luck. When I arrived there was another car in the ditch on the same turn of the highway. And this turn is a perfect storm for cars to go off. It's a fast 60+mph turn (when dry) that is downhill and off camber towards the inside of the turn. Likely the first car (grey sedan) was coming around the turn, the tail started to slide and the driver panicked and hit the brakes causing the rear to come all the way around and go nose first into the ditch 90° to the road.
The second vehicle Subaru WRX likely saw the police lights off the Park Ranger hit the brakes and spun of into the ditch just not nearly as far off the road.
When I got there and was walking around the scene, and talking to the Park Ranger (how handed the scene off to me because I was there and knew what I was doing to get the road open faster than calling multiple tow trucks and dealing with them taking a couple hours to get there. Everyone was having trouble just simply walking on the road because it was a half inch of snow covered in a layer of ice. No plows had been by and there was no gravel or anything on the road. So my first idea was to out chains on. I put all 4 tires chains on to get any sort of grip on the ice and without them I doubt I could have done the recovery.
It was about this time when the State Trooper showed up. In which I explained what my plan was and he gave me the option of being able to fully shut down that section of highway for a couple minutes to get the cars off. Which was so cool to have that permission.
The WRX was just a little bit of the road, but the front tires were slightly off the ground, just enough that it couldn't get traction to back out of the ditch. Luckily he knew exactly where the tow pin was and I know that they are just big enough to fit the pin of a D-Ring through. My plan was to just use low range and give him a just slow tug out of the ditch. I still had a tiny bit of tires soon even with the chains, but one they dug into the pavement under the snow the Jeep pulled the WRX out at 1000rpm nice and slowly. So he was back on his way nice and quickly.
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Unfortunately my recoveries are not usually picture heavy as I am usually just focused on getting it done quickly.
The second vehicle was much deeper in the snow and thanks to Chrysler's cheapness in the 90s this sedan didn't have a single tow point on it anywhere. A gentleman who was helping me and I looked for a good 20 minutes and found nothing under underneath it. So they next option was to find the strongest point to be able to pull off with the lowest change of vehicle damage. This ended up being the rear subframe in between where the suspension components attach to.
I definitely knew that the winch was by far the best option for this recovery as I needed as much control to get this car to pivot up and out of the snow as it was bellied out.
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With the winch I was able to get it to come out nice and slowly without much drama. Once it was out the driver got a taking to be the local state trooper and a warning that if they ever came back up to Gunnison again they better have snow tires and not cheap bald summer tires. He also gave me permission to escort the driver back to Gunnison until the road unfroze the next day.
It was not my most difficult recoveries but due to only being able to close of the highway for short amounts of time. I had to make sure that everything was as set up as possible before I closed it down to pull.
It was also one of the colder recoveries as it was -15° one the sun went down and being on Blue Mesa Reservoir we had winds up to 20-30mph for most of the recovery.
In the end I was there for an hours and 45 minutes. And not a single plow truck ever came by so the state trooper had some choice words to the head of CDOT on the phone during the recovery.
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