25 hours getting the car out of the snow

Feb 12, 2017 snowstorm Kennebunkport Maine

I’ve been driving up to Southern Maine on weekends to visit my Dad and decided to go despite the incoming storm. My brother and sister-in-law live near him and I was to pick him up on the way. I knew the roads were bad when I slid past the Route 9 turn in Wells but the drive was otherwise uneventful. I picked Geoff up and we went on. After cribbage accompanied by their shared stock of unprintable insults, I dropped Geoff at his place and that’s when the fun started.

That’s actually a fairly steep rise onto Route 9. I’ve been on that road many times in my life and know it as a fast but also slippery road. I often drive in the snow and know to take an incline fairly aggressively. But I was cautious and slow and didn’t make it. Backing up with no visibility I ended up over the shoulder.

I grumbled my way back to my brother’s and he came to the rescue I thought. But he slid off the other shoulder. It was some slippery. And he couldn’t get back over so decided to strike out to his old fire road. Now it’s dark by the way.

I trudged back to the house and waited for the sound of the tractor. After a while my brother showed up and took me through the woods to where the tractor lay at a 40’ angle, left wheels deep in the mud, right wheels in the air. I didn’t take any pictures that night but imagine in the picture below that the tractor is in the stream at that angle. That’s the 700 lb snowblower attachment which we had to detach to get the tractor out.

We worked for hours with winches, 4x4’s, chains, etc. to try to move the tractor and then to remove the snowblower and try again. This necessitated long walks through heavy snow with heavy stuff, still in the dark. I think I met my fitness goals for the day, or week. And what I learned about my brother is that he never gives up. We did it.

The next morning, with another foot of snow completely covering evidence of our trials, we needed to recover the snowblower to open the road enough for AAA to come to the rescue. That’s Geoff cutting a new road down to the scene.

Using his electric winch we alternately pulled on either side until we got it close enough to pick up with the shovel and haul it out. This took a couple three hours.

The road is now clear but icy. We tried to warn the AAA guy not to come down but he was too fast. Here he is stuck but still trying to pull my car out. The winch is around a tree for leverage.

Now you see both AAA trucks. Tony, up the hill, is the acknowledged tow master in the area. He reveled in the challenge.

Geoff on the scene on his wife’s grandfather’s 1968 ski doo.

As the second evening came on, Tony did his thing, again using trees as leverage for a nice slow winch. And I high tailed it out of there. 25 hours of Maine in the winter at my brother’s.