Loaded. Heading up the hill. A day in the Jeep priceless!

Back home and ready for a good night's sleep after a good workout today! Very glad John and family are okay and I hope everyone else had an uneventful trip back home.

For those of us who couldn't make it, what happened to John and Family?

kris_olof said
I hung back at the camp fire once we heard that the road was closed. There was a Tacoma that was parked and talking with us who was the only rig of 8 who had made it back in 3 hrs. A few of them made it after being pulled out by Jeff and others at Posse Towing Service. When Jeff went to hook up to the next guy in their group he said they were fine likely out of some Toyota pride and a hatred of ram trucks. We sat by the fire and BSd for another hour before their leader aired down and headed back up the trail.  By this time we had been clued in that there we missing snowmobilers. Another hour by the fire and we started to hear someone screaming for help a ways down the hill. Girlfriend of missing snowmobilers was getting hysterical and screaming. The two remaining toyotas and I went down the hill. 3 of us split up and agreed to walk a ways down the 3 ways snowmobile track led off from the location. I pulled up my phone and saw the track I was following was level on the Topo map so I drove in previous tire tracks about a mile until the snowmobile tracks turned around. When I got back the rest of the toyotas were free and one of the Toyota guys sent out had reported from a portable Ham that the snowmobilers had been found. They had gotten stuck trying to climb back up a hill around 11am and finally decided to hike out around 4:30pm and weren't found until 8pm. They were exhausted so I gave them food while one of the Toyota guys wife's calmed the girlfriend. The F350 with chains towing the empty snowmobile trailer made slow progress down the hill and had to stop 4 times to fix chains each time with the boyfriend being more exhausted and agitated. Finally around 9:15 we rolled onto the dam to pull chains off and air up. At this point the girlfriend walked over and asked if I could give her a ride to her truck. I said yes and proceed to air up my tires. She went back to help pull chains off the truck and a talking turned to screaming. I quickly finished airing up and rolled alongside them with the window down. Seeing they had an audience she hopped back into the truck and he quickly finished pulling the chains off, said thank you for the help, and then drove off. At this point my tired brain put together that her asking for a ride when I first pulled up might have been a clue as to what was happening. I pulled up to the stop sign at the end of Mormon imagrant just in time to see him slam on the brakes about 50 yards from the corner and push her out of the truck. I picked her up and then headed the other direction on sly park rd towards Placerville. When we got to placerville she calmed down enough to talk about what happened and called and booked a room in Folsom where she could get a ride from a friend in the morning. What I gather happened was he couldn't handle her hysteria after being left alone in a truck all day. It escalated to him threatening to pull over and get the gun out of the back before she finally said to stop and let her out.

I did his contact info and an approximate GPS location of the stuck snowmobiles which based on the maps would be a super easy recovery as there is a level road 100yds downhill of their location. However given the details how the rest of last night went I have opted to not get involved nor involve the Posse in a recovery.  

Oh my gosh Kris!  Ur kindness is wonderful but what a sticky stupid mess!  I am so sorry u got wrapped up in that.  We are so glad u stayed in touch with us till u were safe! We waited for u...  

To echo Mr. Sharkbyte's comments, the food was so good. I had a food coma there for a while after getting home. And I have a newfound suspicion of Dale's character after the anti-guacamole comments. . .