1997
Coming back to the twin cities from West Yellowstone.
Blizzard warning, Hwy 94 east bound closed at Dickinson
So instead of heeding the warnings of several dozen truckers at the truck stop, we fueled up and a caravan of three trucks with four place trailers decided we knew better than these truckers, and proceeded up to hit hwy 200 across North Dakota.
For the first 75 miles we were laughing at these know it all truckers for being so conservative.
That was until it got dark, and the plows got pulled off the roads completely.
Little drifts began forming on the highway, no big deal, punch right through them. Kept doing that for another hour or so, and then the wind kicked up to the point where we could hardly see the road, but we kept on going.
Soon the drifts started getting to the point where you could really feel the vehicle slowing down and almost getting stuck, but we kept going.
About midnight, the lead truck hit a drift and never came back down. At this point the wind is blowing 45+ mph, and you had to wear a snowmobile helmet and goggles to walk up to the truck infront of you to communicate.
So there we were One truck + trailer stuck up in a 4+ drift that measured 1,000' long and about a foot of snow on the road to boot. We were totally screwed. You could not see 5' in any direction. You could not back up these trialers or turn around in the highway, drifts formed around the "non stuck" trucks and trialers within 15 minutes.
So we sat there in the middle of Hwy 200 idling for a few hours. We figured no big deal, we had just fueled up all the trucks, had another 30 gallons of diesel fuel, if we played our cards right, we could wait this thing out. The younger guys in our group got tired of waiting and wanted to unload sleds and make a run for it. I said "run where?, you cannot see 5' infront of you, chances are you will hit a barbed wire fence, or drop off into a ditch,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, nobody is going anywhere, we all stay with the vehicles"
Then a farmer appeared at the far end of the snow drift that I had just crossed by foot. He had a 10'x8' three stage snow blower hooked up to a huge tractor. He blew a path right up to the stuck truck, and proceeded to pull all of the trucks through the drift down into the path on the hwy.
He sized our group up and said "I would offer you guys a place to stay for the night, but I have a 16,18,20 year old girls, and you P.U.S.S hounds are not getting 100 yards from the farm house". He proceeded to direct us to a hotel in Harvey? (I think that was the name of the town)
That was the famous blizzard of 1997 and I still can picture standing down in the path of where the snowblower carved a path in this drift, and watching the tractor pull the truck and trailer that was stuck 5' above the road.
It took us two more days to get home because the roads had drifts up to the BOTTOM of the bridge decks on the highways that needed to be cleared.
