Battlesnow Caralitca (Part 1)

The blizzard completely covered the roads, so Mike directed Ivan with GPS. We were confident that we would reach the cabin despite the visibility being nearly nonexistent.

Moments later we were outside the car in the blizzard. We tried to move snow from the wheels of the car but the snow is falling faster than we can dig. Behind us in another car, Mark tried to back up so we could try moving our car back and forth to get it moving again — he became stuck too. We got in front of Mark’s car and pushed while he pressed the gas.

“Monica!”, screamed Mark while the wheels spun in the snow.

It was no use; both cars were stuck. We formed a group of volunteers from both cars and started our trek through the snowstorm. We jogged until we were above knee-deep in snow and slowed our pace to not burn out too fast. The wind slowed us down but we pushed forward until we reached the cabin. The warmth greeted us and tempted us to settle.

In the cabin Raul threw his wet shoes in the dryer while Mark and I made calls. Mark’s car was insured to be towed out of the snowstorm; mine wasn’t, though it was insured if there’s damage due to the snow. Weird. We kept the others in the cars updated on the situation despite the reception on our phones going in and out. No tow truck wanted to come out; the storm was too much.

We devised a plan and set things in motion. Raul grabbed his shoes that were still wet and we went out the door. Tim drove Raul and I as close as possible to the others without losing a third car; we hiked the rest of the way. The blizzard worsened and stung our faces and lungs as we pushed on. The visibility caused us to constantly bump into each other and patches of ice made us constantly slip. We reached the others and grabbed all our bags and hiked our way back to Tim. We made them go in the car to drive back to the cabin; we were going to walk back, but Tim rolled down his window.

“I’ll drop them off and pick you guys up,” he informed us.

He drove off, and instead of waiting, we walked back to the car and grabbed a few more things that were left. As we walked to where Tim was going to meet us, I turned back to look at our abandoned cars — the snow was overtaking them; they were almost completely covered. The snowstorm won.