Good ideas!

I had never heard of a "flip-flop winch" before. Brilliant! Though it looks like a two-person operation to me.

1) Vehicle Recovery:

I agree with Chaos -- jack up the vehicle. Try to build a platform under the wheels. Break up the "chock" behind each wheel.

Unfortunately, even with a good shovel or a pickaxe, frozen soil is really difficult to chop through. A beater hatchet or ripping hammer can work well. I suppose the tire iron could be used as a crude chisel. It would take a lot of force and patience. Watch out for the sidewall of the tire!

I'll bet the vehicle has all-season tires (which really means three-season; bloody awful in winter). One trick is to drop the tire pressure to increase flexibility and traction.

2) Staying Warm:

I see a lot of dry grass ready to be harvested. Excellent insulation! Stuff it between layers of clothing (it's scratchy). Pile it in the vehicle. It's messy, but at this point who cares? You can detail it later.

3) Water and Fire:

Dehydration is insidious in the cold: you don't feel thirsty but it messes with your reasoning and your body's ability to stay warm and metabolize fats (most of us have a small surplus).

There is a lot of standing dead spruce in the background. The vehicle offers options for starting a fire. I guess it's possible to melt snow indirectly in a glass or plastic drink container, but far from ideal.

First, unless I had some reason to be on lesser traveled roads, my GPS would be keeping me on main roads where at the very least a snow plow might find me (hopefully without tossing me off the road). If I were (not in my right mind and) intentionally driving the backroads of Manitoba, the kit in my truck would do okay. My winter kit would be integrated (adding my parka, boots, heavier gloves and additional wool clothing). The shovel, axe and bow saw are already part of the kit.

The flip-flop winch suggestion is good. Thers’s a YouTube for that...
Off Grid Winch: Making a Flip Flop Winch :

Question: What weight line would be recommended for fabricating the winch? A dedicated tow strap is probably overkill.

Important lesson here. I know the partial-deflation to improve traction trick that dougwalkabout mentions. Sitting in my living room, under no stress, I didn’t think of it or mention it.

It’s a really good idea to mentally walk through all of what you might do, so that you make as many decisions in advance of a stressful situation as possible.

Great point about frozen ground.

A flip-flop winch can be done by one person at need. I wouldn’t want to try it with less than 2000lb test line and 3000lb test would be better. While you can get it done with dynamic rope, static rope makes it a whole lot easier.

So 1/4" x 50' 7700LBs Synthetic Winch Line Cable Rope should work?
TIA.

Gearing up, looking for good insurance.

It certainly should be strong enough, and 50’ seems like a good length. I might get that myself.

Edited to add: Make sure you have some way to connect it to your vehicle.

Another trick for getting unstuck: turn off the vehicle's traction control. There is a button on many vehicles. While it's a great system for preventing a skid at higher speeds, it does so by removing power from the wheels. Sometimes you need those wheels to spin a little and chew through the crud to get you moving.

That synthetic winch rope in the Amazon link from Russ is not the one you want. That rope has a thimble (buckle) on one end and probably has a flat connector on the other end to attach to the winch.

What you want is a synthetic rope extension that has a thimble on each end like this one.

https://www.amazon.com/Astra-DepotS-Extension-Synthetic-Stainless/dp/B07MG8RVCX



As most newer vehicles do not have many to tow point options, an axle strap or 2 is very handy, but first make sure you know where you can attach to your vehicle axle or frame.

https://www.amazon.com/Keeper-Original-Version-04228-Premium/dp/B00I5HRTU4

To tie everything together, use a shackle - but you first need to know the max diameter of the above rope thimble. Hard to tell in the images, but looks like it may accept at least a 5/8 inch shackle pin such as this one.

https://www.amazon.com/Fuzbaxy-Shackle-Threaded-Rigging-Vehicle/dp/B07PXW94G6.

Another option is a Clevis hook.

https://www.amazon.com/Curt-Manufacturing-81560-Safety-Capacity/dp/B000LOLX2E

So the setup would be:

Axle strap on vehicle>>>Shackle or Clevis hook>>>synthetic rope.

I run a very similar setup, but use recovery straps as the synthetic rope is meant only for winching / straight pulls and not to be used as a stretchable / jerking recovery strap.

Above all, practice, practice before using in an emergency.

Good catch. Dual connectors/thimbles is a better option. I may look into getting a dedicated tow strap too. More pricey, but as you indicate, for actual towing, that light line would not be as durable and they always fail at the worst possible time.