My Jeep club held a one day off-road trip a few weeks ago in the the Wharton State forest here in NJ. The park is mostly sugar sand and good old Jersey mud with some water crossings. Many of us are very familiar with this area. We hold an annual week-end event here every year.
We had almost 10 Jeeps of various models (Full size/Cherokee/Wrangler) out for a semi-moderate day of trail riding. Some of the vehicles are bone stock and some are highly modified. Most of what we did in the early part of the day was very mild, we hit some patches of ice but nothing too extreme.
During the second part of the day we ventured into a bit of more difficult section of the park. At one point we came around a bend into a section we call "1/4 mile road" that can be pretty difficult due to lots of water and mud. On this day we found it completely frozen. The weather had been cold for the 2 weeks prior and we had some snow and freezing rain just a few days before the run. To our surprise we found a fellow just sitting there.
We found out that he and a friend had been out the day before in 2 different vehicles, neither one of them was an experienced off-roader and both had stock Nissans. Neither of them had any recovery equipment or survival gear with them. They both got stuck big time. This fellow's friend had a cell phone with him and was lucky enough to be in a area where there was coverage. Somehow he got ahold of a tow truck to come and get them. The friend's truck was at the start of the road and the tow truck driver charged him $125 to pull him to an area off the ice. The fellow that was sitting there had been able to get to a point further down the road and was up to his front axle through the ice. His rear axle was not through the ice but the bald tires on it just kept spinning on the ice. Tow truck driver wanted $425 to pull him out. He didn't have that much with him.
His friend offered to drive him home and seek some help with getting him pulled out the next day. He didn't want to leave his truck for the night so he stayed in it.
By the time we found him (around 1:00PM) he was cold/hungry/thirsty. He had spent the night in his truck with absolutely nothing except for the clothes on his back. Temps that night had gone down into the low 20's. Every hour or so he would start the truck and get a bit warm. Needless to say he was one happy guy to see a herd of Jeeps with all sorts of equipment coming around the bend. We gave him some hot soup and wrapped him in a blanket while a few of the guys winched him out. He was on his way home in less than 1/2 hour.
These guys did some many different things wrong. This fellow was extremely lucky that we found him, he could have easily been stuck for another night. He had no map with him and didn't have a clue which way to go even if he had decided to try to walk out. No food, no water, nothing to keep warm.
Amazing.