Don’t gun it. Back up slowly, into the snowbank for a few inches, and then put it in gear drive forward gently. Go slow. Hopefully, the added momentum will carry you a little bit further than the place you got stuck. Repeat rocking action as necessary. Do not let the wheels spin, or you melt some snow that’ll promptly re-freeze, leaving you both stuck in a snowbank AND spinning your wheels on ice. If there’s so much snow that the drive wheels are being lifted off the ground, you will need to get out of the car and dig until your wheels are back on the ground.
All those years in Montreal had to teach me some kinda useful skill.
That reminds me of one of the wildest times I’ve ever had while driving on snow, while heading north from Montreal.
It was in the middle of winter, early in 1973, and I had a 1967 Saab which had a small three-cylinder, two-stroke engine, and front wheel drive. A friend and I had decided to go skiing on Mount Tremblant, some seventy miles or so north of Montreal. By the time we got to Montreal, however, it was snowing hard, HARD, but my freind and I decided to go for it, and so we kept heading north, at night.
By the time we got about halfway to Mount Tremblant, we were the only vehicle on the road, a major highway, except for an occasional, slow moving big truck with a snow plow. The snow was so deep that it was difficult to tell the difference between where the road was, and where it was not! Then, just as we were slowly passing one of the snow plow trucks, the driver of the truck waved his arm frantically out of his window, and my friend and I assumed he meant to get our attention. So, I stopped the car, and the truck stopped, too.
The snow was so deep that I couldn’t easily get the door open, so I rolled down the window, and got out of the car that way. I then walked over to the nearby truck, where the truck driver warned me about the extreme weather condition, and asked me if my friend and I would rather ride in the truck, as that might be a safer thing to do. However, I assured him that we would be OK, and, after thanking him, I went back to my car and crawled back through the window.
Actually, the truck driver really had tried to do the right thing. However, I put the car in gear, and onward we went. And, it was VERY slow going. It was about half a mile before I could shift into second gear, and, of four gears, I was just able to get it into third gear, for the rest of the journey. BTW, apparently that Swedish made car was designed for deep snow, as the bottom of the car resembled a flat sled, of sorts, and by building up enough speed, the car actually lifted itself and planed across the snow, a fact that we were lucky to discover!
We spent the next two days skiing, and the roads were well plowed by the time we headed home.
That was the mistake, right there. Any Canadian who has done much highway driving in winter has spent hours following snowplows at 30 miles an hour. If you stay right there, you will arrive at your destination. Late. The decision to pass or crawl behind the plows is one that requires careful consideration. The driver’s wave was him trying to tell you that you’d made the wrong choice for the conditions.
Those plows are engineered to work at 30 or so miles an hour. If they go any faster the snow goes up into the windshield instead out to the side.