DANGER! Road Closed: (Ahem, not for us)

Perhaps we should have turned around at the “Road Closed” sign.

But, no. Not this tribe.

We were arrogant, citified, representing LA and Vegas, baby. 

So what if we were 8,000 feet above sea level, on the outskirts of rugged Zion National Park, negotiating a twisting, relentless up-hill track to marvel at its majestic iron-red views?

We were off the grid, taking a path-not-normally-taken, one known mostly to locals and few enterprising outsiders, where maybe a handful of cars passed in late March.

Then -- Bam! -- there was the Utah Department of Transportation sign, warning of impassable snowed-in roads ahead. 

The driver hailed from Ohio, the guy riding shotgun from Upstate New York.

We knew snow.

Heavy-dump Lake Effect snows.

No scairdy-cat signs could stop us.

We blundered on in our weak-wristed, two-wheel-drive rental SUV, springtime vacationers at long last breaking the bonds of a long year of virus quarantining. 

We wanted hikes to die for, far from the rest of the madding human rabble. We wanted Sweet Mother of Jesus natural landscapes that sent you scrambling for your iPhone camera.

We wanted them now. And we wanted them all for ourselves.

So of course we headed for one of the most popular hiking destinations on the blue planet.

Yep, we were a rag-tag, presumptuous flock. 

First came the Commander, a bossy little Beijing-born know-it-all who never faced a fact she didn’t know already, a kind of a head chef without any kitchen experience.

She was the ring leader.

There was Old Fool, (the Commander’s shameless errand-runner); Shower Boy, a 9-to-5 piece-of-work so fastidious he's taken showers at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

There was Vanity, a shameless teenaged operator who goes nowhere without makeup; who longs to become a CIA operative — or is it a Mafia gun moll? -- depending on what cable TV series she’s watching, the Sopranos or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

And finally, there was the Chef, our quiet voice-of-reason, who fed us five-star meals and hustled up a mean steak-sandwich for the road.

Five unschooled, overconfident tourist souls on a path toward disaster.

Really, one simply cannot go wrong hiking in southwestern Utah. 

But, of course, right off the bat, there were certain irritants.

Old Fool made a map-reading blunder (no Merriweather Lewis, he), promising a to-die-for slot canyon hike in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

But it was an assurance on which, in the end, he could not deliver.

The Commander was not amused.

Inside Bryce Canyon, Old Fool slipped on some ice and fell on his sizable behind in front of hundreds of people, in the end injuring little more than his ego. Then Vanity’s stomach got queasy from drinking too much morning coffee. She started guzzling pesto-bismol from the bottle, a trick she learned from her father, Shower Boy.

Suddenly, she stopped and insisted she simply could not go on.

Not another step.

It was drama made for the Shakespearean stage.

In Zion, the Commander refused to set foot on any cattle-packed shuttle bus, with a million other wheezing COVID-carriers.

So there went those hikes.

That’s when Old Fool located a little-known road that would leave the hordes behind.

We were all laughing, so proud of ourselves, when we encountered that ominous warning of impassable road ahead. 

Proceed at your own risk, it said.

We did.

At first, we found a few patches of snow, nothing our 2020 GMC Ignoramus SUV couldn’t handle. Then the tarmac vanished entirely, the icy foot-high snow cover scraping the bottom of our low-slung vehicle with a sickening noise.

The Chef wanted no part of this. 

Go back, she said.

Shower Boy was behind the wheel; with Old Fool by his side. Both ignored her.

Then one patch stopped us cold. The SUV was in deeper snow, its wheels spinning helplessly.

“Oh, good!” Vanity exclaimed. “We’re having a snow adventure!”

Old Fool got out kicked at the snow, which was so frozen it sent him shambling off in the distance, yelping at a near-broken big toe.

An hour later, we were still stuck; gloveless, underdressed, cursing a stiff wind.

Nearby sat a sign for Whispering Pines, a new community that obviously attracted summer dwellers, because for miles either way, there was nothing.

We’d gathered sticks and rocks and logs to give the tires traction.

Nothing worked.

Shower Boy sighed.

“This is no minor predicament,” he said.

Vanity was inside the SUV.

“Anybody want any sunflower seeds?” she called out.

And yet all was not lost.

We still had daylight and a near-full tank of gas. But we began to consider the worst — that nobody would come and we’d be stuck there overnight.

Finally, Old Fool blundered down the road, past vacant houses, finally finding an abandoned snow machine the size of a pickup truck.

In the back were two shovels.

Old Fool swiped (and later returned) both and, looking over his shoulder, fearing the sounds of gun-shot reprisal, limped back to the wounded vehicle.

The shovels proved as worthless as the logs and the sticks, no matter how hard the Commander and the Chef tried to unblock the bottom of that SUV.

No matter how many sunflower seeds Vanity ate.

No, this tale does not end with five hapless, frozen corpses; one wearing too much makeup. 

People did finally pass by — God-fearing Utah residents with four-wheel drive trucks. They took one look at our pathetic predicament, our rental SUV wallowing like a farm hog in its own excrement, and asked:

“Didn’t you see the sign back there?”

Then some millennials gave us the bad news.

Our SUV was high-centered; the frozen snow held the chassis so high the tires could not gain purchase. They worried that even their Toyota 4-runner would get stuck.

Still, they helped us push our SUV out of the snow and we all yelled like high-school cheerleaders. We mushed forward, only to get stuck another 100 feet down the road. 

Finally, two hunter-types driving Jeeps with oversized tires pulled our lame asses out for good. They even stuck around to make sure we headed back toward where we’d come from.

They were locals. They knew snow and bad weather and didn’t take chances.

“Didn’t you see the sign back there?” they asked.

So did we learn our lesson?

Sort of.

Next time we pull any arrogant, don’t-tell-me, just plain city-foolish decision far outside our regular turf, we’ll do it in Utah, where the folks are accommodating and they carry tow chains.