This story reminds me of a time back when I was living in CO up in the mountains. One of our cell sites was located at the top of a ridge over Glenwood Springs. Next to our site was an AT&T long distance microwave station. They would use a helicopter to get in during the winter. I had four modes of transportation to use throughout the year - Bronco, snowmobile, atv, and an Argo. During the winter, I pretty much used the snowmobile for most of my sites.
At this particular site, you have to park off one of the dirt roads and snowmobile the rest of the way. It's probably a 3 mile ride in to the site. YOU CANNOT DRIVE. Anyways, during one pretty frigid day, I was leaving the site and heading back to my truck when I come across two young guys, their dog, and a stuck Jeep Wrangler. They had been trying to dig their way out to get turned around. The snow depth varied all along the road, but I would say they got caught in about 2-3 feet of snow. There was no way they were getting out that day. I had to ride three up on my sled with their dog running along(and about to collapse from exhaustion) all the way back to my truck. If I hadn't been there at that particular time on that day, they would have been in a world of hurt. They didn't have any cold weather gear, no gloves, nada. Just their jeans and ski coats. If they would have walked out, I don't know what shape they would have been in. And there's no telling how long they would have stuck it out in their Jeep.
I ended up driving them to one of their homes and told them good luck on getting their Jeep out. I gave them my number to let me know how they were going to get their Jeep back. They ended up having to hire a guy with a large snowcat to go up there and get their Jeep pulled around and then towed it down back to the main road.
I'm not sure what the Kim's were driving, but it's quite possible that James Kim thought he could drive through anything. I have two other personal stories(where I got stuck on closed roads) that I'll have to relate some other time. I too thought I could drive my way through the snow to get to where I was going. Dumb dumb dumb.