I don't really know what drives people to end up on these trails in the winter. To be fair, that trail - and many around that area - are just dirt roads with houses on them in the summer and they are on google maps. Lots of new construction out in that area as the rich folk gentrify the mountainside.
I'm registered on offroad portal, some recoveries come in through that system. This one came in on a community facebook group, which unfortunately has a much lower bar both for communication and quality of responders. Lots of folk replying on this request, nobody taking initiative to get out there (other than that guy with the Cherokee, who wasn't actually equipped to handle the situation). People saying "I don't have a winch but I can come out with my dually" or "I have a power wagon just let me know??". There's no way to say this without sounding like a bit of a jerk, those people mean well but they really just become a liability as well as muddying the communications of who is actually engaging.
One time I was setting up to pull a 1 ton dually out of a snowbank, we were trying to figure out how to hook it up as he had some odd hidden hitch that we couldn't angle my shackle receiver into. Some guy comes up in a subaru and insists that we can insert the strap into the 2" receiver and put the pin through the eye in the strap! I kind of went off on him, sure that would work for a golf cart on ice but this is easily 7k lbs with an axle buried. You want to watch someone die today? It's not even noon.
I digress, this is rambling.
