Got to agree a shock to the system certainly opens your eyes to the pitfalls here.
newmercman:
I tried to put it across as best I could, but really words cannot describe it
Well it came across well this end! I felt the frustration and the sheer ‘best get on with it’ determination reading those words of yours. Having been in one or two scrapes on my own many years ago, realisation soon creeps in that if you dont get on with it, then there is no-one around to do it for you.
To be honest it came as a complete shock to actually get stuck in the first place, it’s only the start of winter and there’s not much snow around really, I’ve seen much worse weather before and never had a problem, even years ago running to Italy through Swiss at less than 28tons, I’d been in much worse conditions, it was the last big hill before I hit the wide open Prairies too, so it did come as a bit of a shock 
But that’s British Columbia for you, the old roads over the mountains in Europe are much more difficult to drive along, here it’s a lot of dual carriageways that you can come down at 60mph with the Jake Brake howling, rather than the creep down at 5mph hills in the Alps etc, but in BC they have weather like nowhere else, the amount of snow that falls in a single storm is mental 
I did the same trip last week and the roads were fine on the way out, on the way home it started snowing so much as soon as it got dark at 5pm that I couldn’t make out what was road and what was ditch, so I parked it and had another go in the daylight, my hill was totally covered in snow, but I got up without any bother at all, although the old blood pressure got a bit high and I don’t think I’ve ever gripped a steering wheel so tight in my life