"It feels so good to have a bed to sleep in!" On the morning of the 18th, reporters met Shen Xiaoquan and his team of six from "Off-Road E-Community" at a hotel. They had been stranded in the snow for 15 hours and were rescued around 4 a.m. on the 18th.
Shen Xiaoquan explained that they were members of the "Chifeng Brigade of Off-Road E-Community," with him as the team leader. This adventure was to scout the route for a group off-road activity for the Chifeng Winter Fishing Festival on the 29th.
At around 1 p.m. on the 17th, the six set off in two standard off-road vehicles. In pursuit of excitement, they chose a snowy off-road route. Not long after setting off, they found themselves stuck in the snow, with endless white stretching out before them. By 5 p.m., both vehicles had fallen into a pit over a meter deep and completely lost mobility.
Initially, the team members actively tried to save themselves. They dug while flooring the gas to push forward. "We have a lot of experience in sand, but this was our first time in snow. At minus 33 degrees with a blizzard blowing, vigorously digging was a huge mistake. Soon we were all struggling to breathe," said Shen Xiaoquan. Moreover, everyone was severely exhausted.
After checking, there were only three frozen, rock-hard small ham sausages and two ice-cold bottles of beer in the vehicles. "After I finished that bottle of beer, I felt even colder, but there was nothing else to eat—I was really hungry," said Dawei, another teammate on the scouting trip. The self-rescue efforts continued until 1 a.m. on the 18th. Eventually, everyone was utterly exhausted, and one of the vehicles was also nearly out of gas. At that point, the guide managed to contact an old Mongolian man who was the only person nearby with a tractor.
The old man dug for a full three hours before finally clearing a path. He drove the tractor ahead to pack down the snow and scout the route, and around 4 a.m. he successfully led the two off-road vehicles out of the snowdrift.
"I'm truly grateful to that old man. He risked his life to rescue us. With over a meter of snow, if he had gotten stuck, he would've been doomed—worse off than us. The tractor didn’t even have a cab; he could’ve frozen to death or been eaten by wolves," said Zhu Wei.
"If they hadn’t been rescued, these six people would’ve turned into popsicles," said the old man who saved them. "In such freezing weather, don’t go chasing thrills."