This is especially true in states like Northern California (especially near the Oregon and Nevada borders and Arizona borders, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and several other states there are many places that are just too inhospitable because of year around weather, no electrical lines or water available or gas lines and no houses. This is slowly changing though as people go solar and put in water tanks and haul their water or drill water wells where it is available and not too deep under the ground to make this practical. But, if you are 4 wheel driving you usually want to prepare to at least spend overnight if you run into problems. I even almost got there myself recently just driving up from Lake Siskiyou past Gumboot lake past 7 lakes basin trail and over about a 10 miles dirt road over towards Deadfall Lakes and Meadow that you likely could make without a 4 wheel drive if your tires are really good. What I didn't realize is just how sharp the rocks were on this road from volcanic rock so because I likely needed to buy new tires within 10,000 or 20,000 miles anyway I wrecked one tire and it took a big chip that folded out of another tire. But, the first went went flat. Then I discovered that the jack Toyota Tundra gave me won't jack up a flat tire once it's flat which was pretty upsetting. Luckily, someone parked next to us came back from hiking right then and gave us a can of compressed air and liquid rubber. This pumped the tire up and temporarily sealed the hole enough to get several miles higher on this road to where there was a single bar of cell service because there was no service where my tire went flat. Then a guy on a Suzuki Dualsport 650 motorcycle had a small portable 12 volt tire pump that I was able to plug into my 12 volt jack in the back seat of my 6 passenger 4wd Tundra and blow the tire up fully. This got us back down the then paved road to Stewart springs and because of heavy southbound traffic then we were able to bypass the Interstate 5 jam up by driving down a back road called Old Stage Road from the freeway entrance all the way into the little City of mt. Shasta. The tire stayed inflated until the next morning when it was again down to about 10 pounds so I filled it on the way to the Tire service place where they also sell Michelin tires in town and they put on the spare because it had never been used. Also, on a truck usually you have a real full size spare not like on some cars where you should only use those little tires in real emergencies. If I had wanted to I could have driven my spare anywhere (except it was a different diameter than all the rest of the tires on the truck).Eventually we realized the truck wasn't safe to drive home before driving new tires because of cuts on the other tires and because my spare tire now was going flat up the underside of the Truck where it is stored and we waited to order a full set of Michelin all weather tires because they are the safest in all situations if you drive as much as we do every year to mt. Shasta, Portland Santa Barbara etc. in my truck. I find the Tundra ride is much better than most cars and likely would rival a Lexus or Cadillac or other luxury car in it's ride. Also, because I bought a small 8 cylinder with a 6 speed transmission if it's just me driving I can still get about 20 miles per gallon which is pretty good for most 4 wheel drive trucks on the open road.
The point I'm making here is to be prepared for whatever you might encounter because you might not meet other people out there to help keep you alive. This 73 year old man alone likely was within of 1 day of not surviving this journey at all.
Also, having a GPS device with plenty of batteries that you do not drop off a cliff or into the water somewhere is a really good idea to have in country like this with an SOS button for real emergencies like this one.
The other thing I did after the fact was to go to a hardware store and by a 12 ton hydraulic jack for about 65 dollars so at the very least I can jack up my truck in an emergency because the jack they gave me with the truck wasn't worth anything. The new jack I can also screw out the top to any height within about 6 inches before I hydraulically jack up my truck in an emergency. So, I'm much better prepared for future emergencies because of the one we survived (luckily) so well.
But, if the people hadn't been there with the compressed air in a can and if the motorcyclist hadn't been there with a 12 volt DC air compressor it is very likely the 4 of us would have had to spend a night up at about 7000 feet elevation where it can get very cold and there might be bears and cougars nearby with only the one sleeping bag we brought for an emergency. We would have survived that too of course because we had plenty of drinking water but I'm not sure the women would have been happy campers after that.
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