broken down vehicle

Today, is the first time I've been broken down on the side of the road during a road trip. We were only on the road about one hour or so, too. We were driving back from Big White, after a 4 day snowboarding trip. We were coasting along at a reasonable pace as the weather was quite snowy and unpredictable. Kyle, (his parents vehicle), noticed a not-so-good noise coming from the vehicle, but continued on, hoping the noise would stop. Once the oil light turned on, we pulled over to the side of the road and checked out the engine. The oil looked to be at  normal level, but he added a little more just to be sure. It started to smoke, and when he turned the car back on, the noise sounded just as bad and very loud! It was not as simple as just adding oil we discovered. We decided we should probably not drive any further and call BCAA to come and get us. They did not come and get us :(

Since BCAA only insures a car, if the person who owns the BCAA insurance is in the car,  Kyle made the executive decision to just drive into Merritt. It was only 18 clicks away (mostly downhill thankfully) because we didn't want to spend $200.00+ on a tow truck. It seemed that the car was ok if we could cruise downhill, but as soon as the gas was triggered, there was LOUD banging noise that didn't sound good. A few times driving into Merritt, my heart skipped a beat and I was sure the car was going to blow up into a million peices. Tara (my sister who was also in the car) was clearly freaking out as well. We were later told vy a guy from Kal-Tire that the banging noise sounded like metal on metal which is VERY bad and immediatly told Kyle to shut off the engine once he heard the noise. YIKES!

Here's the sound:


As far as I know, Kyle's parents car is still in Kamloops (where it got towed to) .  We took the lovely 5 hour torturing Greyhound bus ride back to Vancouver the next morning at 8am in order to get back to work asap.