Narrative:

I embarked on what was meant to be a local flight beginning and terminating at [home airport]. I had a single passenger with me in the right seat. I climbed above a scattered to broken layer of clouds to an altitude of 11500 feet heading northeast to prevent straying into [other class B or class C airspace]. I only did a minimal check of the weather. I checked metar and taf. After taking some pictures of the sunset; I tuned the VOR and took up a heading of 140 to the station. I am still not totally sure what happened but after flying that heading for more than 10 miles and watching the 'to' flag change from 'to' to what looked like 'from'; I began a descent through a hole in the clouds. I quickly realized that I was not over ZZZ as I should have been but over a mountain slope. Climbing back above the clouds which were growing in height and filling in; I contacted ATC who had me squawk and gave me a vector back toward ZZZ. I was unable to comply with vectors numerous times because I could not out climb the clouds. Finally after asking my remaining fuel (2.5 hours) they vectored me east. When I alerted ATC center that I had an airport beacon in sight; they identified it as being ZZZ1 airport. They gave me the current numbers for the airport and told me if I was able to keep the beacon in sight I continue and land. As it turned out; the NOTAM that should have been in place showing that the airport was closed due to unplowed snow on the runway had expired and was not renewed. I ended up landing on a runway that had 10 inches of heavy snow on it and caused the aircraft to partially depart from the runway. No damage to the aircraft occurred and there were no injuries. NTSB cleared me to move the aircraft once the field was plowed if my a&P inspection deemed it to be airworthy which I did the following day without further incident.contributing factors: inadequate check of the weather for a high altitude flight into high winds aloft which made climbing penetration difficult while returning to ZZZ. Did not have my hand held GPS in the airplane so when I failed to be able to successfully navigate using my navigation radio; I had no backup. Airport failed to issue NOTAM or mark the runway closed. Lights were on at time of landing.my personal minimums had been pretty high. I have lowered my minimums after this experience and if flying at high altitude over the top of cloud layer; I will have a flight plan with alternates to make sure this doesn't happen again. I plan on putting a second source of navigation in my aircraft as well IFR GPS hopefully this year.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: PA-28 pilot reported unexpected weather led to a request for ATC assistance and diverting to an airport in VFR conditions that was unplowed and closed.

Narrative: I embarked on what was meant to be a local flight beginning and terminating at [home airport]. I had a single passenger with me in the right seat. I climbed above a scattered to broken layer of clouds to an altitude of 11500 feet heading northeast to prevent straying into [other Class B or Class C airspace]. I only did a minimal check of the weather. I checked METAR and TAF. After taking some pictures of the sunset; I tuned the VOR and took up a heading of 140 to the station. I am still not totally sure what happened but after flying that heading for more than 10 miles and watching the 'to' flag change from 'to' to what looked like 'from'; I began a descent through a hole in the clouds. I quickly realized that I was not over ZZZ as I should have been but over a mountain slope. Climbing back above the clouds which were growing in height and filling in; I contacted ATC who had me squawk and gave me a vector back toward ZZZ. I was unable to comply with vectors numerous times because I could not out climb the clouds. Finally after asking my remaining fuel (2.5 hours) they vectored me east. When I alerted ATC Center that I had an airport beacon in sight; they identified it as being ZZZ1 Airport. They gave me the current numbers for the airport and told me if I was able to keep the beacon in sight I continue and land. As it turned out; the NOTAM that should have been in place showing that the airport was closed due to unplowed snow on the runway had expired and was not renewed. I ended up landing on a runway that had 10 inches of heavy snow on it and caused the aircraft to partially depart from the runway. No damage to the aircraft occurred and there were no injuries. NTSB cleared me to move the aircraft once the field was plowed if my A&P inspection deemed it to be airworthy which I did the following day without further incident.Contributing Factors: Inadequate check of the weather for a high altitude flight into high winds aloft which made climbing penetration difficult while returning to ZZZ. Did not have my hand held GPS in the airplane so when I failed to be able to successfully navigate using my NAV radio; I had no backup. Airport failed to issue NOTAM or mark the runway closed. Lights were on at time of landing.My personal minimums had been pretty high. I have lowered my minimums after this experience and if flying at high altitude over the top of cloud layer; I will have a flight plan with alternates to make sure this doesn't happen again. I plan on putting a second source of navigation in my aircraft as well IFR GPS hopefully this year.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.