This happens about 25% of the time for me. Been to hundreds of stations in the western states. I flip the handle 180 degrees and it almost always resolved the problem.
It's your power steering going out. You can still steer, it's just a lot harder. The PS is electrically controlled through the CANBUS network, and can get knocked out when the bus gets faults. My PS did this as a result of a bad swaybar disconnect module, but there are many modules all using the...
Saying 100% is silly. I've been through that tunnel a dozen times in summer in all sorts of shitty traffic. The only time I've seen over 232F was a 15 degree incline climbing a trail with loose debris. I use the off-road pages almost by default, so a lot of watching temps in my Jeep's 178Kmi...
Are you sure you're measuring the winch current and not the whole battery? That's pretty close to what the Jeep electronics pull when off (which shouldn't drain your battery in a few days, btw).