Snow oops!

SawMaster

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Last Saturday night we got a decent snow. 2 hours before it began 1/2" (1.3cm) or less was predicted. Instead we got about 3" (7.8cm) in about a two hour timeframe. I needed a quick trip to the store and figured I'd be OK but alas! It wasn't meant to be :( Cam is the B4K, vid edited in VLC and apparently the resolution wasn't set to 'high' as I'd thought it was :cautious:


Rather embarrassing to say the least. I didn't touch the brakes till I'd jumped the curb. I didn't hit the tree until I tried to 'rock' the old van out, then the hood got slightly bent :cry: As luck would have it my 4WD friend had sold his truck and none of the local towing companies would come out till morning so the old bus sat there overnight. I'm somewhat baffled by this as in my old van I've been through worse but those tires were discontinued and the cheaper ones I'm on now aren't in the same league when it comes to snow it seems. Only once in 5 years do we get more snow than this and we don't often see this much so no point in winter tires here. One day before this the temp was almost 60F / 15.5C :cool: Straightened most of the bend out of the hood already, will finish it come springtime.

Phil
 
Oops!

Probably some ice under the snow, I wouldn't try driving on that much snow here unless it was well below freezing and had been for a few days.
 
Looks like it was a particularly slippery snow storm but it's clear from the video that you are apparently unaccustomed to driving in those conditions. You made all the classic mistakes. Winter driving is an acquired skill that can take many years to fully develop. The thing to do when you get stuck like that is to VERY gently apply power and see if you can slowly back out of your predicament. And usually it's a good idea to first get out of your vehicle and have a look at your tires and what they are stuck in. A little sand can work wonders. When you immediately get on the gas pedal like that all you do is immediately make things worse!

Having said this, I came home in the dark on February 3rd and managed to get totally stuck in my driveway after a big storm earlier in the day. And this was in my four wheel drive truck with knobby Mud & Snow tires!. It seems the town snow plow had come by during the day when I wasn't home and jammed a big pile of snow into the upper entrance of my recently plowed circular driveway that I couldn't see as I approached because of the big snow bank that was in the way and the fact that it was dark. The result was that when I made the turn and powered my way over the hump in four wheel drive I bottomed out up to the chassis and got stuck. I tried to dig myself out but the snow was like concrete in the sub freezing weather and there was finally nothing else to do except call a tow truck. It was the first time in more than 30 years I've needed to call a tow truck! Cost me 150 bucks! (At least I have some towing insurance on my auto policy.) Usually, people come and knock on my door and ask for help and I'm the one to pull them out! Then again, we've got nearly three feet of snow and ice on the ground and it has been a hell of a winter. And it is starting to snow right now and we are in for another big storm!
 
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Well it may be hard to tell in the vid but I did press the accelerator gently and gradually in reverse but it just moved backwards a tiny bit then spun. I almost freed it by 'rocking' forward and back but what you can't see is that the normally solid dirt past the curb had turned to mud. With three wheels in that I wsn't going anywhere once it began sinking. But wait- there's more! :rolleyes:

The corner fence post is concreted in and seemed pretty solid, so I dug out my tow-strap and come-along winch and attempted to pull myself out with the van idling in reverse to help out a bit. Just as the old bus started moving as the winch was getting really tight the fence post pulled out of the dirt bank sideways, concrete and all :mad: I didn't have my other tow cable (still in storage) or enough good chain to reach anything else solid enough to work with, so that's when I called AAA. Didn't take long before they notified me that nobody here was taking their tow trucks out in the weather till morning. I called around and found that to be true. $50 to the most local guy to get pulled 25 feet the next morning after the mess started melting.

The snows we get here are not like the snows in New England, the midwest, or the Rockies- I've seen and driven in all those. Ours is dense, wet, heavy, and packs into ice, not slush. You ski on it more than drive on it :cautious: Folks from up north who move down here are the first ones to find the ditches and crash when it snows here. They can't believe how slick it is even after you tell them :ROFLMAO:

Didn't help that my old bus weighs twice what a big car does and the curb didn't catch it either which I thought it would as it's pretty high and my front wheels were parallel to it when it went over, just like going sideways off a ski ramp :eek: Too much momentum going against me- there was no saving it once it began going. I'm just glad I didn't hit that tree- it was MIGHTY close :love:

Phil
 
OK. Well, none of your elaborate efforts come across in your 55 second video which looks like you just gunned it. Sometimes there's just nothing you can do when you get really stuck.

The snows we get here are not like the snows in New England, the midwest, or the Rockies- I've seen and driven in all those. Ours is dense, wet, heavy, and packs into ice, not slush.

Oh, we get that stuff too! In fact, I think we are in the beginning of such a storm right now. We'll know more in the morning! It's like when the Eskimos say they have 50 words for snow and I know what they are talking about! :)
 
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Ours is dense, wet, heavy, and packs into ice, not slush. You ski on it more than drive on it
Yeah, I've been in VA when they got one of those snow storms - locals there didn't handle it very well at all. We get some of that stuff here in MI once every couple of years as well. Really a lot of fun trying to walk on it.
 
glad it's you driving and not me, happy to not have to drive in those conditions
Few people will want to go in such conditions... only when necessary. Therefore, there are very few cars on the road. But SGGCX2PRO worked perfectly even in such conditions!
 
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