White knuckle muddy drive home!

Dashmellow

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I think I'll try to set the scene and offer some background and explanation before posting this clip so that viewers will have a better idea of what is actually happening.

As many of you know I live on a dirt road half way up a modest sized mountain in rural New England (Vermont) and have often commented on how that can affect dash cam footage or the proper mounting of cams when it comes to vibrations from bumps in the road or what it's like trying to capture footage driving around on rural dirt roads in pitch blackness at night with no street lights.

The roads around here are extremely well maintained by our dedicated town road crew and much of the time you feel like you are almost driving on fresh paved tarmac. Other times, it can be bumpy or dusty and now and again we'll get some potholes and washboard roads. It's all par for the course and usually no big deal and we tend to like our dirt roads. The townspeople voted long ago not t pave any more dirt roads around here. People on horseback come by my place all the time as do joggers, hikers, bicyclists and motor vehicles of all kinds.

About once a year, in early spring we usually experience a little thing call "Mud Season" when the temperatures begin to warm up and the frost begins to work its way out of the ground. The road can get pretty muddy. Some years are worse than others but most of the time it's not too bad and often even if it is, the muddy spots are mostly confined to certain "pockets" along the way such as places where the frozen roads get lots of sunshine all day long. Mud season is usually sort of a slow process that can get gradually worse depending on the conditions. Only a few times over the decades has the mud become so bad that it becomes impassable or the roads get officially closed.

Then there was what happened two days ago in this video!

Say what you will about climate change but this is the third year in a row where we have experienced wild dramatic temperature swings during the winter and it appears to be getting worse. In this last week alone we went through an extended period of extreme sub zero temps (the so called polar vortex) where the night before this video capture it dropped to about -10º below zero Fahrenheit (-23.33333º Celcius) and then suddenly spiked all the way up to +55º Fahrenheit (+12.77778 Celcius) the following day. A 65 degree F swing like that, with the temp at +55 degrees, especially in the first week of February is highly unusual, perhaps unprecedented. The result was that the road I live on turned to total muck very quickly and not just patches of mud but pretty much the entire road all at once! And the thing is that it's only early February which is not exactly what we usually think of as "Mud Season" around here. As the seasons usually go, "mud season" isn't for another month or so.

I left my house early in the day when things were still pretty cold out and the mud was very minimal but as I watched the thermometer climb during the day while I over in New Hampshire on some business I kind of knew in the back of my mind that conditions on my return trip up the mountain might be a little dicey. You'll hear in the video that I said, "Oh boy, this is gonna' be fun!"just after I leave the paved road and start the steeper part of the journey up the mountain to where I live. I've lived on this road for a very long time and so I knew things could become a bit challenging and I'm very familiar with the potential bad spots but I had no idea what I was heading into, which turned out to a harrowing, adrenaline fueled, white knuckle driving experience!

Here's the thing I want to explain about what is happening in the video. So, I'm driving up the mountain, gaining hundreds of feet in altitude in the distance of only a couple of miles. Once you commit to driving up a steep deeply muddy road like this you just CAN'T SLOW DOWN! If you slow down too much you loose momentum you're dead in the water! (well, in the mud actually), so you just have to keep putting the pedal to the metal no matter what! So, my truck was kind of hydroplaning in the mud getting buffeted back and forth in the ruts while I'm desperately working my steering wheel, throttle and gearshift trying not to go flying off the road into a tree or a drainage ditch, while still maintaining enough speed not to get stuck. The only times I actually slow down in the video are when my tires are losing traction in the deep mud. There were quite a few times times throughout the drive when I barely had control or didn't entirely have control of my vehicle.

The other thing that is going on is that as I rapidly gain elevation the temperature is dropping dramatically. Just near the end of the video when I say, "Yikes!" it was because I suddenly hit a patch of black ice and had zero control of my truck for a few moments as it slid sideways and I thought I was about to go off the road down into a steep ravine to my right that you can't see in the footage. Even in the summer time you can feel the colder air coming in the window on the way home. Where I live further up the mountain it's usually about 10-20º colder than the nearby town down in the valley I just came from. So, at the point in the clip where I said, "We made it!" I knew I had finally reached an elevation where I was back on solid, fairly frozen ground.

I really gotta' give credit here to the performance of my ole' Toyota Tacoma 4x4 pick-up truck with it's oversized Cooper all terrain M&S tires. THIS is what this kind of vehicle is designed to do and living where I do it's why I drive this thing. The Tacoma really came through for me here!

MUTHA FUKAH!! :smuggrin:

 
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This is one of the times when I appreciate a camera like the SG9665GC that is securely mounted directly to the glass. Cameras that dangle down from a mounting post don't usually cut it. (Although my securely ball and socket mounted telephoto zoom Mobius handled this situation just fine.)

Also, you'll notice that there is a loud rattling noise in this footage. It's no big deal. I have a couple of unsecured USB cables (including one unused one) just tucked up behind my passenger side sun visor and that's what you are hearing. Under ordinary circumstances they wouldn't be making any noise.
 
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I have already run into one Danish farmer that had pulled a lot of dirt onto the road with his tractor, first time i have seen this so early in the year.
Can be tricky when you come driving merrily along with 80 km/h on the highway and suddenly you are on a layer of mud / manure / whatever.
The farmers are actually supposed to put up signs, but it is extremely rare i have seen this done.
 
That is a real challenge. Ever think about moving down the hill to live in one of the other houses lol? I'd be tempted.... :)
 
This is one of the times when I appreciate a camera like the SG9665GC that is securely mounted directly to the glass. Cameras that dangle down from a mounting post don't usually cut it. (Although my securely ball and socket mounted telephoto zoom Mobius handled this situation just fine.)
Good to see your GC was behaving itself on this day. I'm happier driving on the black stuff, although I'm also hoping for a decent snowfall before the winter's out.
 
Try living on one! :giggle:

I had a dirt road to traverse for a half mile to get home when I lived in McBean GA. There were no real hills involved, but in the summer thunderstorms that's pretty much what the road was like. The fully paved alternate route home was 11 miles and 20 minutes longer so you usually took your chances and went for it :cool: Only once did I turn back which meant another 20 minutes to get back to the turn for the paved roads. It was a long drive home that night when I had been just three minutes away at one point :(

Phil
 
those were the types of roads we used to actively look for when we were kids, give it a miss these days though

Mud and warm temp, Yes. Snowy Cold of winter? No way. Even as a kid I'd stay warm.:)
 
That is a real challenge. Ever think about moving down the hill to live in one of the other houses lol? I'd be tempted.... :)

Well Paul, I live on magnificent mountaintop acreage of fields, forest, ponds and streams with a 100 mile vista out my living room window and no other nearby houses anywhere in sight of mine, so no, I haven't any desire to move "down the hill" to one of those other houses. The conditions in my muddy video clip are relatively rare and in this particular case unusually severe, hence my posting it. Most of the time the trip home is a lovely drive in the country. There can be many challenges to living in a place like this but those of us who choose to live here find those challenges more than worth it! :happy:

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I had a dirt road to traverse for a half mile to get home when I lived in McBean GA. There were no real hills involved, but in the summer thunderstorms that's pretty much what the road was like. The fully paved alternate route home was 11 miles and 20 minutes longer so you usually took your chances and went for it :cool: Only once did I turn back which meant another 20 minutes to get back to the turn for the paved roads. It was a long drive home that night when I had been just three minutes away at one point :(

Phil

Yeah, gotta' have a good 4x4 to live on a road like this!
 
Well Paul, I live on magnificent mountaintop acreage of fields, forest, ponds and streams with a 100 mile vista out my living room window and no other nearby houses anywhere in sight of mine, so no, I haven't any desire to move "down the hill" to one of those other houses. The conditions in my muddy video clip are relatively rare and in this particular case unusually severe, hence my posting it. Most of the time the trip home is a lovely drive in the country. There can be many challenges to living in a place like this but those of us who choose to live here find those challenges more than worth it! :happy:

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Simply beautiful! I understand why you remain :)
 
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