Frozen Traction

The other day the little man and I went out for a hike but at a totally new place in New Hampshire. This one ended up being one that we weren't prepared for in many different ways! I am going to do a dedicated post for that one in the coming days or week but in the mean time, this one here is shorter and easier to get together.

The place we went to was a mountain but all of the parking was on the side of the mountain itself and not in a very well taken care of area. There was incredible amounts of snowmelt all around and lots of freezing temps lately. This meant that melting during the day and freezing at night makes for one terrible parking lot LOL

We got to the hiking area and when I was looking at the parking lot I saw a few different cars there but something in my head told me I should stay towards the top of the parking lot, and ended up being for good reason! The whole area was a sheet of slick, wet ice. There were some small patches of area that didn't have much ice but those were hard to find. The parking lot was also angled downards, to the left of the picture below.

When I first got to the area and the little man and I were getting our stuff set up, getting our gear on and all that one of the people that was hiking came back to their van and got in so they could get out. They backed up but what happened was shocking: they slid to the left down the hill! They ended up bumping into the snow bank a couple times trying to back up. Thankfully there was nobody I could see to their left so what they ended up doing is just turning into the slide and finally getting a small patch of land they could work with and got out of there. That was when I knew I was really lucky to have parked where I did.

We proceeded to go on the hike, not really thinking a whole lot of that situation for a while. On the way back though, I was really thinking of that poor soul who slid and figured I would do something that I did a couple years ago to help a friend with a situation where he had no traction: put a bunch of shit under the tires!

Now it may seem crazy and weird but one of the things I've learned, and anybody living in an area where they get decent amounts of snow and freezing temps, is that ice is a situation where there isn't enough grip and not a lot of friction to stop something from sliding. If you introduce some stuff to give something like tires, boots or paws something to touch instead of the ice you are going to have a much better time with traction overall.

A couple years ago I was helping a friend move and he did this in the winter time so there was snow on the ground. His driveway in the new house wasn't plowed at all so we took care of that but what we didn't expect was for the moving van to get stuck! He backed the van up but ended up getting stuck in some snow and ice that melted under the tire from trying to back it up, creating this muddy mess mixture that gave no traction to the tires.

I really enjoy watching this TV show that has a lot of ingenuity to it called Homestead Rescue. The guy comes up with all kinds of awesome ideas and things that make sense to fix problems that people who are trying to homestead are going through. One episode I saw someone have a Bobcat get stuck in the mud. Instead of getting all kinds of winches and tow chains etc. he cut down two tree limbs and stuck one under each tire to give the tires something to grip on. The skid steer got out of the mud!

I know it's a bit of a long winded way to describe the problem but I like to give background to stuff. When we were hiking back I grabbed a bunch of sticks as stuff to bring back to the car since I had a good idea that I would need to use them to get the car out safely and without hitting anyone or anything. When I got back to the parking lot, sure enough, someone else tried to pull into the lot to my left here and completely slid down, bumping into another car! I thanked the stars that I didn't try to park where he did, I considered it!

When I saw him in that predicament, I knew that I definitely made the right choice by grabbing some sticks. I had the little man help me break them up and we stuck them and a bunch more sticks under all of the tires to give the car grip on the crazy ice. Thankfully the idea worked perfectly! I was able to back up without sliding an inch and we zipped right out of there without a hiccup. I was sweating bullets backing up though, let me tell you lol