Snow Day Wheeling
Even tho we live in Canada, we live in the warm and wet side of the country so we don’t get a ton of snow in the winter. With a fresh dump of over a foot and a ton of unprepared people the town practically shuts down. So it was a great excuse to do some mid-week, Snow Day Trail Wheelin!
We headed out with Spencer in his Suzuki Buggy and Mike in his big block Ford buggy. The hill we were going up isn’t particularly hard for these rigs, but a foot of snow changes everything! The day started out full throttle as the steep road that normally isn’t an obsticle turned into a wheel spin party for Spencer breaking trail in his buggy. Even with his 4 run old Maxxis Trepadors running at 3psi his tires were struggling to gain any traction. Mike had a lot more weight and with his cut boggers he was having an easier time digging down to the dirt and powering up the hill.
Snow Day Wheeling video Part 1
As we got further into the trail we ended up on some of the harder lines, big rock faces in a clearing. They were nicely covered in deep snow drifts but had a few inches of ice hiding underneath. Mike took the first poke at the hill, getting that 428 Ford motor just singing, until he seemed to pressurize the engine, pushing the dipstick out and shooting oil all over his header which promptly turned into a big fireball. I yelled at him to stop and luckily letting off the throttle put the fire out. He took a few more pokes at it but the engine wasn’t starting right and it was pushing a ton of dark smoke out the exhaust. Foreshadowing what was next.
Spencer made the pass while Mike let his rig cool down. The Treps slipping badly on the ice too so Spencer called for the Man-Winch! Three of the guys grabbed on to the rope and had just enough pull to get him up and on top of the big climb. He gets hard on the throttle for the next climb, slipping almost back down to the bottom but amazingly keeping traction, stomping the gnarly climb in the deep snow with some impressive driving.
Mike fires up and tries to follow and thats when his engine lets go! A hole in the cylinder wall leads to a broken rod and destroyed piston, turning his rig into a 7000lb trail plug.
Snow Day Wheeling video Part 2
With Mikes rig not going anywhere we decided to finish the trail and head to the summit, before coming back down and starting an extraction. Another huge steep climb led to another clearing with some big rock faces. The exposed top of the hill made for some drifts that were 4 feet deep so Spencer had to take multiple runs at a few spots to get thru, packing his diff full of snow in the process as well as cooking the bearing on his power steering pump. He started dripping fluid as we headed back down to see if we could get Mikes rig turned around.
Snow Day Wheeling video Part 3
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