Just came back from a two day adventure, awesome time, and bitterly, bitterly cold! Had quite the scare though... In ~3 inches of snow and another couple of mud, heading down a 13% grade the back tires slid sideways toward about a 500 foot shear cliff. Every time I released the brakes even the tiniest amount the truck just slid and slid closer to the edge. (see how close tire tracks are to the edge? Holy pucker factor...)
I then tried to just get off the brakes quickly and roll down, and all that did was drag the front tires to the edge. At one point I could feel the soft mushy shoulder of the shelf road starting to kinda give and I really didn't have much choice at all... See in this pic how the tracks are literally over the edge:
If I sat there, the soft shoulder would continue to give away and... Well, rolling- actually scratch that,
falling 500+ feet would just turn the truck and me into a metal coffin, so with my left foot I held the brakes, and with the right I spooled the turbos, and being in 4LO (with a 10 speed transmission, the gears are insanely, insanely short in 4LO) just punched it and steered away, the back tires slid a bit further, and the front tires finally hooked and pulled the truck to safety. At that point, the speedo was like 70kmh roughly, so the wheel speed was gargantuan. Managed to get to safety and pulled over to let my heart rate drop... ************* hell. Almost died...
Beautiful scenery and awesome trip though!
