All In a Day's Work

Today is my second "official" day in CO. As such, it seemed high time for some adventures.

After an accumulated five or so inches of snow over the last forty-eight hours, somehow it got into our heads that an adventurous drive up to some mountain tops was an excellent idea. I mean, we had 4-wheel drive, right?

Well. It was pretty excellent - I mean, the view was nice - until on our way up a particularly steep and icy slope we encountered a Suburban coming - or rather, sliding - down the one-lane "road" and frantically waving us back down the way we had just come. So smarties that we are, we reverse down the hill until we find a nice ditch to rest in while the Suburban slides on past and spins out into the same ditch about twenty feet further downhill. As a gaggle of men heave-ho the Suburban out of their ditch and on their way down the slippy-slidey hill, we try desperately to get our car out of its predicament. A few tire spins later we're back on the road, only to spin into a ditch again just about where the Suburban had. Now, the snow-pack was so slippery you could hardly walk on it (in fact I definitely wiped out and fell - hard - on my tush), and here we were about to go in reverse down this steep slope; ditch on one side, drop-off on the other. We fretted a few minutes until we saw another pickup truck coming on down the mountain. To avoid them hitting us, we ran up to their truck, and asked them for help. Lo and behold, they had chains on their tires, so they could do things like grip the snow and stop and maintain control of their vehicle in general. So together four of us pushed the car out of its new ditch and one of the nice men coached our driver down the steep part of the hill until we reached a spot we could turn around and thenceforth creep slowly down the rest of the way.

So. Lesson learned. Next time you want to go up into the mountains on snow-packed roads, bring chains.