Riding was fantastic as usual. Day 1 we start climbing. I’m up front. We start hitting patches of snow once we get up to about 6,000 feet. My machine with the Bearclaws just powered thru the snow. My two buddies, one with stock tires (as everyone knows they get stuck at the sight of a snow flake – older stocks anyways) and my other buddy had the infamous Mud Lites. He barely did any better than the stock tires, which surprised me a bit. So, both were knee deep in snow and going no-where.
The male in me immediately said, screw them – I’m going to carry on for a bit. The lake is just up ahead a bit. I keep powering through this snow. I am amazed at how well I was able to keep climbing thru the snow. I sadly had Mud Lites before as well so I remember how lousy they are in the snow. Huge difference in these tires.
I was about 10-12 mins riding time up from my buddies when all of a sudden my quad sank down fast on the right side….Then it sank a bit more and came to a rest nice and very steady on her side. No harm done to this old guy.
I immediately shut the power off, climbed out (luckily I was not trapped in any way) checked myself and thought "hmm maybe this wasn’t such a great idea to keep going all by myself after all. This could have ended badly".
Then I tried to get the machine back on her feet again. Not a chance in hell. She was wedged in the snow like quick sand. The reason I had gone thru the snow was that the melting snow was running a wee river under the snow patch……
I figured I only had probably maybe 10 seconds (I was totally guessing here) of hard winching without the engine on before battery died. Then I would be quite screwed. So I pulled out my extra winch line that I always carry, planned it all out a best I could to maximize results and was able to put her back on her right side up.
I then patiently waited for 10 mins to allow all fluids to settle back down before starting her back up again. I was praying that I had enough battery left to start it back up after hard winching – even though it was only for about 10 seconds.
She fired right back up again. Amazing…..Gotta love these machines for that…
Jumped back on her and rode down to my buddies….
Great riding for rest of weekend.
Sorry for long post. Maybe a couple of learning points in here for some of us. I’m curious to hear comments on how long hard winching with battery only would take to drain the battery..
