Winter Mountain Driving Advice Needed

Thanks for the info, never heard em called that before. Guess I'll have to rethink my chains. While I've chained up plenty, I've never used the doubles. I don't even have any.

 

All we ever carried was a set of 3 railers and a set of singles. Singles hardly got used unless we were in a state that required drag chains. 90% of the time I’d throw three railers on the back axle and go. They’re pretty fast as long as you hang them up in an orderly way.

 

You call it lazy, I’d much rather run on a cold maintained snowpack than what the road turns into when deicer freezes again. Once there was a good snowpack on Lolo and Lost Trail you could run it without chains as long as it didn’t warm up too much. Anything in the teens or colder it was like driving on a bare road. Nowadays everyone thinks they need to see bare pavement, which is fine unless it freezes again or when it’s windy and fine snow sticks to the driver all day. And if they would’ve left it alone the blowing snow wouldn’t stick at all.

 

This is some of the best running there is. Cold snowpack with a little sand. This would be a mess if they slopped deicer all over it.

 

True enough all that, but I’ve seen them leave long stretches of I-90 as solid sheets of ice between Missoula and Butte which is inexcusable IMO. Extremely dangerous and trucks/cars getting stuck on hills and going into 4-wheel drifts and careening off the road. They really leave it up your discretion as a big boy to figure out if you can safety deal with the road conditions or not. I don’t care much for Wyoming but they are a little better about I-80, being a much busier route than 90/94

 

Ok. How do you propose they maintain the road when it’s too cold for the magic deicer to work? It wasn’t all that long ago that people had to recognize road conditions and drive accordingly. I’m not saying they’re perfect but a lot of highway departments are also hamstrung as far as what they can do. A lot of places aren’t allowed to use much sand anymore because of the dust it creates and the “harmful” air quality. Liquid deicer only works down to a certain point. A lot of the problems come from treating the roads before the storm hits, which causes the snow to melt, which causes ice again when it gets down around 10 degrees or so. Roads were far better when it snowed and then was dealt with. You weren’t running on wet roads in the teens hoping it wasn’t going to get much colder.

 

One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is watch your tires when driving on snowpack or ice. If the tread is shiny then you’re creating heat and melting the snow/ice which means poor traction. If they look dull or even white then your tires aren’t warm enough to melt what you’re driving on and you have good traction because the moisture is frozen out of what you’re driving on.

 

Salt. I don’t like the stuff either for obvious reasons but east of the Mississippi in the snow belt they don’t play around and could never get away with leaving a major interstate route that dangerous. Would be a disaster. Montana is Montana. It’s huge and sparely populated so you’re kind of on your own.

 

That goes back to the dust and air quality. They used to blend salt with sand and it was great. I moved away at the end of 2011 and when I moved back to MT in January of 2017 I couldn’t believe how much they relied on liquid deicer.

Idaho started using liquid deicer way back and it would turn your truck slimy and brown but they would always just maintain and sand the passes. Now they use liquid on the passes too and in my opinion makes them worse.

The reason salt works back east is because there’s enough traffic to dry the road out. Less traffic just creates a thaw/freeze cycle and when the road is wet during the day then the blowing snow will just stick and cause more of an issue.

 

Salt has the same problem as de-icer, it quits melting things below about 18 degrees.

The biggest danger in winter driving is other drivers. Snowidiots are everywhere, especially on weekends near recreational areas. Momma’s got a 4wheel drive Equinox and “all season tires” and thinks she’s invincible on snow, Keep your eyes open and let them have all the space they need.

I’ve told this story before, but first time up I ever drove over Donner was in my 3/4 ton Dodge, Coming back, they’ve got the chain controls on, checking everybody. CHP is walking between the line of cars, and I’m thinking “wow, must really be something coming down for them to go to this extreme”. Idaho just puts a sign up that says “careful if it snows” and lets you figure it out, lol.

Anyway, before the officer gets to our truck, the Nissan Xterra looking thing next to us cranks the window down and, I kid you not, asks the officer “do you know how to put this in 4wd?” . I ask the officer if I should chain up,the fronts or all four, and he just shrugged and says “none”. I was on Michelin snow tires, and cruised up and down the hill leasurely, way ahead of the pack, never more than 4 to 6” of snow. But they shut the road down because the motoring public doesn’t have the sense that God gives mice when it comes to winter driving.