Snow driving...

[Tender Branson]

I'm generally a really good driver, even among snow and ice.

But sometimes there are snowstorms here that dump 2 or 3 feet of snow even down in the valley.

Usually, the snow plows are driving the whole night to clear the main roads and spray salt onto the street so that the snow more or less vanishes & the street does not get icy.

Which means, as long as you drive on the main roads, you are pretty safe even if it snowed 2-3 feet overnight. Of course, winter tires are mandatory so that the car does not go off the street.

But, if you get off the main roads and drive up some mountain road - this can get really tricky:

After I got my driving license, I once went up a mountain/foresty road after it snowed through during the night. The plows had cleared the fallen snow, but a layer of snow remained. And that layer was slippery and hard as sh*t. So, you are driving up and at some point your wheels are spinning through because of no grip, you brake but it doesn't help because your whole car is slipping backwards, down the slippery road. At some point, my car was in the middle of the road, but not up and down, but left and right ! My rear-end was in some snow-pile.

I did some trick and accelerated fast and turned over the steering wheel, to bring the front of my car back to face the downhill side.



Since then, I only use snow chains for mountain roads.