I have a '99 Cherokee that I bought new, which has ~230,000 miles on it. Still in great condition.
A few years ago I went to visit the SO when she was in Oregon. The night before I was to leave on this 500-mile trip, someone nicked one of my windshield wipers. So I put the right one on the left, and drove 80 miles in the snow to get to the only junkyard that A) had a spare wiper arm and blade; and B) was open on Christmas Eve. The Jeep duly repaired, I headed south. ODOT apparently only plows the lanes – not between the lanes. I was in the left lane and getting rather low on gas by the time I got through Portland. Speeds were fairly high, and I didn’t feel comfortable driving through a foot of snow between lanes. Finally I had to. I made sure I was in 4WD, gripped the wheel tightly, and went for it. It was anticlimactic.
Farther on, it started snowing so heavily that I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. I was crawling. It was to the point where I almost pulled over to wait it out.
The '99 Cherokee had the legendary, indestructible 4.0L “PowerTech” Straight-Six, just like my '95 Grand Cherokee…correct? You probably know that it was actually an AMC-engine that Chrysler acquired when they purchased Jeep. One of the best engines ever built,
mrAru is from Fresno, his idea is that show exists to be driven to for skiing:D
Shelter creation. You can use fishline to tie together fallen wood to create lean to shelters, and peel the seams on a contracters garbage bag for under roofing and lay pine boughs on top and make a fairly nice shelter that can be warmed with very tiny fires. Ideally you can actually snug in fairly nicely in a stand of pine trees as they tend to turn into impromptu igloos by being covered with a nice snow layer so you can actually pitch a tent inside and stay warm via body heat - a properly made igloo can actually maintain 60F with body heat and a candle. [what can I say, we used to go winter camping with boy scouts. Lot of good survival training used to take place in the scouts and some of the older scout manuals actually were useful when it came to detailing how to survive.]
And yes, if you want to fish or make snares, fish lines and hooks, weights and bobbers are useful. You can make travois for transporting an injured person or if there are 2 people able to carry it, a stretcher from excess clothing, branches and fishing line. You can make impromptu ladders, hang supplies in trees to keep it away from animals. [you need the hard core stuff, the 250+ test line if you want to use it to make anything for climbing]
Ah, and lest I forget, lacking shoelaces [I have velcro sneakers] you can make a friction bow for firestarting.
And, for the hell of it - knap yourself a lovely flint blade, then take a stick of either dagger handle, ax handle or thrusting spear length and gently split one end and bind the blade in the gap created, if you have pine tar available use it also as glue and you now have either a dagger, axe or thrusting spear.
[my dad and both uncles and husband were/are eagle scouts, my mom was a den mother and my brother and I were also in scouts for about 6 years. Not to mention I have had an abiding love of history and ended up a medieval recreationist and oddly found myself in a flint knapping class.]
I adored Baby, my 79 IH Scout with the 345V8, 2w/4w drive and a heater that could turn the passenger compartment into a sauna. Drop it into 4w and use the low gears and it would happily chug through pretty much anything. Solid metal, the body and frame had some heft to it. Definitely not the prettiest of utility vehicles - definitely no sport about it. We put almost half a million miles on it before mrAru had a mischance involving a patch of black ice, opposing traffic, a solid new england stacked stone fence and an oak with a 2 foot trunk. Still, bent frame and trashed oil pan, trashed radiator and lifeblood draining away it made the 3 mile drive home to die.
It doesn’t seem to matter where you live or how used to driving in slippery conditions people are - the same thing happens here every fall when it starts to snow, even though most drivers here are well-accustomed to driving in bad conditions like that. I’m not sure what the mentality is - people haven’t got their snow tires on yet, so they’re surprised by a snowfall, or they just don’t understand that you can’t drive the same way on snow and ice that you do on bare pavement.
A LOT of it is 4 wheel drive drivers being complete idiots, and thinking that their 4WD makes them immune to snow and ice - you see far more 4WDs in the ditch than you do any other kind of vehicle around here. My little Corolla does just fine with front wheel drive and winter tires - I don’t expect it to work miracles, so I stay realistic with it.
You’d think people in Seattle would know how to drive in rain. They don’t. When the sun comes out, they get freaked out. Seems they can’t drive in sunshine either.
The camera footage shows that the visibility was actually pretty good. If the camera can see far enough down the road to witness the carnage, then drivers certainly were able to see as far, especially with brake lights lighting up in front of them. People are just shitty drivers, and it pisses me off when disasters like this get blamed entirely on the weather.
Oh boy, I was in something similar on another highway (90/94 ?) south of Madison on Sunday the 8th. Five or six cars spread out over about 1/2 mile with smashed front or back ends, nobody appeared to be hurt. I had come down from Rochester MN and was going to suburban Chicago. The highway had been fine, snow blowing off, and all of a sudden it turned to ice. There were no police on the scene yet, and it was like driving through a maze with cars all over the place.
Sure slowed everyone down, until new cars joined the throng at the next on ramp.
Not necessarily. On the road there can be a layer of snow dust that only goes up 6 feet or so, that in a car you have to look through a 1/4 mile of, that from a higher angle you only have to look a few feet through to see the road.