Well ... I had an interesting experience
today .... Today was a Bentley holiday, so I decided to
take the quad out for a ride. The weather has been really
mild for the past couple of days and today it was in the high
30's and sunny. I wanted to go higher up the mountain
where we live with the quad and take some pictures. I got
to a place on the mountain that is between two peaks. So
it is a little "valley" with a steep grade down to the bottom of
the valley and steep grade up to the next peak. I have
been on this trail several times in the summer and winter with
no problems. Today, I started down the steep grade towards
the bottom and I started to slide out of control.
The warm temperatures made the hard packed
snow very slick. As I started down the grade, the back of
the quad started to slide sideways and I got off the throttle to
try to control the slide. As I should have expected,
letting go of the throttle only made it worse. I knew that
if I gave it a little throttle, I would have better control, but
I was afraid that if I got going too fast I would not make the
sharp curve at the bottom of the trail. Oh yeah ... and at
the bottom of the trail, right at the apex of the sharp curve,
there is about a 20 or 30 foot drop straight off the side of the
trail. It was really a scary situation.
Fortunately, I was able to catch my front
tire on the snow bank on the side of the trail. The back
end spun around and I was facing back up the hill, but at least
I was stopped. I climbed off the quad and immediately
slipped as soon as I put my foot down. The trail was
really slippery. I tried to drive back up because I knew
that if I tried go down, I would again lose control. The
wheels just spun as I tried to go back up the hill.
So, I knew I had to winch myself back up the
hill. I let the cable out of the winch mounted on the
front of the quad and attached it to my tow strap that I secured
around a tree near the side of the trail. I used the winch
to pull the quad up to that tree. Then I picked another
tree and repeated the process. I attached the tow strap
and winch cable to tree after tree until I eventually made my
way back up to the top of the hill.
This whole process took about an hour.
I was very tense the whole time because each time I took the tow
strap off of one tree and went to attach it to the next, the
quad was essentially free to slide down the hill. Each
time I had to try to block the tires with chunks of ice and snow
so that the quad would not slide when I moved the strap to the
next tree.
I was never more than a 1/2 mile from a
house, so it was not like it was a life threatening situation,
but it was still pretty scary. |