Delicas in the snow

[Green1]

On Saturday Ruminante and I went off roading in the Indian Graves area south of Longview Alberta, got a lot of confidence in the performance of these beasts in the snow, and in fact I'm rather impressed with the tires I have on (Hancook all seasons) (either that, or I'm rather un-impressed with Ruminante's Dueller AT tires... hard to say for sure, but we seemed reasonably evenly matched)

So as to have a purpose for our trip (have to come up with some form of an excuse to go play...) we provided a ground target for an aerial search and rescue training exercise, here's a photo taken by the second search plane to "find" us.

Aerial recovery.jpg (51.65 KiB) Viewed 4617 times

Before any comments are made about the extrication equipment attached to the front of my vehicle, I wasn't actually stuck (in fact I ended up driving out of that position) This was just an excuse to waste some time waiting for the plane to find us, and to practice recovery techniques in case I ever do manage to get the Delica stuck (hey, I'd never used a come-along before!)

It should also be noted that the tire tracks leading up to where we are parked are ours and ours alone, there were no other tracks in the snow anywhere near as far in as we were in this photo, the only other tracks in seemed to give up at the first tree across the trail, we just drove around it and kept going.

[coaxial]

looks like great fun! I'm impressed with how mine handles the snow as well with some random AT tires :) I lived in calgary before moving to vancouver last year and buying the delica - wish I'd had it in alberta to get to play with it in real winter conditions.

[Erebus]

It was indeed a blast. I'll try to upload some more photos that were taken on the ground. But in the meantime, more photos from the air are here:
http://photoshare.shaw.ca/messages/view ... parm/pge/1

Those who like a challenge, see if you can find the target in the photos of the bridge.

For everyone else, especially those of you who go offroading, you might want to think about how difficult it is to be seen from the air. The planes had a pretty good idea of where we were, and we were in reasonably open areas, and yet both planes missed us on the first pass. And when we were in the woods on the trail, there was no hope of being seen. Moral of the story is to be prepared to help yourself, don't count on someone else being able to find you. Take warm clothing, matches, food. Let someone know when you will be back, where you are going, and when to raise the alarm if you aren't back.

Sorry, I can't help the soapbox!

[BCDelica]

Going by the title of this thread lets see other Delicas in the snow!



Went higher up the hill today but stopped right away when the 'rad' scoop started shoveling up the snow! Was pretty cool; fresh tracks on hard packed snow, with no LSD and drove up easily. Only had to dig out once, when I drove out of were I'm parked in the pic the front wheel dropped almost a foot - 2 minutes of digging then I was free. Think that shot was a little less then a 1000m.



Merry Christmas to all!!!

[tomanique]

Cool pics, BCD.

We grabbed the sleds and headed up to Chilliwack Lake. Not bad, about 2 feet of snow and Frankendeli didn't have any problems. Actually got my 6 year old behind the wheel in 4L for a bit on the trail.