which_chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
which_chick) wrote2019-02-19 07:55 am
which_chick) wrote2019-02-19 07:55 am
Ugh, February
The road's a sheet of ice following last Tuesday's sleet-a-thon. I plowed and stuff, but then we got freezing rain and now it looks and drives like a bobsled run. We are supposed to get 4 to 8 inches of snow followed by sleet and freezing rain on Wednesday and I don't have a road I can go in and out without white knuckle terror. So, dunno how that is going to work.
Plowing with a truck is a no-go. It won't make it out the road. Plowing with the dozer... as long as I don't get it on sloped ice (all of my road) it'll be fine. Otherwise, it's like ice-skating on a hill with machinery that will kill you if it rolls. (It is somewhat challenging to roll a dozer, though. Usually it just slides sideways horrifyingly.)
We shall see. It may be that snow will improve the road. Who knows. I didn't do rollback of the sleet and it should still be possible to pry it off the shoulders of the road (and the snow with it) following the snowstorm. I'll have about a foot and a half wide stretch of real dirt underneath one track for this project, which should provide a more-or-less driveable surface, assuming all goes well. No matter what, it's going to be a total shitshow.
Temps are supposed to hit the forties for five days following the snowstorm, so it might melt out after the storm. Might. I mean, eventually it always melts out. It doesn't NOT melt. By the end of March, the road is always passable. But, ah, that space in between the storm and the melt has its moments, made even more fun by the fact that the hard roads are clear and the summer people never ever EXPECT the late-February ICE ROAD OF DEATH and they're angry when they run into it.
Why didn't you DO SOMETHING?
How did you LET THIS HAPPEN?
This road is HORRIBLE.
I really hate February.
Also I forgot my keys today for work.
Plowing with a truck is a no-go. It won't make it out the road. Plowing with the dozer... as long as I don't get it on sloped ice (all of my road) it'll be fine. Otherwise, it's like ice-skating on a hill with machinery that will kill you if it rolls. (It is somewhat challenging to roll a dozer, though. Usually it just slides sideways horrifyingly.)
We shall see. It may be that snow will improve the road. Who knows. I didn't do rollback of the sleet and it should still be possible to pry it off the shoulders of the road (and the snow with it) following the snowstorm. I'll have about a foot and a half wide stretch of real dirt underneath one track for this project, which should provide a more-or-less driveable surface, assuming all goes well. No matter what, it's going to be a total shitshow.
Temps are supposed to hit the forties for five days following the snowstorm, so it might melt out after the storm. Might. I mean, eventually it always melts out. It doesn't NOT melt. By the end of March, the road is always passable. But, ah, that space in between the storm and the melt has its moments, made even more fun by the fact that the hard roads are clear and the summer people never ever EXPECT the late-February ICE ROAD OF DEATH and they're angry when they run into it.
Why didn't you DO SOMETHING?
How did you LET THIS HAPPEN?
This road is HORRIBLE.
I really hate February.
Also I forgot my keys today for work.
no subject
In this image, I live in the green dot. The dozer lives in the blue dot. (On a good day you can walk from the green dot to the blue dot in about five minutes. If there's two feet of snow on the ground it can take longer.) From the green dot (my house, remember) to the top of the road where it hits Route 30 (a state road that gets plowed pretty regular) is just about two miles along the road. Obviously "as the crow flies" is shorter but we are not crows here. We are Using The Road.
The VERY FAINT elevation lines are 40' up each time. The surface of the lake is 1323. So, we go up from 1323 or thereabouts to 1680, a climb of about 440 feet. This Makes A Difference in the condition of the road from bottom to top. You can have NO ICE at the bottom and ICE at the top, if the valley temp is 32-ish, you will lose that degree or so on the way up the hill and it will freeze solid on you.
Due South is at the bottom of the map and there's a Big Bark Of A Mountain (called Ray's Hill) to the west, so you don't get much sun on the road, particularly not on the section carefully marked in dark green. The section carefully marked in dark green is "The Bad Turn". It gets about fifteen minutes of sun late in the day and that's it. It is the very last part of the road to melt out and the first to ice up. It's uphill outbound, about eighty feet of climb in a fairly contained distance. It's on a curve that is very slightly tilted towards the outside edge. And it has a three foot ditch on the outside edge of the curve. So, y'know, there are some challenges there.
If you are going to fail to exit the valley, you will do it here.
To succeed, it is best if you're going about 25 mph when you hit the start of The Bad Turn. 30 is better but not if it's super icy. If it's super-icy you must balance between going fast enough and not sliding off the road. Good luck with that. Anyway, aim for the inside of the curve, practically on the shoulder. Don't worry about oncoming traffic, there isn't any. Continue onward, with as much gas pedal as you are able to apply without sliding horribly, until you have passed The Bent Tree and are on the more-or-less straightaway. You must be brave. You must attain escape velocity before entering The Bad Turn and then spill only as much as is necessary to keep from sliding off the road on your way out.
Inbound... you should be able to get in the valley when it's a sheet of ice. It's not FUN but it's downhill and you can probably manage it. Go exceedingly gently, only enough forward to maintain steering, and again hit the inside track on The Bad Turn. Studded tires will help if you have them. (I do not.) Slamming on the brakes will slide you into a ditch. You must instead negotiate a peace with the ice, enough wheel rolling for steerage of some sort, and a slow enough speed to keep you on the road. It's not super-easy but it is generally doable.