Last Sunday, as Eric was driving down from the Visitor Center, the road had become ridiculously icy. If you recall in my earlier post, it had been snowing for about an hour. As we were coming down the hill, just as we hit first turn, ice found a way to get between the tire and road. Next thing we know, we are out of control and sliding. As Eric desperately tried to get the tires to respond, it was becoming quite clear, quite fast that we were heading off the road and into a ditch! As we slid off the pavement, the car rolled from level to almost sideways. Luckily we were only going about 10MPH, so we didn’t roll over, although the CRV was pitched radically to the right, with most of the weight on the front wheel. That wheel was in a muddy stream. We made an attempt to back it out of the ditch, but we couldn’t get much traction. We got it backed up about four feet.
Shown here is what the CRV looked like after Eric and I managed to get it off the front wheel a little. Note that the rear tire is not contacting the ground. Also, lucky for us, the Visitor Center wasn’t that far. Someone went to get a Ranger for us, who pulled us out. There was no damage to the vehicle or us!
Nasty road conditions!
When we started out, it was raining, and we knew that there was snow above 5000 ft. We didn’t know that we would be going above 5000 ft that day! Needless to say, all trips to the mountains from here on out, we’ll have our snow chains.
