I decided to keep my halftrack in my father's barn this winter instead of at my house. He lives out in the country with rolling hills and much more land at his disposal than my little suburban village.
My family and me happened to be up at Dad's on New Year's Day and given that the weather was unusually warm, I decided to fire up the track. I like to blow the junk out of the carb, spark plugs, etc at least once a month during the winter.
We've had some snow recently but due to the high winds there were bare spots all over the frozen lawn and fields combined with some three to four foot deep snow drifts. So off I go tootling around, the vehicle is running flawlessly. I'm skirting the inside perimeter of his former horse field kind of near his wooden fence. The terrain might be hard to explain but basically I was heading back to the barn on the side of slight hill and then attempted to make a right turn up the hill. This being the lee of the hill a huge snow drift had formed right from the point I attempted to make my turn. I'm sure some of you more experienced half track drivers know what happened next.
Even with my front axle engaged, I couldn't turn up the side of the hill. The vehicle decided to take the path of least resistance and continue going in the direction that the tracks were pushing it. While some of you sit back and say "no duh" I must admit this was the first time I've ever encountered any conditions that proved an obstacle to my half track.
I attempted to back up but within about two feet got stuck in the snow bank. Because of the very warm temps the snow seemed to be especially slippery. So now I'm faced with not being able to go back or turn right up the hill. Straight down following gravity was going to put me through the horse fence. Luckily for me, Dad's been wanting to get rid of the dilapidated fence for a while as we haven't had horses in years. I graciously helped him out with about 10 feet of it. I basically went for broke, pointed down the hill, which the M3 did happily and made it to the bottom. I must admit I was rather crest fallen that I'd encountered something which stopped my mean, green, 9 ton squishing machine.
So now I'm at the bottom of a hill on the perimeter of the family property. How to get back up? Well I just picked a part of the hill with a more gentle slope. We use it for sleigh riding for the kids and go up and down it all the time with the snowmobiles so I figured it wouldn't be a problem. Oh contraire mon frere. I'm powering up the hill no problem until I reached the crest. That was all she wrote. Tracks spinning, front wheels spinning I'm suddenly heading back down the hill. I couldn't believe it. I'm thinking that perhaps if I had more weight in the back, like say a rifle squad of guys, maybe I would've made it. It just seems that there was almost some point of weight equilibrium at the top of the hill and I just lost all traction. Again, perhaps a "no duh" moment for some of you more seasoned guys but I was much chagrined.
I was therefore ingloriously forced to drive though our neighbor's corn field out to the main road and come back home that way. Good thing it wasn't an alfalfa field or I wouldn't dared have crossed it. Either way I now feel like a big dufass.
I've pulled my 18 wheeler and other people's armour out of the mud with the half track with no problems. Until yesterday there's never been anything that would stop it. I guess I can only chalk this up to me having unrealistic expectations of what a tracked vehicle can do in the snow and me being a lousy driver for now knowing. I can swear however that I negotiated terrain much worse with my MB back at Fort Indiantown Gap in deep January snow a few years ago. I don't know, all I do know is that I'm sort of sad right now.
