This was a few years ago my wife and I wanted to experience being in the snow (before Covid). So, we loaded up my 4WD Tundra truck with a lot of ground clearance so we could theoretically drive through several feet of snow unplowed (if we had to). If we had to is the key set of words here. I'm not young anymore so I don't set out to see how much snow I can conquer in a 4 wheel drive anymore simply because I have had to dig out vehicles after getting stuck in the snow so many times by now I just don't want to do that anymore.
I remember the most amazing 4wd vehicle for the snow was a locked rear end International Harvester Scout II which was a 1974. This had to be the most amazing vehicle I ever drove in the snow. I remember being out pushing over 2 to 3 feet of snow in it and it occurred to me finally (in my 30s then) that if I got it stuck NO ONE COULD GET THIS UNSTUCK UNTIL THE SPRING several months away.
At that point I realized I needed to drive back home because I hadn't installed a winch that would get me out of anywhere at that point on it.
In Mt. Shasta if you have a winch you can go almost anywhere and winch yourselves out of almost any condition you find yourself in. (but not all of them).
So, I drove my IH Scout home so I would have to to use to just live my life and take care of my family like a wise person.
Anyway, this is years later now and my present wife and I drove up in my Tundra 4WD (which also can go anywhere but is better on freeways than the Scout II was mostly because it is an automatic and the Scout had a clutch and was a stick shift and it blew out my then wife's knee in a traffic jam. So, I was glad to move away from stick shifts because of the clutch on the Scout II and what it did to my then wife's knee.
Also, an automatic is actually better in snow because you can feather the throttle better than a stick shift too and keep your wheels from spinning and sliding better. In this way you can maintain better control in difficult situations in the snow and are less likely to slide off a road in snow if you know what you are doing.
Anyway, the snow came down and because it was heavy in the town of Mt. Shasta all the power went off. In the hotel we were staying I cleaned 3 feet of snow off the hood and back fold top lid to the back of the pickup truck twice. So, this is why I said 6 feet of snow came down over 3 or 4 days. Since the power was off all this time I was grateful I brought out down sleeping bags by North Face. We could visit our friends to warm up then and one restaurant had a generator and we could eat there but whenever we returned to our hotel room it was cold but I think it didn't go below 50 degrees while we were there. We bought flashlights and lantern lights at the hardware store with cash because all power was out there too and we made do but even moving the truck for any reason I had to go into 4 wheel drive just to move the truck or go anywhere.
The point I'm making here is often people think that Mt. Shasta city doesn't get 6 feet of snow over several days but I have seen Mt. Shasta in the winter of 1992 with 12 feet of snow in town to where roofs were collapsing for people who couldn't get the snow off their roofs. People even hoisted up snow blowers which was one of the only ways to get the snow off the roofs because the snow was much higher than most roofs and you couldn't shovel the snow higher than the roofs. But, you could snow blow the snow above the snow level so people just hoisted their snow blowers onto their roof somehow and blew the snow off. This probably caused leaks in their roofs but this is better than having to rebuild your whole roof if the weight of the snow collapses it.
Also, when there are leaks many people just get plastic Tarps for their roofs to prevent leaking when the snow melts and tie them down.
Also, then I-5 was completely closed for several days too so we couldn't even drive home to the SF Bay area if we wanted to then.
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