OK, I have the big 4WD out of the drifts.
My wife and I are just now getting ready to see if we can break through to the Highway again. If we can we’ll get her Rav4 Toyota down to the pavement and we can use the big Chevy as a shuttle for the Honda Fit and the Rav-4 as well as the small Toyota pickup. We have 3 ways to get to the highway with the shortest being 1-/4 mile long and the longest being 8.2 miles long.
But we’ll leave the other cars and truck down at the pavement and use the big Chevy to get in and out of our home.
Inside the next 30 minutes we’ll know if all is OK or if we are going to be stranded again. Anna is hoping not to need to use “snow days” at her work, but if she need to, she needs to and her boss will understand. He’s a nice guy.,
Snowblowers don’t work well on crushed rock and dirt driveways. Not so good for steep grades, either. Learned that two houses ago. There is a part that broke pretty much every time one was used; the previous owner and a bunch of neighbors all told us not to bother with snowblowers unless the driveway was paved. There was exactly one paved driveway there, and it’s the same situation here.
They recommended using a Graveley if we could find a good used one. It was basically a gas lawnmower with a small plow attachment. We bought one made in 1948. It worked fairly well on the flatter parts. Still had plenty of hand-shoveling to do. But the worst part was it leaked horribly. Could not be fixed. I insisted that we get rid of it, it was such an environmental nightmare.
Here, steep sections are not a problem. It is the sheer amount to be shoveled, like the other place. Also like the other place, with any more than a few inches there is no place to put the growing heaps of wet concrete.
One exceptionally bad winter here I resorted to hiring someone with backhoe and front end loader. A skid steer also could handle most of the job, but machines really tear up the surface and we would STILL have to do a fair bit of hand shoveling in tight places.
So we hold out on bringing those in.
Just remembered that you (Rookie) had flooding right onto your driveway and into the garage a couple years ago. Are you also getting the wet snows this time? Time to stockpile the sandbags!
We have a partial win.
Anna’s car is now at the highway. So she can drive to town. However the big Chevy is stuck to the frame.
So we have a way to town for her to go to work and we can buy supplies as we need them and pull a game sled behind us to get them home.
But we have to walk to the highway. 2.5 mile round trip in knees deep snow. (at the shallowest) 1.25 down and 1.25 back,
It wasn’t wet snow, which is quite rare here, but melting snow. The driveway pool is pretty much an annual spring event but the WaterBug pump I bought does a good job moving out the water, although it’s slow.
Didn’t think of the snowblower on rock and dirt driveways, although I should have as my drive was Afton stone and I recall the small blower I used flung stones as well as snow. Had it blacktopped so that job is much easier.