I woke up to 3" of snow on the ground this morning with more falling. The day started out as usual heading down the asphalt driveway and blowing snow, but it soon got interesting. On my final pass down the steep gravel driveway where I use the snow blade, I got close to the edge and didn't realize that it was a sheet of ice under the snow. Every attempt to back up or move forward got me closer to going over. I dropped the blade hard into the snow bank, lowered the blower and applied the parking brake. I knew I was in trouble when I decided to unlatch the right side door in case I had to make a hasty exit.
The arrow in the photo below (taken last year) shows the approximate location of where I was this morning when it all went south.
I had just seen my neighbor plowing and sanding/salting his driveway so I called him and asked him to help me out. I have a bunch of equipment to pull the MX out but I needed another person. I went back to the house/garage and grabbed two long tow straps and two shackles, slipped over twice on the ice, and headed back down to the MX. It only took a couple of minutes for my neighbor to pull me away from the edge of certain doom but I wasn't done slipping on the ice yet. Another hard fall was in store for me.
Fortunately I was so close to the edge that my neighbor was able to come up the drive and get past the tractor, and head up my other neighbor's driveway. His truck was pointing downhill when he started to pull which is why I got two straps, so that he'd be past the crest of the driveway. My neighbor's drive heads down for 30 feet or so before the steep climb up.