Journey in the Snow

Yesterday evening I got to take a long (55mi) journey during a snowstorm. These are my impressions (tldr-it’s a beast on all seasons)

The setup: 2024 Manual with wheels as seen in the image.

The journey: From Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania to the suburbs of Philadelphia.

The conditions: Active snowfall on top of 3-5”. Sometimes it was freshly plowed. Sometimes it was driven on. Sometimes it was fresh powder. 🏂

My impression: Before we even left the resort lot, we passed a pickup that was spinning their tires and going nowhere. I blipped the gas pulling out of the lot onto the road and we fishtailed and the dash lit up but it was predictable and easily managed. Now that I knew how slippery it was, I slowly made my way down the switchbacks towards Allentown. It was probably less than a mile of switchbacks (this isn’t the Rockies) and we passed several (5?) cars either spinning in place trying to climb the hill or wirh crunched bodywork on the downhill shoulder. Further from the resort, things calmed down and there was a lot of patiently following someone as we made our way. Roads had been plowed, but had up to 2” reaccumulated. Had a luxury sedan in front of me lose traction on an uphill so we went around.
The only times we slipped was when I would deliberately drift around the turn on a wide open intersection. My kids loved it.
We got to one hill where there were multiple police and fire and nobody was moving. I turned around and Google sent us down a winding river road that hadn’t seen a plow and the last set of tracks was well over an hour old. It was magical. The scenery was gorgeous and the road was silent and the drive was uneventful. No ABS, no ESC, just crunching snow and fresh tracks.
Then we got to bigger roads and highways and made it home without breaking a sweat.