In our arrogance, we prayed for snow. The snow gods delivered with gusto.
Flagstaff, Arizona, is a bit strange when it comes to snow. Some years, there's so little that the ski resort doesn't even open. Other years, there's so much snow that it's nigh impossible to get around outside of main roads. This time around, it was the latter, and it wasn't necessarily a disaster, since we came well-prepared with a host of recovery gear. The stars of the show were the MaxTrax Mark II Traction Aids which really helped save our bacon on more than one occasion as we tried (in vain) to make it back to some of our favorite trails in the woods surrounding the San Francisco Peaks.
Flagstaff go utterly dumped on by a big snowstorm only a few days before we went for our off-road adventure. While we were initially pretty happy about the turn of events, that quickly went away when we got into the woods and realized that practically every trail leading toward the mountains was inundated with 18-24" of powder. You could barely see some of the "Road Closed" signs. Naturally, with us being kind of dumb, we tried to ford our way back on some side trails anyway. Having the widest tires, me and my 2011 F150 5.0L XL led the way in the hope that the more distributed ground pressure would help the truck float over the thick stuff. Unfortunately for us, that theory was soon debunked as the snow turned back into soft powder about 100ft down the way right when we had to slow down to maneuver past some trees, and our XL dug itself into a four Toyo shaped ruts.
With the truck just spinning all four of its tires, it was time to bring out the MaxTrax Mark IIs, which we had been itching to use. The MaxTrax Mark IIs are made out of a durable, reinforced nylon compound and have a studded top traction surface that allows your tires to bite and a concave underside that doubles as a shovel for helping to dig yourself out of trouble. Along with our Krazy Beaver Super Shovel, we used the MaxTrax to dig snow out from under our truck's rear tires before shoving the Mark IIs under the tires as much as we could. We then threw the truck in reverse and crossed our fingers. The tires gripped almost immediately, and pulled the MaxTrax farther underneath them, giving our truck even more traction allowing it to pull itself out of the ruts.
We had to go through the process of digging and repositioning the MaxTrax a few more times before we got the truck completely out. However, the MaxTrax Mark IIs held up extremely well. Other than some molten tread stuck to some of the studs on the traction surface, the MaxTrax were in stellar shape.
We tried a different trail, this time with our 2015 F150 3.5L EcoBoost Race Red Lariat leading the way with its more capable Nitto Trail Grappler M/Ts. Unfortunately, the results were basically the same, and out came the MaxTrax Mark IIs. A little extra help came from a Bubba Rope "Renegade" Recovery Rope attached to a Rugged Ridge D-Ring hooked to our 2011 F150 XL's Hammerhead front bumper.
In the end, we found a trail clear enough for night photos, and saved our next day for going out to Flagstaff's Cinders OHV Area. The moral of the story is, if you ask for snow, you may get it. So bring some MaxTrax Mark IIs to help pull yourself out. Check out even more photos and video from our Flagstaff trip over on our Flagstaff 2017 Blog Post!
