Oh, and I'll second packing a shovel in your trunk with the chains. I can't tell you how many times I've used it in the last three weeks. Hell, I used it today to get out of the unplowed section of Sugarbowl's parking lot. Definitely driver error there though

-Brian

 

Hey BAIC'rs - I moved up to Seattle two years ago and have been doing a bunch of the TSD rallies here. In the winter rallies up in British Columbia, we run all back roads that are "barely" plowed, with mud and slush and ice mixed in. The go-to tire is the Nokian Hakka-1. Nokian is a Finnish company that makes awesome snow and all-season tires, even in low profile sizes. Check out their site:

www.nokiantire.com
www.nokiantyre.com (the U.K. site seems to have more updated info)

Casey

P.S. - I'll second the shovel idea. A folding hikers shovel is nice. The serious rallyist here bring a hoe - to sweep the snow out from under the car.

 

But we can't get Hakkas in CA unless we order them from Colorado(!?)

 

I will post up pics of our little snow trip this weekend with Racewitme (Anthony). Took us about an hour and half to get our wrx's out of our cabin's driveway which happened to be on an incline. I had on some Falken Ziex 512 and they handle amazing of course except for getting it out the driveway. We also found out that RE92's suck! So my next trip I will definately get a set of chains, my question is get chains for all four or just for a pair??

 

A pair for the front should be all you need.

 

I ordered my NRW's from an online retailer called etires. They are the all season version that Nokian offered a few years ago. IMHO, Hakka 1's are overkill if you live in the Bay Area. I was in Tahoe all weekend and didn't have any trouble getting around on the NRW's - including climbing a barely plowed residential street that was quite steep. I actually helped pull an Explorer out of a snow bank he had hit.

Fresh snow provides MUCH more traction than the packed ice that quickly coats roads cars drive on, especially in the relatively warm climate of Tahoe. If you see more than one car in a ditch, it's probably a very good indication that there is ice on that section of road.

Be safe out there, I saw a lot of broken plastic bits on the snow this last week.

 

Actually I had a set of studded Coopers for the Alcan last Feb, blew out two of them on the MacKenzie River on the way back from Tuktoyaktuk and had to put Goodyear UltraGrip Ice's on two of the wheels, so last time I was in real snow I was running studs in front and the ultragrips in back, interesting handling dynamics, to say the least.

This weekend I was in Reno with the Sumitomo HTR+'s on all 4 corners and they really are pretty decent in the deep stuff- especially for an all-season 300 treadwear rated tire costing <$70