Remember, having 4x4 only means you get stuck further along the road . I went out to test out that theory on Sunday . My goal was to get to the top of Brohm Ridge (above Cat Lake) just north of Squamish. I had been there in the summer and there's an abandoned ski lift at the top (from a planned ski resort that never developed).

It's about 8.5 km from the trail head (Hwy 99) to the top and I almost made it. Here are some pictures of our day....

	Cat Lake parking lot--empty, no one around, very quiet. Someone's been ripping pages out of the owner's manual of a Sony car stereo in the outhouse. Time for some fun in the snow!
	Fresh snow. No tracks. We'll be the only ones to go up since the last snowfall. (The road goes up between the trees behind the girls.)
	We get stuck going around one of the switchbacks about half-way up the mountain. I put on the chains and continue upward. We are rewarded with this view shortly afterward.
	At about 7.6 km from the trail head one of the tire chains breaks while we round a bend . That's it. We can go no further because I have no traction. I take the broken chains off. The arrow in the picture shows where we had to turn around.
	This picture was taken after I had backed down the slope. It was tricky, because being in reverse I was trying to go slowly, and I couldn't take advantage the the truck's low gear. I actually slid about 10 ft. backwards with the wheels locked because the snow had iced-up underneath. After that I put the broken chains back on for a little traction so that I wouldn't slide all the way to the bottom.
	Luckily, at the bend there's enough room for me to back into the shrubs and turn around. I really didn't want to go in reverse down the entire mountain.
	This is the best view from the highest point that we got. We were so close to the top!

No more pictures, but on our way down there were a couple of scary moments (neither of which my wife or I admitted until we were back on solid pavement ).

1. After turning around and going back down, my wife noticed that the right rear wheel is not turning. I stop and put the car in park but cannot activate the parking brake. WTF? I go out and look and, yes, we had been dragging that wheel for about 30 ft. I look under the car and the broken chain had wrapped itself around the axle. Hmmm....I think to myself...a pair of cutters would be a good thing to pack in my emergency kit for next time. I ask her to turn off the engine, but don't mention anything else. Luckily, I'm able to untangle it and we are on our way down again.

2. We approach another steep slope (they never look that steep when you're going up). Very icy. ABS not working because all four wheels lock up on the ice. Learning from when we slid last time, I pump the brakes. We pick up speed and the car squirms from side to side. Nerve-racking because to the left of me is solid rock and to the right is the drop-off. Good for us is the fact the this part is straight and I am able to finally stop where it levels off a bit. My wife and I don't say anything to each other.

3. We approach yet another incline. This time it's really, really steep. I can't see over the edge--looks like a cliff! (We came up this?! ) I get out and take a look. At the bottom of the incline is a bend and I form a mental picture of the Sequoia sliding down the ice and over the edge. I tell my wife, "I'm just going to break up the ice a bit before we go down....just in-case--be right back!"

I start digging and shovelling, breaking the ice and thinking: next time, some cat litter or sand would be a good idea. After about 20 min. I think to myself, there's no way I can shovel the whole mountain--I hate shovelling my own driveway! Well, we can't stay up here and there's no other way down. I figure I've done the best I can to reduce the risk so now we have to take the plunge. I definitely don't want to be up here when the sun goes down.

I climb back up the hill and tell my wife that we're going to go down. I wait a minute or so to catch my breath. Then I put it into low and away we go. In 4wd-Lo I just let the transmission guide us down and hardly use the brakes. We don't slide at all and the curve is not as bad as I thought. Whew! We're home free!!!! We leave the Squamish area just as the sun is setting.

Anyway, now I have a better idea of what the truck is capable of. The chains helped but they're not really suited to the hardcore situations I like to get myself into. (I really need to get that winch once day.)

I usually pride myself in being prepared for any situation and not putting my family at undue risk. Two things happened that I didn't anticipate and cause the day to be more adventurous than I planned:

1. I didn't think about the tire chains breaking. I knew that I wasn't supposed to spin the wheels with the chains on, but I thought that was to prevent damage to the vehicle. I spun the wheels to get around a soft spot and the chains broke. Without the chains, we were really crippled.

2. I didn't think about ice forming under the tracks we made going up the mountain. The snow was very sticky (perfect for snowballs) but after we drove on it, it turned to solid ice. It made it very treacherous to come down on especially without the chains.

Postscript: Yes, I know I broke the number one rule about going off-road: never travel alone. The road we took was just off the main highway and we always had cell phone reception. When I was breaking up the ice, another truck did stop on it's way down. If I every thought my family was in true danger, I never would have attempted the things that I did.