Back in Feb. '96 I went on a late night service call about 40 miles from my hometown in Central WA. It was snowing, and then turned into a nasty freezing rain, so I took my new Ford 4x4 since the company had no 4x4 service trucks. No problem. After I finished the service call, I headed carefully towards home creeeping along the glare ice in 4 hi, and came to the roadblock at the small mountain pass on I-82 between me and my house.The State Troopers were closing the pass until further notice, you couldn't even stand out there on the 3 inches of wet ice, it was nasty!I turned around carefully and headed back the other way, with plan "B" in mind. (Yes this is where I ****ed up) This plan consisted of going through the old road around the mountain, which is a river canyon road. I passed 15 cars in the ditch, smiling as my trust Fors was doing pretty good on this shiz. I had deflated the tires to 12 PSI and had pretty good traction.I made it 15 miles when it happened. I was coming up a 1 mile grade, and a Peterbilt pulling a fuel tanker was coming down the grade with the trailer coming around in my lane. It was like a scene from an action movie.It was funny, I had not seen any other vehicles up to this point, knowing they had closed this road as well on both ends after I got on it.
Anyhow, I slowed and got as far over on the gleaming shoulder as possible and missed the trailer by about an inch. My truck rolled to a slow stop, and I was so proud that I had not paniced and locked up the brakes.Like it mattered. The place I stopped was at a slight grade towards the 800 foot river below. The weight of the vehicle overcame the "friction" of the tires and I slid sideways off the shoulder.The truck ended up on a small snow berm 15 feet below. My lights shining on the ice covered river far below. I slowly opened the door, looked over the vehicle, looked over the slope I just slipped down, and said to myself "no problem"I walked up and down the 12-15 foot slope a couple of times, the ice was cleared and I saw no reason I could not back my shiny Ford off that berm and back onto that road. NOTE: This was my second and final mistake of the evening. I put it in 4 LO, left the driver door open, ready to bail out in case I had to, and slowly began creeping back up the grade in Reverse. It lost traction right near the top, and slipped right back down to that snow berm. I jumped from the truck and stared at it. I heard 3 cracks, and a crunching noise and down she went. Into the river. I had no GAP insurance, and had to fight with the insurance company for this $15,000 recovery, and had to pay a $1000 EPA fine (note the ATF on the ice