Prepping...

It's been hot today, a typical hot still Auckland summer day, wonderful. Strange then to be fitting snow chains on such a day! I have been waiting to find an opportune moment to fiddle about with the additional recovery attachments that I have purchased to go with the Hi-Lift jack and also have a go at fitting the snow chains before I actually need to.

I got out all of the Hi-Lift jack accessories and assembled them as if in preparation for a recovery, all good. I now feel confident about how it all fits together and now I just need to find a tree to winch off of to put the theory into practice.

The chains were a little trickier. The Snow Sweat Chains pictorial instructions were written by someone who already knows how to attach chains, heads up here guys, your written text needs to be a little clearer. I am glad that I spent the time fitting the chains as they had got seriously tangled in the bag and working out what needed to be untangled from what, has now given me an intimate understanding of the chains. In fairness to the guys at Snow Sweat, now that I have fitted the chains once, the instructions make sense, but prior to this they did require several read throughs!

I am not expecting to have to use the chains on our trip to the South Island next month, well not in snow anyway, but if it rains some of the tracks could get boggy, so better to be prepared. The highest elevation we get to is 2500m so we might encounter snow. What ever happens, I now feel better prepared than I did this morning.

On Wednesday this week I am taking the car to Top of the Range to have front and rear recovery points added and then next Sunday I am off up to Woodhill for a day of 4x4 off road training in the car, will take the Go Pros for that trip. This will be the first serious off road trip the car has had... I am really looking forward to it.