Crappy Japanese Tires and Adjustability

When I traded the A4 for The Allroad I laughed a little when I saw the new car had Sumitomo tires on it. The salesman asked me what I thought was funny and I told him it was the tires. He was clueless.

I noticed when Pam, Lisa, Athena and I were heading up by Noble Nob trailhead that they were every bit as bad as I assumed as we slipped around - in an Audi Quattro!

As I was getting out of the car at the store last Thursday I saw a sidewall blister on the driver's side front tire and was almost happy since that meant I would need a new set of tires. On an Audi Quattro you really can't just replace one anyway. The all wheel drive system is too picky for that.

I did some looking around and ordered the tires I wanted on Costco.com. They will be in Tuesday so I should be able to get them on Wednesday.

Knowing all that, we headed out for Mowich Lake knowing we would encounter snow on the road - YEAH I KNOW. We did and found ourselves stuck - in a Quattro car. We dug and gathered sticks and rocks and Sue headed down the road so she could call Bob for help. Her call died after she had told him "The car's stuck and we are in trouble."

We continued working on extricating ourselves and had jacked up each wheel and piled gravel under each tire. That got us 3 feet. Only have to do that 30 more times and we would be out!

Meanwhile - unknown to us since Sue wasn't sure if her call went through - Bob had called Chris who rallied the Rangers and Ranger Walker set out to look for us.

Right after our gravel experiment a couple of young guys in a Jeep came up the road. They had a winch so we hooked up and they pulled us down a couple hundred yards to where we could turn around and head down. They wouldn't take the $20 we tried to give them.

We headed back towards Carbonado until we had cell coverage and called Bob back. We got the machine at home so Sue left a message and then we called his cell phone. He clued us in on what they had done so we called Chris and got the Ranger's number and got his voicemail. He was likely on his way up where we were stuck and had no coverage. We headed into the Carbon River entrance of Mount Rainier to let the ranger there know we were out and safe. He was aware of the situation and was glad we stopped.

We decided that a nice little hike up the Carbon River road would be a good idea so off we went. We took a side trail to an abandoned mine which was steep but worthy and then went over to the river for a look at what the flood 5 or 6 years ago had left behind and then headed back.