Took The W108 Up Mt.Lemmon

...and got some of my favorite shots of the Benz that I've ever taken.

Made 4 stops in total on the drive up, this being the first. No snow yet but a great place to get a high-key portrait like this.

I stopped again as soon as I saw a good spot with some snow. Luckily the road in the background of these shots is pretty cool too.

My next stop was more of the same, only this time I had the sun on my side for the nice flare shot you see above. I also took advantage of the background and took a straight on side shot of the car as well.

My next stop was a quick one. I only got one shot that was really happy with, no surprise though since I only spent about 5 minutes taking photos before a couple of loud families pulled into the the area to play around in the snow.

The next place I went to was a small access road for a wastewater treatment facility. I don't think i was supposed to be there, in fact I know I wasn't supposed to be there, but no one stopped me so who cares right?

I took this quick shot before heading to my "final destination" (in quotes because I almost got stranded, more on that later). The sun had just barely started to set an I couldn't resist a quick snap from the driver's seat.

This is the stop that nearly left me and the Benz stranded. Going down the road was absolutely fine. Conditions were slightly icy, but at low speeds there was minimal loss of traction. In addition to that I was going slightly down hill. The problem came when I had to drive back up the road. at the bottom it was dirt, which was just fine, but as I eased back onto the packed, icy snow, things got a little complicated. I made it up about 45ft of a 100 ft section of uphill road when I lost traction and the car was sitting in place. Luckily when I stopped the car didn't slide backwards. Had that been the case I'd have been in some deep trouble. I tried packing snow behind the tires, that didn't work. I tried beating up the snow with a tire iron to make it rougher and more "grippy," I guess. That also didn't work. I realized that maybe if I let myself roll back down to the dirt section, I could speed up and try to coast my way up the hill. As I started to build a little bit of speed, I realized that if I had too much, I'd have to brake, and braking at any speed over 5mph on a road like this will just send you sliding. Because of my sudden realization, I didn't speed up as much and this time got about 80ft up. I had made progress, but I definitely wasn't out of the woods yet. At this point there was no I way I was gonna let myself roll all the way back down and try again, so i tried to dig down through to the dirt so I could try the same technique on a smaller scale. Long story short, It worked. I had to do it 3 times to move just 20 feet, but it worked. I made it to the dirt patch you see on the bottom of the above photo. At this point I was nervous about making it up the icy-ish curve you see above my car in the same photo above, but surprisingly I made it up with little to no problem.

My original plan was to take photos at sunset, but after the whole ice-road ordeal it was almost night time. Oh well, lesson learned. Next time I should probably consider the fact that my tires are in no way made for these conditions.

I took this last photo on my way down. Its a little blurry but I like it.

What a trip.