Climbing ability

The local club that I groom for was forced to find a way around a land owner who would not let them cross his property. In doing this they had to go over a small mountian. One section of the trail is very steep, infact the excavator making the trail had to pull itself up the hill with its bucket. They were unsure if anything would clime it. The clubs primary groomer is an 05 tucker 1000 with rubber tracks and air lockers front and rear and after a couple of tries were unable to climb it. We all thought this is bad, if the new equipment won't climb it the old iron doesn't stand a chance. Well I decided to give it a try any way.( this trail goes right past my shop and house letting me drive the groomer to my shop) Not only was I able to climb this hill I was able to pull snow up the hill with the drag.

This is just a simple guess, but it is based on some observations. But I suggest that the lower profile twin track, mid-engine machines are probably better climbers than high profile machines of any configuration.

Take a look at the designs of the ski slope groomers. They are built very much like yours, but with more modern features.

The club i groom for has a steep hill with rocks and ice that makes for bad traction. I never had any trouble with the 1984 front engine, long track, rubber belted ,steel cleat Tucker, but when we got our 1999 Tucker Terra (rubber tracks) with air lockers we had to winch up the hill untill a good snow base was made. On the rest of the trail i prefer the Terra over the cleated track.

The tucker terra is a much better ride than mine in our low snow conditions.

When I got my first Snow Trac, a factory original Red ST4 with the original 36 HP(40 HP industrial), I was showing it off to a bunch of guy's in the Boeing Jeep club. There reaction was something along the line of:" GNARLY RIG, but you better get a Winch".

Having grown up in New England and having skiied alot in New Hampshine, Vermont and Mass I don't remember seeing many Snow Cats equipped with winches. So we Tried to get it stuck, attacked every steep hill we could find in the Cascades all around Mt. Ranieer, MT. St. Helens, McKenzie Pass in Oregon and a whole list of other places. Later as my collection grew to a dozen Snow Cats we tried, tested and pushed the machines to their limits. A stock Snow Track is about equivalent to a stock snow mobile, it can hold it's own. A Tucker Steel track can often out climb a Snow Trac. BUT practally nothing seems to out preform a stock Trac Master or Snow Master. I'm sure it has to do with the power to weight ratio and the positioning of the drive.

When it comes to Gnarly terraine a Kristy can hold it's own pretty good too. When I worked for Alyeska, the Trans Alaska Pipeline, they had Bombardiere Ski Dozer's with 2 sets of tracks, Steel Tall Grouser, and Aluminum with a rubber edge 'summer tracks'. These didn't preform very well despite having the Turbo Cummings Diesel. Alyeska also had Tucker 1543's. These would easily out preform the bombardier's. The Tuckers had aluminum grousers on rubber belting. At one point Aleyska had some 40+ of these Tuckers. Before that they had Snow Tracs and Snow Masters. Under certain conditions it is possible to drive a Snow Master straight up until it flips over. At an Ice covered river crossing outsides Fairbanks there were: Tucker, Thiokol, Bombardier and an Army Weasel all of which could not make it up this one hill. Along comes a Trac Master, drives right up, and left the other snow cat owners cursing:"Show off! #@*%#!!....." because he was dragging 2 Moose behind him and they were not even on a sled!

I've also seen some of the really big Groomers, mostly Bombardier and Piston Bully (Kossborer) that were close to 20 Foot wide and cost 400,000 $ do quite well on steep terraine in New snow. In a competition I would be willing to bet that a 35 year old Trac Master would still place in the top 4 against 2007 Machines, and an old steel track tucker would still be a contender. We pulled a 3/4 ton Dodge Turbo Cummings diesel with a heavy camper and a car trailer behind that, up a 9 or 10 % grade for several miles in 2 feet of snow with a 1963 Tucker Steel track that had the original 94 HP dodge Flat Haed Six. The Truck, Trailer and Camper weighed over 10,000 LBs, the Tucker only 3500. It didn't even overheat! Snow was pushing over the hood of the truck and the dual axel car trailer was dragging along like a surf board behind the truck.

Lyndon said:

Under certain conditions it is possible to drive a Snow Master straight up until it flips over.

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Based on my limited experience with climbing some river banks, this would not surprise me. Mine is a Snow Trac, not a Snow Master, but the capabilities of these little machines are pretty amazing.

Lyndon said:

. Alyeska also had Tucker 1543's. .... The Tuckers had aluminum grousers on rubber belting. At one point Aleyska had some 40+ of these Tuckers.

Lyndon-

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I don't believe I've ever seen a Tucker with aluminum grousers. And I've seen many of the Tuckers owned by Alyeska Pipeline. I've (unsuccessfully) bid on them several times in the fairly recent past at surplus auctions.

When Alyeska got rid of their Snow Trac's and Snow Masters Al Gartz of Delta Junction was the Snow Trac Dealer at the time. He purchased most of the machines, fixed them up and resold them. Later I bought him out of his spare parts. Alyeska employees wanted Haglunds, but some accountant/bean counter saw the 300,000$ price tag and flatly vetoed that request. Instead they bought the Tucker's. This was in 83-84 and all the machines had 1984 manufacturing ID plates, allison automatics and detroit diesel engines. At least 39 of the 44 machines that I looked at were set up with large fuel tanks and some spiffy radio gear too. Most of them got stored Inside the Warm Storeage Building or the Oil Spill Containment Products building. Very few Pump Stations left them outside, even though all the other trucks and loaders and graders lived outside.

In the 90's Alyeska purchased at least 5 Bombardier Ski dozers with all sorts of attachments, back hoe, crane, big man box, plow blades..... you name it. But within a couple years there had been 3 serious failures where a critical part broke in the drive train leaving the 300,000$ machine stranded. After that most of the employees didn't want to chance it and avoided using them. One you didn't want to be the guy who Broke it, and two you didn't want to be stuck out in the snow at 40 below! So the bombardier's started showing up at the auctions fairly quickly. They went for a fraction of their original price too.

After the State of Alaska took posession of the 'Haul Road' ( Steese, Eliot and Dalton highways), from fairbanks to deadhorse, roughly 500 miles, they closed down Pump Stations 2, 6, 8, & 10. Their Snow Cats as well as road graders and other equipment were auctioned off. And I stand corrected, most of the machines had steel grousers. Their primary use was for inspecting the 800 or so river crossings. It's alot easier to inspect them in the winter when they are frozen over. Also, every year Alyeska does the equivalent of 'Fire Drills' that are Practice Responses for Oil spill containment. They are generally in the winter and one winter up at Pump 5, near the Arctic Circle, one of the Tuckers got stuck on an Ice Flow(where a frozen river flows over itself) and a second tucker detracked trying to pull out the first one. When the pump station crew got back to Pump 5 for dinner they were tired, cranky and looked pretty well trashed, non of them had anything positive to say about"Sno Cats" that evening.

On one of my outings in my Snow Master I had 4 people a dog gear and food for 14 to last 3 days, 2 cases of wine, 2 cages of beer not to mention all that damn gear. I could barely move my arms to steer! Anyway we came to our first river crossing (very shallow) but the river was 6 to7 feet below the road/snow surface. You should have seen the eyes of the people I was taking across the river. I eased the Snow Master down into the river and proceeded to cross the 18" inch deep river (this time of year) Then when I came to the other bank which was 6 to 7 feet tall of snow (basically a vertical snow wall) I just nosed her on up into it. She climebed right out like nothing was even there! It was pretty damn impressive not to mention fun!