I was talking to @WYO300RUM short while ago and this came up so thought it was worth a share:
Couple years ago, I was practicing putting on chains in driveway in 80 degree weather and my wife was laughing at how funny I looked. While I was doing it, I was thinking "what if at night or in really bad weather?" so I added a red zip tie to the connecting links that were perfect for the chain to be tight on tire. Little did I realize how much this little life hack came to play the following month in 2nd rifle in CO in 2019! It started to snow on Sat the first day and snowed through the night, which was enough we had to get up every few hours to brush off snow on tent (from inside LOL!). Sunday morn after short hunt, couple of guys from MT stopped by and they were all loaded up. We thought they tagged out but nope, they asked if we heard forecast? Oh Oh. Fired up radio and HOLY COW! 3-5' predicted over 72 hours where we were camped! So about 1:00PM, we called the trip and started to bug out process. It was still snowing hard at about 1-2" hour easily so we had almost 18" by now. I cleared out rear of truck and got chains out. Dropped over tires, the beautiful red zip tie just begging to be linked up was a dream! I had both chains on in virtually 5 minutes! The drive out was a bear and the ride up to I-90 was not much better. The speed limit was 35 on I-90 and being closed behind me as I traveled. Finally found a place to hole up and slept in truck with sleeping bag over me.
So a little red zip tie on the right tire chain link can be huge time saver when trying to set chains in bad weather.
Couple years ago, I was practicing putting on chains in driveway in 80 degree weather and my wife was laughing at how funny I looked. While I was doing it, I was thinking "what if at night or in really bad weather?" so I added a red zip tie to the connecting links that were perfect for the chain to be tight on tire. Little did I realize how much this little life hack came to play the following month in 2nd rifle in CO in 2019! It started to snow on Sat the first day and snowed through the night, which was enough we had to get up every few hours to brush off snow on tent (from inside LOL!). Sunday morn after short hunt, couple of guys from MT stopped by and they were all loaded up. We thought they tagged out but nope, they asked if we heard forecast? Oh Oh. Fired up radio and HOLY COW! 3-5' predicted over 72 hours where we were camped! So about 1:00PM, we called the trip and started to bug out process. It was still snowing hard at about 1-2" hour easily so we had almost 18" by now. I cleared out rear of truck and got chains out. Dropped over tires, the beautiful red zip tie just begging to be linked up was a dream! I had both chains on in virtually 5 minutes! The drive out was a bear and the ride up to I-90 was not much better. The speed limit was 35 on I-90 and being closed behind me as I traveled. Finally found a place to hole up and slept in truck with sleeping bag over me.
So a little red zip tie on the right tire chain link can be huge time saver when trying to set chains in bad weather.
