Yesterday I ran up to camp on my day off with the intention of clearing my driveway of snow mid season. The problem with owning a place where it snows a lot is that if you’re not there doing maintenance, sometimes it snows a lot. Go figure, right? So usually by now there’s multiple feet of snow sitting on our property. Unfortunately for Colorado, we’re at record low snowpack about a month into 2026. It’s not good for ski country now, and won’t be good for the birds and herds come spring through fall.
Undeterred and stir crazy, I made the drive from the Denver Metro up to our place, where the beast awaited. I’d pre-staged my 1990s era tracked Craftsman snowblower that I’d bought off Facebook marketplace and the gentleman actually delivered it and tested it at my door. Now that’s service! I’d used it a few times to great success at our little suburban postage stamp of a driveway. But how would it fare for the first real test in the mountains? It’s a carbureted 10HP Tecumseh with an electric start available. All things that led me to believe even I, an IT guy by trade, could tear it down and work on it if needed.
Arrival
Pulling onto our street, the driveway had a little bit of a lip — they plow with heavy construction equipment on the dirt roads. After two passes to make sure the snow wasn’t too terribly deep I wedged the Jeep into the driveway. Success. This was the first winter since owning the property where I didn’t have to park on the street. Trudging up to the garage it almost didn’t make sense to run the snowblower other than through the drifts that didn’t allow my truck to pass.
I opened the garage door and there it was. Electrical cord dangling atop of it like a single piece of tinsel upon a Christmas tree of snow destruction. It was slow to start, the electric starter firing, exhaust puffing, but the second I released the button — nothing. I added gas, messed with the various choke settings and about gave up before I found a full-choke more-than-should-be-required running of the electric starter flushed fresh gas through the engine and it roared to life.
Getting to Work
Making a pass through the top of the driveway was easy, but as it curves and descends to the roadbed, that’s when it felt like the ground gave way. That’s because it did. Snow had drifted from about 4″ on top of the driveway to 10″+ as the driveway curved. Putting the old snowblower through it’s paces. I was happy, it was slow going but a few hundred bucks and some haggling really seemed like it was going to do the trick. This was a stopgap until I could afford a TLB (tractor, loader, backhoe) for doing more serious farm work such as putting in our orchard — if I can ever get anything to grow up there.
It was all going well until I heard a sudden thunk followed by the engine straining and then suddenly stopping. I got the engine to start, thinking it was just the old machine being cranky. It lurched forward, I pulled back the auger handle and brrrruuuuuuuup, it stalled out again. Not wanting to get the heavy machine stranded mid-driveway I fired it up again, manhandled it facing the garage, and had it lumber back to the flat where I could inspect it. When I was finally able to do a walk around I found it. A fist sized rock stuck on the drive side of the auger. Whelp.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
In order to get the rock out from the auger I tried prying, caveman instinct telling me that would be a good idea. I tried banging on it. Percussive maintenance and all. Then I finally knuckled down and got a half inch socket and began methodically taking off all the bolts that held the augers in place. My senses prevailed, but not before my socket slipped on one of the half inch bolt heads and stripped a third of the skin from the side of my right index finger.
It bled immediately and profusely, I was a maimed animal and had to give blood sacrifice to the snow beast. Similar to a head wound, with nearly no meat, it was distracting yet didn’t hurt. However I had to bandage it up so as to be able to work with any tools. I’ll spare you the picture of my finger, but the sight was gruesome.
Back At It
It took two bolts on each side of the auger housing, two bolts on the auger assembly support, and way more elbow grease than it should have, and the rock was free. Reassembling the auger and getting the snowblower fired up again was easy. The blood sacrifice seemed to do it’s trick and I was back on the road to a cleared driveway.
The rest of the trip was uneventful with me babying the beast to take more passes at the driveway in an attempt to clear it for my truck. In the end the center hump of my driveway and the drifting meant it was almost inevitable to slurp up a rock again, so I quit while I was ahead. I put the beast back to bed having cleared a walkway to the bottom of the driveway and a parking spot. In a place that is supposed to receive 52 inches of snow per year it’s only at 13″ since October. Up the road in Steamboat they receive up to 31 feet of snow.
Most of our neighbors that full time in Kremmling have a snow clearing plan that involves multiple methods for varying snowfall and the time of the season. Many of them have everything from snowshovels to snowblowers, to skidsteers, all the way up to snowcats! I feel behind with my little Craftsman — the biggest one they made around when I was born. But with a little blood sacrifice, it clears the snow.
