I used my wheelchair for the first time in “real” snow today and it went well. When I got near the beginning of the year most of the hard snow was over and it was just wet out so I’ve been uncertain how it would handle when the weather turned snowy.
The biggest problem was honestly my hands. I use fingerless cycling gloves for grip and so I can check off grocery lists and stuff on my phone, but they were atrocious in this weather for obvious reasons. I also forgot that frostbite is a thing that happens and my push rims are aluminum so my hands were very very very cold and wet augh. I am looking into new ones for winter. These are things I never thought about when I picked a manual chair but I’m still happy with it.
I have a little motor called a Smartdrive that attaches to the back and is meant to take the strain off my shoulders, because they are terrible. It pushes me fully around on dry surfaces with no issue but this was new. I keep forgetting that it’s technically an assist motor so I can manually push and turn it on to, well, assist. It did so much better than I thought. With some difficulty I got through a pile of snow I shouldn’t have attempted (5 or 6 inches? Maybe?) and once I was on just thin snow it was great. It struggled on its own but pushing to speed it up was a breeze and basically no effort on my part.
I can’t find a gif of it but I am currently the “technology is incredible!” guy from Pokémon so just imagine that in this space.
Anyway, if you’re out there considering a Smartdrive and also live in a snowy climate, it’ll probably work ok as long as you’re on a reasonably well plowed or shoveled surface, and you can manually push a little when needed. The traction could be a little better but I can’t exactly complain because it worked better than I expected it to. It probably isn’t designed for this at all and in retrospect I hope it’s ok getting kinda wet, but I’ve been through rain and stuff and it seems ok. Time will tell I guess.
