By Bryan Rogala, Outside

Tires have a huge impact on car performance and safety, but most of us rarely give them any thought—until they quit working. That’s what happened in November when our headquarters in Santa Fe, New Mexico, got hit with the first major El Niño storm of the season. On the storm’s biggest day, most of the office drove up a local hill and proceeded to get stuck in the more than two feet of snow that had fallen overnight.

I had to abandon my Subaru Forester, with its regular all-season tires, in a snowbank and hop into a friend’s Toyota. After skinning up the resort and skiing all-time powder, that same friend gave me a ride back down, where we dug out my car, which I then white-knuckled back to town.

I resolved never to drive a snowy road without the proper treads again.

Read the whole story