14 Sherpa-Approved Ways to Winterize Your Ride

With such a flurry of winter driving products on the market today, outfitting your automobile for the winter months seems more like gearing up for a Mount Everest expedition. Which brings up the question: Can you actually summit Everest using only auto parts? The following list of accessories includes all the parts and accessories you need for safe and cozy winter driving, as well as some useful tips on how you might use them in a classic push to the world’s highest summit.

Peak Performance for Winter Driving

Performance Wiper Blade

Automotive Use: Clearing rain, sleet, snow, and frost from your windshield.

Everest Use: Emergency tent pole, goggle squeegee, broken-bone splint.

Tire Chains

Automotive Use: Maintaining biting traction on slick, icy and steep mountain roads.

Everest Use: Rumbling with the Nepalese chapters of the Jets and Sharks.

Fog Light

Automotive Use: Illuminating the road and cutting through fog so thick it could shroud the ghostly crew of the Elizabeth Dane.

Everest Use: Safety beacon for stranded climbers, reading light for those long Himalayan nights.

Salt Spreader

Automotive Use: To melt ice and snow on parking lots, roads, and driveways, and keep it from refreezing.

Everest Use: Setting up salt licks for the local yak herds.

Snow Plow

Automotive Use: Clearing snow from roads, driveways, and parking lots. The SnowSport brand snow plow attaches right to those front-mount trailer hitches often found on truck and SUVs.

Everest Use: Piling up enough snow to sculpt a mini-Everest for practice climbs.

Snow Shades

Automotive Use: Keeps your windshield from freezing over even on the chilliest nights.

Everest Use: Emergency Snuggie, makeshift tent (see performance wiper blade).

Windshield Washer Heaters

Automotive Use: By heating your wiper fluid to over 125° F, these babies spray your windshield with a super-heated mist of frost-melting fluid.

Everest Use: Brewing coffee, base-camp shower, warming yak milk for a good night’s sleep.

Headrest Monitor

Automotive Use: Entertaining passengers with the movie-watching comforts of home, and shielding your kids’ eyes from the drab countryside scenery that inspired Robert Frost.

Everest Use: Watching Discovery Channel reruns of Everest: Beyond the Limit with the local Sherpa population.

Mud Flaps

Automotive Use: Shielding your paint-job from the splatters, smatters, muck, and crud thrown up by snow tires.

Everest Use: Makeshift snow shoes, tiny wind break.

Floor Mats

Automotive Use: Protecting your carpets from the snow, sleet, water, and mud tracked in by your boots. Catching and containing virgin hot toddy spills.

Everest Use: Welcome mat for your base camp tent.

Seat Covers

Automotive Use: Preserving new seats from damage and the rigors of winter driving, restoring old seats to their like-new glory.

Everest Use: Wear as a temporary, albeit ill-fitting parka.

Cargo Liners

Automotive Use: Containing the mud, muck, and moisture that seeks to destroy the carpet in your cargo area. Custom-molded models like Husky Cargo Liners are the best for wet winter detail.

Everest Use: Provisional bobsled to slide back down the mountain.

Ski Racks

Automotive Use: Getting your sticks to the slopes.

Everest Use: If you decide to skip a death-defying Everest summit, we hear that Nepalese pow-pow is some of the best.

Roof Racks

Automotive Use: Making long trips to the slopes and grandma’s all the more comfortable by stowing your gear on top.

Everest Use: Hauling all the automotive gear you just bought in your misguided attempt to climb Mount Everest.

Winter Driving Accessories

From bed covers to truck bed mats, adding something like a tonneau to your rig is the quickest way to organize your ride and, by doing so, get the most out of it. Trickin' out your truck bed is easy, affordable, and perfectly suited to the do-it-yourselfer. Give it a try!