I was on the trails again over Christmas, and on one logging road I came head on into two other 4x4 enthusiasts, one in a Toyota 4x4 and the other in a chevy 1/2 ton. The snow on the road was about 2 feet deep, and we were all in the tire ruts. I moved my F250 over to the right, the Toyota moved left but the Chevy had huge swamper-style tires (38's?) and he couldn't get out of the ruts...his front tires just floated forward, not getting any bite in the snow at all. Eventually we got him out of the ruts, but not without a great deal of effort. He definitely had enough ground clearance, as I estimate he was running a 6 inch lift at least. The tires had huge lugs and lots of tread, they were just useless.

My tires and those of the Toyota were much thinner (245's), is this a case of wide versus thin, or just bad driving?

 

Maybe it isn't how he was driving as much as what he was driving. Sorry, couldn't resist taking a shot at the bowtie...

FWIW, I grew up in Prince George and always found a narrower tire to be superior in the snow. They seem to dig in and find purchase better than a fat tire.

 

A wider tire will tend to "Push" the snow, and a narrow tire will tend to "Cut" through the snow.

In this case bigger is not better, you'll get around easier in some aggressive tred 285 than some huge "balloons"

 

If they were mudder style tires that could some of the problem he was having also as stated already overly wide tires well tend to snow plow

 

In deeper snow, the narrow tires win hands down. Exactly as others have described, the wider wheels will float and push a huge wall of snow in front of them. The narrower tires will lessen the pushing of snow and will be more likely to dig for more stable stuff underneath the fluffy stuff.

Also, mud style tires aren't always the best in snow with the big blocks. Most snow tires don't use a huge block or a small block - generally something in between. All of the additional biting edges along with allowing a little snow to pack in the treads all helps out. (At least in dry snow - snow on snow has lots of friction)

 

I have read that if you air down the big mud tires in the snow to around 10lb's or less depending on how heavy your truck is that they will grip alot better here is a link to a review this guy was runing his at 1-2 psi on his Samurai
http://www.off-road.com/suzuki/reviews/interco.htm
he was running swamper SSR's