Best drive belts?

You best be government or last name of Gate's, Leno... for that kind of snow removal. They don't give fuel away around here ;-)

This setup isn't too far away from me:

OK, but there are snow melters that do some pretty impressive destruction, turning the white stuff to liquid about as fast as you can feed them. I saw a news report a couple of years ago that showed a New York frontloader dum ping snow into one of these and water just pouring out of it. https://youtu .be/LmDl_nETs8U

The consistency of the snowbank the road plows leave across the driveway is somewhere between gravel and hard-frozen ice cream, shading to wet concrete mix if it partly melts on a sunny day. Guess what that turns into at night.

-jsw

With my previous macine, I broke one shear bolt in 29 years when I forgot that I had anchored a tarp over a piece of equipment withy bricks!

You didn't catch the "something a bit smaller" portion of that joke, didja? ;) Handheld, that jet engine would launch _me_. (as if I could lift it.) so I'd have to settle for something about 99.5% smaller. Y'know, 3x larger than a weed burner, and movable. Once a week, I could handle the fuel costs on my 50' driveway.

Would a pressure washer leave too much ice? It could blow most powder off the drive, and blast free any previous layers of ice.

Something just ripe for a pick mattock? Thot so.

Sure, if you have the finesse to stop short of the pavement underneath, or planned to repave it in the spring.

I've tried my winter climbing gear on a frozen snowbank.

It would have been the right tool to carve stair steps up and over the bank but was nowhere near enough to hack out a vehicle-sized opening.

It's sharper than a mattock since it doesn't strike rocks (much). It can't be too sharp because the self-arrest technique if you slip is to hastily grab the wide blade (3) and force the long blade (1) down into the snow.

-jsw

I caught the smiley, why I smiled back ;-)

You need to spend a winter or two in the rustbelt. It routinely gets cold enough around here that the road salt/goop they spread quits working. In those instances a pressure washer would be like spraying ice rather than removing it :)

Snow fall can vary anywhere from light puffy stuff that you could move with air pressure to hard packed stuff that you could cut into chunks and build an igloo. I have/use a half-dozen shovels and a couple brooms depending on the consistency.

Your choices are to shovel, plow, blow or drive over it. The latter can become a huge pain though when a big thaw hits. Packed snow and ice that is melting becomes really, really slippery. Even four-wheel drive has its limitations...

Many years ago I help an old girlfriends brother clear his driveway. He had been driving over the snow and had solid pack maybe 8-10 inches thick. We used his roto-tiller to loosen it up and then shovel off the debris. There was cement underneath. His idea/plan. It didn't work too bad. I wouldn't want to use my tiller though unless there was say gravel underneath. An old set of tines would be best. I saw the drive once the snow was gone and you couldn't see any obvious damage. No more than tire chains would make.

I stopped using my home-made bucket loader to clear snow after it knocked chunks of asphalt out of the edge of the driveway. It also made a mess of the yard if the ground wasn't frozen solid before the snow fell, i.e. the snow came with a cold front.

The skids on the edges of the bucket sank uselessly into the soft mud that forms when the top layer of soil melts but can't drain through the ice below it.

-jsw

Yeah, really common collateral damage with snow plow removal. It doesn't seem to bother my neighbors but then most of them use lawn service companies (usually the same guy that plows). So it's not their cleanup problem...

You should see what the County Road Plows rip up around the area. The trucks have side-wing plows now. Make a real mess of it when the shoulder isn't froze up underneath.

One could use the reverse croquet stance, sir, as if hitting the ball back between one's legs, wot? Or how about the side strike, splitting the mound vertically so you could roll boulders of it to the side?

Ah. I see. You -were- nuts, climbing up icicles. Eek!

I hadn't even considered something that light and small to attack a couple-foot thick mound of solid ice. Aren't they used for clearing ice from crevices to insert expanders or set pitons?

Sounds like great fun...for you. Enjoy. I very much prefer snowless areas.

Some of the truck vids from Russia are showing triple tractors trying to free lumber trucks from mudbeds. What a horrible mess that is.

Actually the ice and snow open up areas that are inacessible the rest of the year. Lakes and streams become highways instead of obstructions.

The off-road motorcycle club I belonged to ran springtime rallys through all the mudholes. It was amazing to watch the Trials experts on their Bultacos float over mud the less skilled of us were waist deep in.

-jsw