Limited Slip Differentials

[SourTooth307]

I guess I'll start off by saying that my 84 is my first 4WD vehicle and as such one of the first times I've really cared about things like limited slip vs. a standard differential. This weekend I stayed at my parents house in a little town in the Appalachian Mountains in Northwest NJ and took my K/10 with me because of an impending snow storm. I parked it on the snow covered lawn so the driveway would be free to plow that night and sure enough we got a good 4-6 inches of snowfall.

When I went to leave the next day I tried to take off in 2WD (it was slghtly downhill so I thought I could do it easily) and ended up getting stuck. I tried 4H next and got no where, even went down to 4L with no luck. What I was seeing was my driver rear and passenger front wheels were spinning but not the others, a classic case of having standard diff's. I eventually rocked it out in 4H and was on my way, but I really felt the sting of the standard diff's on my truck. Kind of a shot to the "it can get out of anything!" ego......

The reason I bought my truck mainly was for winter weather and because I wanted to get into off-roading. After the struggle I had yesterday I wanted to learn more about how the axles in my truck work. 2WD I get, but can someone educate me on how the 4WD modes work? I'm fairly familiar with the anatomy of the drivetrain (engine, trans, transfer case, shafts, diffs, and axles) and I get that it's all mechanical and there's no computer system governing the power distribution, but I guess I'd like to know how the power is distributed in a few different 4WD scenarios. Like on dirt, snow, or mud. If I want to get into off-roading, am I going to need to upgrade to limited slip if I'm pretty much just looking to do trails (wet or dry), rough terrain, and maybe cross a river or two here and there? Not really interested in any rock crawling or mud bogging at this point.

Anyway, thanks in advance. Looking forward to learning all I can about this stuff.