They used to spread hot sand on packed snow and ice and we'd land on it quite happily in quadropuffs with no reverse - braking action was fine. (Dagali, Norway) Mind you, it was a bitch figuring out where the runway stopped and the bundhu started or vv. Identifying the limits of the landing surface was by far the hardest bit. I never quite figured how all this worked as far as the Ops manual was concerned but then BWA was a bit of a world unto itself and it wasn't politic for the likes of me to question their SkyGods, of which there were many. It certainly didn't seem hazardous though.