Ice on Driveway- Will it hurt snowblower?

I abused my snowblower this past weekend in similar conditions. Paved driveway was ice covered (gets scraped down but the driveway rarely sees direct sun light and freezes over). The ice was covered w/ 4" of light snow and then the top of the snow was 1" of icy/crusty thick snow. It chewed it all up fine. I did drive right into a frozen bank by the mailbox to try and keep that area cleaned out. It did better than I expected and I did not know until I was done that doing this sheared a pin. I thought it was odd I had larger than normal pile in front of the blower each time I lifted it but I just figured it was plowing the icy chunks more than it would regular snow.