The Land of Ice and Snow

Sunday, January 22^nd, 2012

      I'm a lucky bastard. Really, I am. Well, I'm not technically a bastard, but I have been lucky so far. To date, I missed almost all of winter barring a few incidents in Canada in November. I feel as if that was another lifetime ago already. Being in SoCal was a treat, even Sparks was nice enough. Donner Pass seemed like an anomalous blip on the radar of crap weather. But now, I feel that I've actually stepped in it.

      My present load is going from Salt Lake City to Missouri (Mexico, MO to be precise) and the routing has me going across I-80 for quite a ways. This is a great route if you like to space out and stare off into the distance. I really dig on that. In the winter, however, the story changes a bit.

      Starting off in SLC, I dial 511 for road info. Smart move, Ian. No sense in getting all worked up if the highway through Parley's Canyon is closed. It turned out that the chain restriction had been lifted not too long after I was loaded, so I got on my merry way. Motoring up the hill, all is well. There is a bit of ice on the road (formerly snow compacted by many tires) but it fades away soon enough. Smooth sailing all the way to the border. Right on!

Crossing into Wyoming, the road is wet, which is cool with me, but I see a large number of trucks parked in the Port of Entry (a weigh station). Hmm. I wonder why. About 7 miles down the road, the surface becomes ice/compacted snow. It sounds like I am going over a continual rumble strip. This effect due in large part to the impressions left by tire chains used at some earlier point. There are a few clear-ish spots but they are short lived and barely a tire's width anyway. Looks like 45 m.p.h. for a long stretch. I resolve to get off the road as soon as I can.

A clear spot opens up, and a chance to pass some people doing 35. Seriously. So I zip by at a cool 40, and I pass a parking area. DAMMIT! Looks like I'm going to keep on truckin'. Someplace around mile marker 68, the road is still crap. I could park at Little America (truck stop in the middle of nowhere), but it is absolutely packed. The road has a couple wet streaks for tires in one lane with scattered icy rumble strips.

Then finally, at Green River, the road clears up. It's even dry in some places! Zooming along at 63 (top speed), I release my white knuckle death grip on the steering wheel and ease up on my tension levels. I take more time to notice the landscape. I spy two groups of antelope, presumably playing on the range. They looked like they were eating, but I'm told that they play out here. I look a bit more intently on the local flora. This snow may be the lion's share of their water for the year, and I notice that the plants seem to funnel the wind around themselves leaving little drifts leeward. Brilliant! I'm not sure how intentional this is, but it totally rocks for me.

Knowledge is power, so I dial 511 again. In the mean time, it seems that the road over Elk Mountain (11k+ feet) has become so crappy that they've shut it down entirely. In a stunning turn of events, they have re-opened the section from Cheyenne to the Nebraska border, which I'm guessing was closed because of massively high winds, since the roads are dry. I consider my options. In the end, I shut down in Rollins instead of going to Laramie, where the rest of the people who kept driving East will have to stop. I'll sacrifice a shower to have some peace of mind. I'll get my chance soon enough. For now, I'm resting for the balance of the day and calling it good.