Driving from Truckee California to Lake Tahoe in a blizzard 4k

I have been on top of Truckee during a snowstorm. There was a combination truck stop-gas station-restaurant up there. My wife and I left San Francisco for the 3 hour drive and it was beautiful going through the Sierras. I started seeing signs if we didn’t have chains on our vehicle, we had to be off the road or something to that effect.

When we reached the top, it was snowing like crazy. We decided to go inside and eat. There were all kinds of trucks parked outside, especially trucks with logs on them. My wife and I had my wife’s mother with us. I ordered a hot roast beef sandwich with a baked potato. When they brought it to me and I cut it up on my plate, my M-I-L looked at it and asked me what did I order, roadkill? She said it kind of loud and I knew the waitress heard her, but cut her a break probably because of her age, but I could tell she was a little ticked off.
 
I only live 45 minutes away and the weather can be brutal there. Last winter the snow piles were so tall that the stop signs were buried and it was difficult to see around them at intersections. I used to love to snowshoe up there. Once while hiking in July we had a snowball fight.
 

hollydolly said:
Stunning views

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Wow. As many times as I've been to Lake Tahoe, it's always been in summer and fall. What a beautiful area though. I could happily live there.

The price of gas did not thrill me at all. Nearly $6.00 per/gallon. Ugh!

Salaries are much higher out there, though.
 
Lewkat said:
Wow. As many times as I've been to Lake Tahoe, it's always been in summer and fall. What a beautiful area though. I could happily live there.

The price of gas did not thrill me at all. Nearly $6.00 per/gallon. Ugh!

Salaries are much higher out there, though.
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They're getting towards the same price of petrol as here... ours is around £7..or more per gallon...unfortunately salaries are not high here in the UK
 
This reminds me of a time long, long ago. I was very tired and in the front passenger seat. Started awake, saw the road ahead and the snow, and desperately tried grabbing the for the non-existent steering wheel in front of me to regain control. That was scary.
 
When I was 28, shorty after Christmas I (a Canadian) visited a friend in the Nevada City area of California. Stayed for a month with some cheerful people our age in some rented cabins. Beautiful clear weather, the air was fresh & crisp. Lots of unafraid deer wandering around. The rental ended on January 31. So that evening I packed up to leave. When I woke up on Feb 1, I saw a foot of powder snow had accumulated over night.

Being from southeastern British Columbia, I had decent winter tires on my old Volvo station wagon, and I'd brought tire chains with me. (And luckily, a repair kit for broken chains, including a tool to enable repairs.) While driving, snow was falling continually and it can tend to get a little hypnotic for the guy at the wheel! I drove to Truckee, slow. And I do mean slow... every vehicle on the highway was driving slow, because you could hardly see up ahead. Police were on the highway mindful of possible accidents, to stop traffic and offer advice every so often, and to offer assistance if required. What a slog!

Along the way, I picked up a hitchhiker who seemed stranded on the highway shoulder. He was cold & pathetic, and pretty taciturn. He warmed up in the car. I had to stop to repair a broken tire chain that had been making a racket. But when I asked the hitcher to help me do that, he'd been so chilled & become so frightened of the cold, that with half-closed eyes he just shook his head "no".

Many hours later, approaching Truckee I'd been using headlights for some while. In the dark we'd somehow made it to the vicinity of a two storey "hostel" where we could try to find room for the night. Once in through the door, it was soon apparent that this run-down place, while warm enough inside, was no typical hostel but a shabby flop house for ski bums. If nothing else, there were beds with blankets & pillows.

Next morning, back on the road, at least it was sunny again. Overall, my long trip northward to home from there, was less daunting. It involved picking up a couple of other hitchhikers, one of whom offered me a couch to sleep on, at the little house where he lived with his girlfriend.

As a southern-Canadian, I'd had prior experience driving on snowy mountain-pass highways, but that trip to Truckee was grueling indeed.
 
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As a 4+ decade Tahoe skiing enthusiast, I drive in much treacherous snow every winter. And because of a love of skiing in fresh powder snow, that sometimes means enduring white knuckle driving in mid storm dumping conditions. A prime reason I've driven AWD Subarus for decades. Worst is when heavy snow is falling just slightly below the freezing level that causes snow to slowly slide and accumulate on one's viewing windshield. The snow melts a bit against the warm glass and windshield wipers then push it down to the window bottom where it quickly accumulates as a semi frozen growing slush pile.

So a driver has to occasionally open a door to knock away the pile. But opening a door brings in much spin drift plus snow stuck to one's warm boots and clothing. With heaters blowing at max heat and blower speed, all that wet evaporates and then condenses on all inner windows. Eventually sometimes become impossible to see and one just needs to stop on a roadside. Once snow depth on roads becomes deeper than vehicle underbody clearance, AWD and 4WD become useless.

Side of road boundaries where snow becomes deeper, become difficult to know making any veering from center scary. Of course about hilly and mountain areas, there are lots of ways to start sliding about, even at lowest speeds. And then there is of course areas of dreaded black ice where sliding can be ridiculous.

But yeah, just as in @hollydolly video, fresh snow can be wonderfully beautiful.

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I am from San Jose. We would camp at Lake Tahoe every few years. We fished for trout on the Truckee River. We didn't go in the winter, so no big snow storms.

I did live near Mt Lassen for awhile. Now there we got tons of snow like you described. Snowbanks seamed 15 ft high sometimes! :)
 
David777 said:
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As a 4+ decade Tahoe skiing enthusiast, I drive in much treacherous snow every winter. And because of a love of skiing in fresh powder snow, that sometimes means enduring white knuckle driving in mid storm dumping conditions. ...

Side of road boundaries where snow becomes deeper, become difficult to know making any veering from center scary. Of course about hilly and mountain areas, there are lots of ways to start sliding about, even at lowest speeds. And then there is of course areas of dreaded black ice where sliding can be ridiculous.

But yeah, just as in @hollydolly video, fresh snow can be wonderfully beautiful.
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David777, any familiarity with the ski-bum flop house I mentioned?:whistle:
 
Lewkat said:
Wow. As many times as I've been to Lake Tahoe, it's always been in summer and fall. What a beautiful area though. I could happily live there.

The price of gas did not thrill me at all. Nearly $6.00 per/gallon. Ugh!

Salaries are much higher out there, though.
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No salaries are not much higher there. Truckee is cheaper than many of the other communities that are near Lake Tahoe where only the wealthy live. Truckee is still much more expensive than Reno.
 
@Teacher Terry Yes last year was really something. I could only hope for a repeat this year. I'm in the valley so not a flake but could see snow on mountains.

@Paco Dennis I didn't know you were from San Jose. You've probably seen me mention, I'm from Santa Cruz. First 25 years.
 
In 2008 we got a really early snowstorm. After clearing the first 4 inches I got my camera and shot this picture up into my apple tree. Just a quick shot with cold fingers using a pocket camera and its built in flash without taking any time to adjust camera settings or frame things well.

Apples.jpg
 
It’s a beautiful site flying over the mountains out west in the winter after a large snowfall. If it’s snowing heavy, you can’t see much from the air, but you know it’s snowing down there. To watch the skiers go down the mountains is calming. With all the trees covered in snow, it’s just a beautiful site, especially over the Rockies and Sierras. I really liked flying down through Utah.
 
Snow can be so beautiful.....

I love to look at pictures of it as I sit in my short-sleeve t-shirt with the windows open because today it's 60+ degrees and sunny!

I'm from Chicago so snow there is awful, turns into black slush and then freezes. Fell I don't know how many times, fortunately when I was younger and didn't get anything but bruises, LOL. When I first came to California, people would ask me, "Have you gone to Tahoe to see the snow?" and I would shake my head. I didn't want to see ANY snow any more.

I think it was eight years before I finally went to Tahoe with a friend driving. I was stunned at how the snow stayed white (well, except at the sides of the highway, but you expect that with all the cars)!

Tahoe is truly gorgeous, but apparently we're busy loving it to death with too many visitors and the resultant trash, pollution, and dumb people who don't know that wildlife is actually, truly, really, wild. Look but don't touch, and stop trying to take selfies with the mama bear and her babies underneath the front porch, you idiot!
 
Revived thread.

Today, piled up gear at my front door. At dawn tomorrow will drive 4 hours to one of my Tahoe season pass resorts and get my first day of fun skiing in this winter since snow is finally accumulating in this so far low snowfall winter.
 

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