Last year, Mary and I planned to leave for our Southwest winter safari on December 15th. It seemed a safe bet since even if we got some snow before then, it usually doesn’t start to stay on the roads until sometime in January. Not that you can’t pull a trailer over a snowy pass—big-rig drivers do it all the time—but given a choice, I prefer bare and dry, even with our itsy-bitsy 10,000-pound trailer.
Of course, you can always chain up, but no real man would ever willingly chain up no matter what the conditions. I’d rather ask directions.
But winter surprised us with a series of early storms arriving back to back. I had the trailer at the house and the truck and trailer chained up, if only to get down our steep hill to the highways. But then we saw a brief break in the weather on December 12th, not anticipated in the forecasts, so we threw the dogs in the truck, took off the chains, and made a run for it. It was windy going around Mt. Shasta before we got to I-5, raining and the temperature only 34 degrees, but we had only wet pavement and made it out of the mountains on I-5 without incident and only moderately sweaty palms.
So this year we decided to get an even earlier start and leave December 8th to be safe, but again, Boreas surprises us with his early arrival, and we’re looking out the window at conditions like those in the picture. Nuts.
So it looks now like our best shot is tomorrow, the 2nd, with more snow in the forecast but daytime temperature forecast to rise to 38. By afternoon, there’s a good chance the pass will be clear down to Weed and I-5. (For some reason, highway 97 to Weed is often clear when 140 to Medford has packed snow and ice, despite them both being at about the same elevation, 5500 feet.)
If we don’t get out tomorrow, the forecast is back to more snow and temperatures at or below freezing. We might have to wait who knows how long, and I might even have to chain up.
Dammit. I’m thinking next year, November 15th.
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