A picture would have been great, but you'll visualize this just fine on your own!
There's a road here, called Bogus Basin Road. It's 16 miles long, and has been written up as having 140-something hairpin turns. I'm not so sure I'd call them all hairpin, but that's beside the point. It climbs up through Boise's foothills to the base area of Bogus Basin ski resort -- it's about a 3000 foot elevation change.
We've had a bit of snow this week.
Something like 65 inches (that's over my head!) of powder over the last eight days. Down here in the valley, we've had quite a bit too -- maybe two feet? It's wetter, heavier stuff down here, and that's a lot of snow for a desert community!
Bogus Basin Road is the only road I know of in the entire area (aside from state and federal highways) that is ever touched by a snow plow. It was nasty driving up today. I'm glad DH doesn't seem to mind it too much, cuz I sure wouldn't want to do it! I'm also mighty grateful that there are HUGE plow piles on the downhill side of the road -- it's a long way down!
Today was, as I said, pretty nasty -- We were up yesterday, and after we left, it started snowing. 16 inches of powder between then and when we woke up this morning DH suggested that maybe I could talk him out of skiing today (what, you think maybe you want to stay home today, dear? But you'll miss out on 16 inches of fresh snow!) The crew had things in halfways decent shape, but even halfways decent was still pretty slippery -- the first of it was landing on sun-warmed roads, so it started out slushy, turned icy, and then snow on top, you know how it is... So it was slow going.
NOT the kind of day you wanted to be driving a little "tin can" car, right?
Well, as we were coming down this afternoon, the lines of traffic were terrifying. Terrifying because they weren't moving. Did I mention this is a two lane road, and narrowed by all the snow? The crews have been doing a great job, but it's falling almost as fast as they can clear it, it seems, and keeping things full width, well, let's just say they could use a couple of snow-free days to catch up!
Cars WERE heading up -- there's still several hours of skiing...
We're plodding down the road, nothing's coming our way, and we're barely moving.
Round a little bend, clear another snow pile, and NO WONDER! There's a guy, stopped in the middle of the road, putting chains on his tires.
Down the way a little further, the minivan, tires spinning like mad, the road's NARROW here, and he's sliding left-right-left-right, and DH is saying, NOOOOOOOOOO stay on your OWN side of the road! as we pass him. Still VERY lowly. We'll pass a few more like this along the way, but oh my, look who's next!
One of those little box cars, it's white, a Scion, maybe? This is very strange, they're heading up with the driver's side door hanging wide open. And at the left rear corner? A guy, PUSHING this car UP the mountain!!!!
You gotta want to go skiing pretty darned badly to push your car up a sixteen mile ribbon of ice!
Kano
There's a road here, called Bogus Basin Road. It's 16 miles long, and has been written up as having 140-something hairpin turns. I'm not so sure I'd call them all hairpin, but that's beside the point. It climbs up through Boise's foothills to the base area of Bogus Basin ski resort -- it's about a 3000 foot elevation change.
We've had a bit of snow this week.
Something like 65 inches (that's over my head!) of powder over the last eight days. Down here in the valley, we've had quite a bit too -- maybe two feet? It's wetter, heavier stuff down here, and that's a lot of snow for a desert community! Bogus Basin Road is the only road I know of in the entire area (aside from state and federal highways) that is ever touched by a snow plow. It was nasty driving up today. I'm glad DH doesn't seem to mind it too much, cuz I sure wouldn't want to do it! I'm also mighty grateful that there are HUGE plow piles on the downhill side of the road -- it's a long way down!
Today was, as I said, pretty nasty -- We were up yesterday, and after we left, it started snowing. 16 inches of powder between then and when we woke up this morning DH suggested that maybe I could talk him out of skiing today (what, you think maybe you want to stay home today, dear? But you'll miss out on 16 inches of fresh snow!) The crew had things in halfways decent shape, but even halfways decent was still pretty slippery -- the first of it was landing on sun-warmed roads, so it started out slushy, turned icy, and then snow on top, you know how it is... So it was slow going.
NOT the kind of day you wanted to be driving a little "tin can" car, right?
Well, as we were coming down this afternoon, the lines of traffic were terrifying. Terrifying because they weren't moving. Did I mention this is a two lane road, and narrowed by all the snow? The crews have been doing a great job, but it's falling almost as fast as they can clear it, it seems, and keeping things full width, well, let's just say they could use a couple of snow-free days to catch up!
Cars WERE heading up -- there's still several hours of skiing...
We're plodding down the road, nothing's coming our way, and we're barely moving.
Round a little bend, clear another snow pile, and NO WONDER! There's a guy, stopped in the middle of the road, putting chains on his tires.
Down the way a little further, the minivan, tires spinning like mad, the road's NARROW here, and he's sliding left-right-left-right, and DH is saying, NOOOOOOOOOO stay on your OWN side of the road! as we pass him. Still VERY lowly. We'll pass a few more like this along the way, but oh my, look who's next!
One of those little box cars, it's white, a Scion, maybe? This is very strange, they're heading up with the driver's side door hanging wide open. And at the left rear corner? A guy, PUSHING this car UP the mountain!!!!
You gotta want to go skiing pretty darned badly to push your car up a sixteen mile ribbon of ice!
Kano
That's hilarious! I'm glad you guys made it without incident.
. It ended up being funny, but man, those I think were the worst roads I have ever seen in my life.
