WKarma
03-21-2011, 03:51 PM
Wrote this up about my trip home from Spring Mountain last night. Thought some of you might enjoy it.
So I decided to drive home from Pahrump last night, and I'm pretty sure I got caught in a disaster movie.
Everything started out great, the S4 had run great at the track, and my new summer tires had performed awesome. As I got into Death Valley National Park, it was amazingly dark, but the clouds were unfortunately covering up what must have been an awesome place to see the night sky. As I'm climbing out of the 200 feet below sea level area of the Park, it starts to rain. Which seemed a bit weird for Death Valley to say the least, since it didn't get that name as a joke.
I'm making pretty good time climbing up the pass; the S4 loves cool dense air. I pass through Stovepipe Wells on my way up Towne Pass and the rain gets harder and harder as I climb. Eventually I realize it's changing over to snow. I slow way down as a catch sight of some tail lights up ahead that sprout police lights as they come up to blind turns. In about 10 minutes there's a good half inch of snow on the ground and I'm letting what turns out to be a Park Ranger lead the way up the pass. As we hit the top, he pulls over to the side, and I pulled up to see what was going on. Turns out he was calling ahead to another Ranger to check on the status of the pass. A few minutes later he turns around, and tells me that I should be fine if I take it easy.
I thank the friendly Ranger and move further along the pass, the 70mph winds driving the snow into a vertigo-causing snow tunnel in the headlights. Right as I'm about to start descending from my mountain top snowpocalypse, I come across the Ranger on the other end of the radio, who has 3 flares across the road and flags me down. He tells me that the wind has caused rockslides all through the rest of the pass and CALTRANS is down there right now cleaning it up. I ask him if it's passable and he says just keep going slow like you have been and you should be fine, and that I was almost out of the snow.
Sure enough, about 5 minutes later and 600 feet in altitude, the snow changed back to rain as I saw yellow strobes cutting through the reduced visibility. I came around a corner, passing a ROCKSLIDE AREA sign and sure enough, the road was littered with baseball sized chunks of rock and dirt. The Caltrans truck was basically a snowplow just pushing everything to the side of the road. Unfortunately, he was going the opposite direction, so I had to pick my way through the minefield. I was lucky, the red Miata stuffed into the rock wall and covered in rockslide that I passed wasn't. I encountered several more slide areas as I came out of Towne Pass and into Panamint Springs. I stopped at the gas station there (5.45 gas! yikes!) to ask about conditions ahead. They said several people had tried and were now sleeping in their cars in the parking lot, or in the motel, having abandoned their cars and hitchhiked back down. I had basically two choices of route at this point. Back up to 5000 feet and over to Lone Pine, or down into Panamint Valley, prone to flooding, then back up a steep, winding, 6-10% grade pass before descending into my destination Indian Wells valley. I decide to head to Lone Pine, as once you beat the pass, it stays at moderate elevation that shouldn't have the flooding problems of a valley floor.
So back up I go, and in just a few minutes, I'm in fog that lets me see about 20 feet ahead of the car. Using the GPS as an indicator of what turns are coming up, I pick my way out of the fog and get a brief reprieve before I pass 4500 feet and the snow comes back with a vengeance. Not wanting to get snowed in in Panamint Springs for 2 days, I press on. The temp is still above freezing and the snow is heavy and wet, so it's not super slick, and the tires don't seem to be having any trouble cutting down to the pavement. I pass all manner of vehicles in the turnouts along the road, some running with people in them, some obviously abandoned. The snow at this point basically allows as much forward visibility as the fog did.
I creep up the climb until it flattens out at the top, but now the wind hits. 80mph easy, it switches directions seemingly at random (not being able to see the terrain which drives it). The mind trip that is hard blowing snow and driving makes it easy to see why people can easily mess up and miss a turn. This is my life for the next 40 miles or so, slowly keeping forward progress and engine braking as I finally start to descend towards US-395 and what I hoped was just rain at the lower elevations.
It was, but only for about 5 minutes. Turning on to 395 and the nice straight divided 4 lanes that it is (my last 5 hours of driving having been 2 lane mountain roads), I figure I'm on the home stretch, until the snow decides it's not done with me. More wind driven snow, now without the benefit of an easily recognizable point of reference on the side of the road, I follow in the tracks of a semi that seems to meander across the whole width of the road. Another 30 minutes and I finally drop below the snow line as I come up to my turn off at Inyokern and then back home to Ridgecrest, the drive taking over 6 hours instead of the normal 4. The last ten miles was a struggle to stay awake as the adrenaline from the last 4 hours dissipated.
Pulling into the garage, I thanked Quattro, Torsen, and Dunlop for getting me home, and laughed that I should have had a camera crew with me, as this trip would have made an awesome commercial.
Here's a map of the entire area I had to deal with bad weather, close to 100 miles at 25-45 mph.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=CA-190+W&daddr=US-395+S%2FThree+Flags+Hwy&hl=en&geocode=FUCKLgIdwHQE-Q%3BFeLXJQIdu0_4-A&mra=me&mrsp=1%2C0&sz=11&sll=36.028555%2C-117.718506&sspn=0.482006%2C0.771103&ie=UTF8&ll=36.325084%2C-117.537231&spn=0.960366%2C1.542206&t=h&z=10
and a pic: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_v8rWFBsyZFI/TYfOizjW6zI/AAAAAAAAHaA/8otVH1wa-bg/s800/2011-03-20%2023.26.48.jpg
I'll put a thread up with pics/vids from the track once I get them processed.
So I decided to drive home from Pahrump last night, and I'm pretty sure I got caught in a disaster movie.
Everything started out great, the S4 had run great at the track, and my new summer tires had performed awesome. As I got into Death Valley National Park, it was amazingly dark, but the clouds were unfortunately covering up what must have been an awesome place to see the night sky. As I'm climbing out of the 200 feet below sea level area of the Park, it starts to rain. Which seemed a bit weird for Death Valley to say the least, since it didn't get that name as a joke.
I'm making pretty good time climbing up the pass; the S4 loves cool dense air. I pass through Stovepipe Wells on my way up Towne Pass and the rain gets harder and harder as I climb. Eventually I realize it's changing over to snow. I slow way down as a catch sight of some tail lights up ahead that sprout police lights as they come up to blind turns. In about 10 minutes there's a good half inch of snow on the ground and I'm letting what turns out to be a Park Ranger lead the way up the pass. As we hit the top, he pulls over to the side, and I pulled up to see what was going on. Turns out he was calling ahead to another Ranger to check on the status of the pass. A few minutes later he turns around, and tells me that I should be fine if I take it easy.
I thank the friendly Ranger and move further along the pass, the 70mph winds driving the snow into a vertigo-causing snow tunnel in the headlights. Right as I'm about to start descending from my mountain top snowpocalypse, I come across the Ranger on the other end of the radio, who has 3 flares across the road and flags me down. He tells me that the wind has caused rockslides all through the rest of the pass and CALTRANS is down there right now cleaning it up. I ask him if it's passable and he says just keep going slow like you have been and you should be fine, and that I was almost out of the snow.
Sure enough, about 5 minutes later and 600 feet in altitude, the snow changed back to rain as I saw yellow strobes cutting through the reduced visibility. I came around a corner, passing a ROCKSLIDE AREA sign and sure enough, the road was littered with baseball sized chunks of rock and dirt. The Caltrans truck was basically a snowplow just pushing everything to the side of the road. Unfortunately, he was going the opposite direction, so I had to pick my way through the minefield. I was lucky, the red Miata stuffed into the rock wall and covered in rockslide that I passed wasn't. I encountered several more slide areas as I came out of Towne Pass and into Panamint Springs. I stopped at the gas station there (5.45 gas! yikes!) to ask about conditions ahead. They said several people had tried and were now sleeping in their cars in the parking lot, or in the motel, having abandoned their cars and hitchhiked back down. I had basically two choices of route at this point. Back up to 5000 feet and over to Lone Pine, or down into Panamint Valley, prone to flooding, then back up a steep, winding, 6-10% grade pass before descending into my destination Indian Wells valley. I decide to head to Lone Pine, as once you beat the pass, it stays at moderate elevation that shouldn't have the flooding problems of a valley floor.
So back up I go, and in just a few minutes, I'm in fog that lets me see about 20 feet ahead of the car. Using the GPS as an indicator of what turns are coming up, I pick my way out of the fog and get a brief reprieve before I pass 4500 feet and the snow comes back with a vengeance. Not wanting to get snowed in in Panamint Springs for 2 days, I press on. The temp is still above freezing and the snow is heavy and wet, so it's not super slick, and the tires don't seem to be having any trouble cutting down to the pavement. I pass all manner of vehicles in the turnouts along the road, some running with people in them, some obviously abandoned. The snow at this point basically allows as much forward visibility as the fog did.
I creep up the climb until it flattens out at the top, but now the wind hits. 80mph easy, it switches directions seemingly at random (not being able to see the terrain which drives it). The mind trip that is hard blowing snow and driving makes it easy to see why people can easily mess up and miss a turn. This is my life for the next 40 miles or so, slowly keeping forward progress and engine braking as I finally start to descend towards US-395 and what I hoped was just rain at the lower elevations.
It was, but only for about 5 minutes. Turning on to 395 and the nice straight divided 4 lanes that it is (my last 5 hours of driving having been 2 lane mountain roads), I figure I'm on the home stretch, until the snow decides it's not done with me. More wind driven snow, now without the benefit of an easily recognizable point of reference on the side of the road, I follow in the tracks of a semi that seems to meander across the whole width of the road. Another 30 minutes and I finally drop below the snow line as I come up to my turn off at Inyokern and then back home to Ridgecrest, the drive taking over 6 hours instead of the normal 4. The last ten miles was a struggle to stay awake as the adrenaline from the last 4 hours dissipated.
Pulling into the garage, I thanked Quattro, Torsen, and Dunlop for getting me home, and laughed that I should have had a camera crew with me, as this trip would have made an awesome commercial.
Here's a map of the entire area I had to deal with bad weather, close to 100 miles at 25-45 mph.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=CA-190+W&daddr=US-395+S%2FThree+Flags+Hwy&hl=en&geocode=FUCKLgIdwHQE-Q%3BFeLXJQIdu0_4-A&mra=me&mrsp=1%2C0&sz=11&sll=36.028555%2C-117.718506&sspn=0.482006%2C0.771103&ie=UTF8&ll=36.325084%2C-117.537231&spn=0.960366%2C1.542206&t=h&z=10
and a pic: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_v8rWFBsyZFI/TYfOizjW6zI/AAAAAAAAHaA/8otVH1wa-bg/s800/2011-03-20%2023.26.48.jpg
I'll put a thread up with pics/vids from the track once I get them processed.