Sunday morning brought 2 feet of snow to the area and a treacherous drive back to the city. Jon thought it might be better to wait to put the chains on the tires until we were closer to the mountain pass, so we started out with no chains. Before we could even get in to town from our condo, we were unable to get the rental van up a steep hill. Mike carefully backed down the hill and got the van off to the side of the road so Jon and Chris could put on the chains. With cars and snow plows coming by, it was a nerve-wracking 10 minutes while they put them on.
Once back on the road, we were ready to start back up that hill. Unfortunately, there was now a line of cars trying to get up that hill and not making it. A driver in a car coming the other way rolled his window down and told Mike we wouldn't make it up the hill even with our chains on and told us of a different road to take out. Thank goodness he did! Chris pulled it up in his google maps and off we went. The drive into town went well, slow, but the chains on the tires were really helping us to have traction. We laughed and patted ourselves on the back as we passed gas stations and auto supply stores that were slammed with business and lines. (Mike had filled up with gas after dinner Saturday so we wouldn't have to this morning.) Traffic was a solid line out of town to highway 50 and visibility was limited. We were driving in a crazy snowstorm. Soon, traffic came to a halt. Hmmm...what was going on. Jon looked at the CalTrans website and informed us that yes, chains were being required and that traffic was being kept from going through the pass due to avalanche control. Oh boy! What do we do? Jon says, we just have to wait.
So we waited awhile. But some restlessness set in and Jon found a different way/loop that would take us around no bring us back to 50. We decided to try it, thinking that perhaps when we got back to 50 it would be reopened. Wisely, we pulled into a MacDonalds to use the bathroom before heading out of town again. I might like to mention here that it's been about two hours already that we've been on the road and we aren't even out of town yet! The new route didn't pan out as the police had the road blocked off when we got there and everyone was diverted to a different road that would take us back to 50. (Turns out, that road was closed off because it brought you out to 50 after the checkpoint for chains.) But again, traffic was stopped most of the time and crawling forward in small increments. We were in park a lot of the time, and Mike was able to read a complete book while waiting.
As the hours passed and we weren't getting very far, we began to worry that we weren't going to make it back in time for our 10:15 flight home. We laughed about how we would be crashing at Jon's place. Eventually though, the pass reopened and we were back on our way making very slow progress.
This story ends positively though, as we make it back to Jon's at 7:30 p.m. (We started at 9:00 a.m.) We were going to make our flight home after all!
We had a fantastic weekend as a family and fell in love, again, with Heavenly as a ski destination. The last time we skied here was 14 years ago. We're not going to wait that long to come back again.
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