18 replies to this topic

[DonaldMReif]

Mine's would be taking my sister and her boyfriend to Breckenridge today. The traffic on I-70 was probably the worst we'd ever been through, as it took us basically five hours to get home, three of them just to get to the Eisenhower Tunnel, due to snow, combined with Loveland Pass being shut down for weather and causing hazmat stops at the tunnel, and the need to do metering, and the fact it was the holidays meaning a lot more people on the roads. Honestly the trip home would have just taken three hours if we'd just gone by way of Hoosier Pass.

I'm sure a number of people on this forum have had nightmarish road trips at some point or another. What are yours?

[towertop]

MOVE!!!

[2milehi]

Driving back from Trinidad reservoir to Denver (2 1/2 hour trip) knowing that I was going to divorce my wife shortly. This was 11 years ago.

[skierdude9450]

I've had quite a few just like that. Sometimes you're just stuck and there's nothing you can do about it. A couple times I've bailed using the secret underpass halfway up the hill to the tunnel. I'm sure whoever stayed in Summit had a rad day today!

[SkiDaBird]

I'v had it take 3 hours to get 10 miles down Little Cottonwood. That is a nightmare on pow days if you are coming from Alta.

[Lift Dinosaur]

SkiDaBird, on 27 April 2014 - 08:39 AM, said:

I'v had it take 3 hours to get 10 miles down Little Cottonwood. That is a nightmare on pow days if you are coming from Alta.

I've had it take 2 DAYS just to get OUT of Little Cottonwood! It was great to be stranded in Powder Paradise!!
Dino

[DonaldMReif]

I guess a hotel room at Snowbird suddenly becomes more valuable.

[SkiDaBird]

DonaldMReif, on 28 April 2014 - 08:12 AM, said:

I guess a hotel room at Snowbird suddenly becomes more valuable.

Assuming they let you out of the building....and that the lifts are running. On bad avi days they don't open til 10ish

[boardski]

A few years ago, I was caught just east of Idaho Springs, CO when they closed I-70 for four hours. I was returning from Mary Jane after a day when they had 20 inches new in many areas on the mountain. I turned off the engine and listened to the Rockies game even though I am not a baseball fan and the only thing I had to cover up with was my Daughter's "Barbie princess" blanket. It was important not to freeze to death as those who found me would have gotten the wrong idea:-) As I have started saying after days of annoying traffic and long lines at the lifts, "The downhill part was fun."

This post has been edited by boardski: 29 April 2014 - 07:49 PM

[mikest2]

Hey, let's go burn some donuts in the Happy Valley parking lot ! How do You spell "F**kwit" ?

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[boardski]

Another difficult road trip was in March of 2008 when we visited Big Sky/ Bridger. It took 10 hours to get from Westminster, CO to Bozeman but 3 days to get from Bridger back to Westminster. We were wanting to drive directly back from Bridger and arrive in the early hours of the morning but the blizzard which covered MT, WY, and CO had other plans for us. I filled the gas tank in Billings and it was raining and quickly changed to snow... lots of snow on our way to Sheridan. Then the driver side wiper quit working (loose bolt). Visibility was horrible and speed was down to 20mph (for everyone) and getting dark. Suddenly a bus appeared and we followed it into Sheridan WY and got the last room at Super 8. Fixed wiper the next morning with the help of Hotel maintenance only to be caught in Cheyenne with all roads closed out of the area. The best part was, of course, we all lived to tell/ laugh about it and, at least it was the return trip and not the trip out. No skiing or riding was missed, thank goodness because that trip was a blast and I have wanted to go back ever since. One of these winters.

[Allan]

mikest2, on 27 September 2014 - 07:43 PM, said:

Hey, let's go burn some donuts in the Happy Valley parking lot ! How do You spell "F**kwit" ?

Oh ouch - was that a lamp standard? Someone stole an older minivan from town and was ripping up our parking lot. Well they missed the ramp to the lower lot and aired over the rocks on the bank to the lot.. landed nose first. The van drove about 50 metres after that and no more! They got caught by the RCMP.

[missouriskier]

boardski, on 28 September 2014 - 06:01 PM, said:

Another difficult road trip was in March of 2008 when we visited Big Sky/ Bridger. It took 10 hours to get from Westminster, CO to Bozeman but 3 days to get from Bridger back to Westminster. We were wanting to drive directly back from Bridger and arrive in the early hours of the morning but the blizzard which covered MT, WY, and CO had other plans for us. I filled the gas tank in Billings and it was raining and quickly changed to snow... lots of snow on our way to Sheridan. Then the driver side wiper quit working (loose bolt). Visibility was horrible and speed was down to 20mph (for everyone) and getting dark. Suddenly a bus appeared and we followed it into Sheridan WY and got the last room at Super 8. Fixed wiper the next morning with the help of Hotel maintenance only to be caught in Cheyenne with all roads closed out of the area. The best part was, of course, we all lived to tell/ laugh about it and, at least it was the return trip and not the trip out. No skiing or riding was missed, thank goodness because that trip was a blast and I have wanted to go back ever since. One of these winters.

Yes, those storms that close the main highways can really add to travel time. I haven't ever been in one that was really bad, thankfully. We did get stuck in Limon for a night when I was 8 years old, but it was almost time to find a place to spend the night anyway. When we went to Big Sky two years ago, it snowed the whole way from Sheridan to Billings. The storm had just started and 50 mph was about the right speed. After we got to Bozeman, I checked the highway report and saw that I 90 had been closed on that section. The weird part was that we saw only one plow truck the whole way and it wasn't very cold so plowing and salt would have made a big difference.

I don't know how well MT usually clears the Interstates, but at least from that experience it seems like they either didn't pay attention to the weather or just didn't do very much about it.

[NHskier13]

Hearing everybody else's stories makes New Hampshire seem so docile...
Mine would have to be on 1/25/2015 at Waterville Valley. It was snowing in the morning. It was raining from 12:30 to 2:00 when I left (I normally leave at 5:00 but seeing my weather app is freaking out kind of made me nervous) Everywhere you drove, you saw cars flipped over in the median, All Wheel Drive trucks losing traction and spinning out, and constantly crawling into a standstill traffic area. Add on the the fact that in New England, everyone seems to forget that 4-wheel drive is not 4-wheel stop. And also people were doing more than the speed limit... Just terrible.

[liftmech]

You make a point that I-70 drivers would do well to temember. Four-wheel drive makes you invincible, right?

[DonaldMReif]

It doesn't matter what kind of drive your car is designed as - front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, four wheel drive or all wheel drive - you need to be real cautious in bad weather. I've always learned to drive extra slow when there's snow on the roads. Never once had an accident because I drive safe and I use common sense when driving (I've had a driver's license for two and a half years, and I have never once been pulled over or ticketed or had an accident; the only accident I've been in was when my dad got our Volvo ski car wrecked in a pileup on I-70 in March 2013. We ended up using Dad's BMW for our remaining ski trips that season, and replaced our Volvo with a better Honda CRV that has features our Volvo never had: Sirius XM, a rearview camera, and it handles more like a car than like a truck).

[DonaldMReif]

Of course, my dad, my sister Maggie, and I had to drive in snowy weather and slick roads when driving up to Breckenridge on December 21st this past year for our Christmas week timeshare. It was a good thing we went in the morning, as I think the highway was closed for part of that Monday.

[mrskifriend]

This wasn't really a traffic nightmare since we got home taking about an hour longer, but here's a story from 2009. I'm up at Ski Bowl with my family, and we ski from day to night (It's Christmas of 2009 I think). It's snowing like mad up there, and I heard from a friend it was coming down hard in Portland too. At about 7:30 PM we left Ski Bowl and drove home. The highways were pretty typical on Mt. Hood, with snow and gravel and a few vacated cars. However, driving through Portland was a disaster. A bridge or two as shut down, and we live up in the West Hills. Keep in mind the word ''Hills''. So, We are driving up this road very slowly but not stopping and there are tons of cars scattered about, some crashed into others, with people who left them to seek shelter or are camping out in their cars for the night. At one point we reach the steepest part of our drive and we are weaving in and out of stuck cars scattered all over the two lane road. We weave around them but CANNOT STOP because otherwise we would sink down in the snow and get stuck if trying to move again. But, we made it.

[missouriskier]

I have an interesting comment to add to the thoughts on four-wheel drive up a few posts. While I don't disagree about needing to be very cautious driving in bad weather, I do want to point out that all cars do have four-wheel braking, and there are times you can stop better than you can accelerate.

The reason I mention this relates to a story from last January in Colorado. My family basically only drives four-wheel drive SUVs and trucks, because it does snow in St. Louis, we travel to ski once or twice every winter, and my dad has to drive through mud on construction sites quite often - even so, sometimes he still gets stuck in mud with his truck.

We had a partial failure of the electric motor that shifts the transfer case on our GMC Envoy. (Of course, if the stupid auto manufacturers would just put a manual shift lever to the transfer case, like my dad's truck has, this would never have happened. For some weird reason, Americans have a craving for making everything on their cars automatic, and that uses unreliable electric/electronic vehicle components. End of rant.) What happened is that the only time it would send power to the front wheels was when it was in automatic 4wd mode. By shifting it to full-time 4wd mode, we were unknowingly putting it in rear wheel drive only. I was attempting to drive over Vail Pass, and ended up in a skid and was mercifully stopped by the deeper snow on the shoulder - it could have been a very serious accident, but thankfully wasn't. After my dad couldn't drive the car out of the deeper snow, motorist assist gave us a pull, and my dad finished the trip back to Dillon. Once we were off 70, and on U.S. 6, we realized that the other cars were just blowing past us taking off from a traffic light, while we could only get going very slowly, yet we could stop pretty quickly - as fast as everyone else. My dad kept saying that he'd never seen a 4wd act that way. When we got on a side street ready to enter the parking garage at our cousins' condo, we tested all the 4wd modes and realized that we really didn't have 4wd (except in the automatic mode, which is only part-time 4wd), which is what I had been suspecting all along. What I suppose I am trying to illustrate is that driving a RWD vehicle without excellent winter tires and a lot of weight on the back can actually be much more dangerous when you are trying to go rather than to stop.