December 2021
ESCAPE FROM TAHOE-- Glacier in the Sky--
(Zinc, Laguna Beach)-- Plans had already been made to get out while the getting out was good. That happened on the day before Christmas Eve when the first signs of the severity of the record-breaking atmospheric glacier appeared on the horizon to the west. Having survived the bomb cyclone in October, there was no hesitation this time. What had begun just after Pearl Harbor Day and just before Christmas didn't fall into the usual pattern of December storms and that was the first indication of things to come. That early storm dropped enough snow to make work just short of unbearable; the only advantage was that the sun did come out after a few days and just about the same time a request for a week at the San Clemente resort came through. It was booked immediately.
That post Pearl Harbor Day storm was gnarly enough as the drains on the office building froze immediately requiring a full day of moving a tall ladder after using the snow blower to clear a path below the upper deck to stage it. Icicles were already forming and ice in the drains had to be chopped loose and dropped to the ground before the coils installed on the roof were of any use. Even then, the entire system looks good in ads but is useless otherwise. All of the snow around the firepit and hot tub needed to be removed, amounting to yet another full day on the snow blower. The one thing about snow is that it is never "removed," just put into another place until it melts, hopefully by May. This wasn't the case as it didn't have time. The back decks on the upper two studios on the third floor had about four feet on them and that had to go. By the time all of this was done, starting with using the snowblowers to clear parking, as the plow was a no show at the beginning, the new glacier in the sky was headed for Tahoe. The rain began and lasted for two days even before the glacier began to descend in an unrelenting barrage that included whiteout conditions. That rain offered an opportunity on Wednesday, Christmas Eve Minus Two, to cut into the berm along the boulevard and get it out of the way, not that it would make much of a difference.
On Thursday, the warnings were clear and not just from the agencies tasked with keeping travelers off the highway. If getting out was going to happen, it would happen on Christmas Eve Minus One. A text message from the office inquired as to, "helping out with snow," (removal). Not a chance, the reply: "Did not want to risk injury before the drive." Packing was already done, and chains had been installed a few days before and left on the Toyota Yaris; a very dependable compact hatchback that ran like a snowmobile in heavy snow. Departure was about 14:30 PST on 23 December.
State Route 267 out of Kings Beach required chains and the old set installed on the front tires lasted until pulling up on Interstate-80 west when the driver's side chain blew a link. That was replaced with another one of the old chains and back on the road and cleared by CalTrans at the checkpoint, that same chain blew out going up Donner Pass, and pulling off at the Donner Lake off ramp to replace it. Using a chain from the new set, that held along with the one on the passenger front tire all the way to where chain controls expired somewhere near Kingvale in the whiteout. That was just the beginning of the drive and it had already taken about two hours. All the way into and past Colfax to Forest Hill for gas and a stop at McDonalds, the road was hammered with rain squalls that reduced visibility to near zero. Those would last all the way through Sacramento and most of the way down Interstate-5 to the Tracy cutoff and rest stop. Nobody was at the rest stop, it was clean. Somewhere south of Santa Nella, the clouds opened up and Orion, the Hunter, the constellation appeared high in the sky to the east. Then the half-moon rose over the Sierra Nevada range to the east, a stunning arrival to the landscape, and it would remain until more squalls settled in somewhere around the Fresno cutoff. The canopy closed once again, and squalls came and went for a hundred miles before a dense fog moved in and hung low on the freeway. There were few trucks and driving was not that difficult. A two-hour break at the next rest stop then back on the road to yet another rest stop before morning and just 100 miles from Grapevine Pass.
The fog broke up and the sun came out at the Lebec rest stop.