Fighting the snowbelt

The recent snowstorm in the Sierra Nevadas will cure a lot of ills for the people of California.

Officials predicted that the storm would dump some 12-14 feet of snow there. The spring runoff will do wonders for farmers and fruit growers in the valleys below.

I have been over Donner Pass, made famous back in the days of the movement west. At the time I was there, it didn’t seem like much of a grind getting over the mountains. Donner Pass is barely 7,000 feet above sea level. Of course, my trip over the pass was in good weather so it was a scenic drive.

My wife and I vacationed years later and planned to go over Donner. We took off on I-5 to Sacramento, and had planned to cross over the pass, head north and make a huge circle, then return to Bothell, where we lived at the time.

We stopped at a restaurant to get something to eat and were informed that Donner Pass was closed because of the snow. We waited a couple of hours and learned that it would likely be a day before they could get the highway open again.

So much for traveling over Donner Pass before springtime.

There are certain areas that are natural snow belts.

One that we have taken both in the dead of winter and in the spring is from Cooke City to Deer Lodge, Montana. Again, the altitude of the pass isn’t that high, but you can depend on a lot of snow. We drove over the Bear Tooth highway, where it is only 6,900 feet above sea level, but where there was 10 feet of snow on both sides of the highway.

Highways over high mountain areas don’t always mean heavy snow, and highways not so high don’t mean an absence of snow.

The hope is that the heavy snow in the Sierras will fill the reservoirs, or at least provide the water farmers need in the California valleys.