Man, brings back some not so great memories of about 24 hours spent stuck on top of the Siskiyou pass in about 2002 or so. The average person’s unpreparedness and stupidity continues to blow my mind.
We were travelling back to California (stationed at Travis AFB at the time), from spending Christmas with friends up near Ft Lewis in WA State. It started to snow heavily as we got near southern Oregon and started up the pass…we had 4WD, good winter tires, and even had snow chains if required.
More importantly, had food, water, warm clothes and blankets, several mechanisms to start fires, etc. Oh yeah, and I never let my fuel drop below 1/2 tank…ever. Especially when travelling. Paid off this time for sure.
At some point, someone got stuck and that of course caused a chain reaction all the way down the pass…. We made it as far as mile marker 7 before grinding to a dead stop; completely surrounded by disabled cars.
We were stuck next to that mile marker for over 18 hours. We got 3-4‘ of packed snow in that time…some drifts were well over 6’. I shut the truck down and ran it 15 minutes every hour to keep us warm…barely…and tried to rock it back and forth to keep the tires from flat spotting, get the trans fluid moving a bit, etc. And while it was idling went around and cleared the snow from the exhaust (and the cars around me), cleared windows, etc.
Rinse and repeat for 18 hours. Good times.
Most of the people around us ran out of gas, because they had no concept of limited supplies and an unknown end point. Except for a couple cars, they also had no food or water …or warm attire. The idiot behind us had on top siders with no socks, chinos and a t-shirt with a sweater vest.
One guy a couple vehicles up from us died…likely a heart attack, but definitely froze on top of that (ran out of gas).
Anyway, the next day when they finally worked their way up to us is was a complete mess…. Cool machines though.
This event finally got my wife on board with my “always going overboard“ preparing for contingencies … snowmageddon here in TX last year was another great example for her, but she’s long been on board!
So yeah, extra clothes, boots, food, water…. Common sense for most, but sadly a completely foreign concept for most.