Dashing Through the Snow

The husband and I left early Thursday morning for Seattle. We had an uneventful trip over. The weather was clear, traffic was reasonable, and the dashboard in The Diva was free of check engine lights. The plan was to pick up the new work truck on Friday morning and drive back to Montana. We had done all the paperwork in advance so that all we had to do was walk in, get the keys, and leave with a truck.

We were on our way into Red Robin for dinner when the husband’s cell phone rang. It was the fleet manager from Tacoma Dodge. He has been an absolute hero throughout this entire process, so I am sure that it pained him excessively to have to tell the husband that the employee who was given the job of filling the truck with fuel put gasoline in it instead of diesel. Fortunately, this guy did not start the truck. They towed the truck back to the shop and the plan was to drop the tank Friday morning, drain and flush it, and reinstall it. We were told to be there at noon.

[If the employee had started the truck, that process would have been much more involved, to the point where I would have left the husband in Tacoma and headed home by myself.]

It ended up taking a bit longer than expected, so we didn’t actually leave Tacoma until 2 pm. I had been keeping an eye on the webcams over Snoqualmie Pass. We thought we would get over the pass and drive as far as possible before getting a hotel room for the night.

The husband missed a turn leaving Tacoma and we got separated. I had told him that if that happened, I would pull off into a chain-up area just before the pass and wait for him.

This was not my first time over the pass. (It was probably about my 50th.) This was not my first time over the pass in bad weather. I got over into the right-hand lane and took my time. As we went up in elevation, rain changed to sleet and then snow, and I watched, more than mildly horrified, as cars with Washington plates blew past me in the left-hand lanes like it was a sunny day in July. I’ve concluded that people in Seattle think that because they drive in rain for so much of the year, they also believe that qualifies them to drive in the snow. You know—same precip, just white. 🙄

I pulled over into a chain-up area about five miles from the summit to wait for the husband. After a few minutes, traffic started backing up to my location, so I pulled out my cellphone and looked at the WADOT website. They had closed the pass due to spin-outs and collisions, no doubt caused by the idiots I had seen speeding past me.

I called the husband. He was 10 miles behind me and had gotten stuck in North Bend when the state troopers closed I-90 there.

There was a car parked in front of me in the chain-up area. I watched as a young guy in thin pants, sneakers, and a windbreaker got out and attempted to put chains on one of the tires. I have a padded waterproof kneeling pad in my car in case I need to put chains on, so I got out and went over and offered it to him. He thanked me and said he didn’t need it. “My father-in-law gave us these chains and I don’t think they fit these tires.” They did not. They were too small. He gave up and got back into the car.

[WADOT posted a photo to its Twitter account last week of some guy who tried to rig up a too-small set of chains on his tires by connecting them with a USB cord. He gets points for creativity, but that was a dumb idea.]

We sat and waited. It got dark. I was plenty warm in my wool socks, boots, and warm winter coat. I had food and water and a sleeping bag with me.

I look at this picture and honestly, that’s not a lot of snow, not by Montana standards. We drove through 6" of snow on our road as we got back to the house yesterday because it was Saturday and the county road department doesn’t plow on the weekends.

Around 5:30 pm, they opened the pass and traffic started moving. I was going to wait for the husband, but he said there were a thousand people down there waiting to drive over the pass and he thought I should just go ahead and not wait to get stuck in another traffic jam. I said I would get over the pass and pull off somewhere and wait for him. The guy parked in front of me—who had his wife, mother, MIL, and a toddler with him—told me that they were going to go to the next exit and turn around and go back to Seattle.

I am surprised that pass doesn’t get closed more often than it does. The posted speed limit over the summit was 35 mph, more than appropriate for the road conditions. It was snowing but they had gotten the plows out while the pass was closed. I got back on the road, stayed in the right-hand lane traveling 35 mph, and still there were people passing me in the left-hand lanes. Driving fast on poor road conditions doesn’t make you some kind of badass. What it makes you is lucky.

I went as far as the town of Cle Elum (about 30 miles), where I knew there was a Safeway and a hotel. That was where WADOT had closed the westbound lanes, though, and the hotel was full and traffic was backed up. I found a spot in the Safeway parking lot and called the husband to let him know where I was. He arrived half an hour later.

I went into Safeway and got us some dinner. We made ourselves comfy inside the new truck and considered sleeping there for the night. The snow finally stopped around 10 pm, so I called a hotel in Ellensburg, another 25 miles down the road, to make sure there was a room available. We drove there—traffic was very light at that point—and spent the night. We left Ellensburg at 7 am yesterday morning and were home by 3 pm.

I’m not going to Monday morning quarterback this one. If I can avoid bad weather and poor road conditions, I will, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. I was reluctant to leave the husband to travel alone because I know that route much better than he does. We were under some time constraints and our carefully-planned schedule was upended by a wrench in the works. Waiting until this week wasn’t an option—the weather over the pass is supposed to be just as bad. We were as prepared as we could be, which is more than I can say for some of those travelers. The number of people we saw wearing light jackets and sneakers was appalling.

Today is a busy one for me—I play at church this morning and again for the Christmas Eve service. I plan on taking it easy this week.