lucky to be alive!
Seriously-the title's no joke.
Some of you may know that I'm on holiday in California, visiting my brother-in-law's family and that they own a 75 acre plot of land near Yosemite National Park.
We stayed up there last night and since Yosemite has great skiing, thought we'd (me, my sister and her husband) get up at 6am to reach the slopes early enough to get proper lessons. The drive should've only taken about an hour and half.
About an hour and forty five minutes in, we were ten miles from Badger Pass and ran into problems. It had snowed pretty heavily overnight and it was still early enough that the snow ploughs and gritters hadn't had a chance to get through yet and the road was turning to ice. We had a couple of scary skids and one minor bump into a snowbank, but nothing major and most people were in the same situation.
We reached the intersection for Badger Pass (5 miles to go) and the snow ploughs had been through and compacted all the ice on the roads and created a huge ice bank in the middle of the road. We skidded slowly into it at about 15mph from a distance of about two metres and knocked the right front fender loose. Not even hard emough to scratch it. No biggie, right?
Well, we hit the ice wall sideways and the force blew the pressure from the tyre and ground the gears in the hub together until they weren't fitting together properly and we lost four wheel drive. There were rangers nearby who were luckily able to tell us what had happened (they all saw us crash) and what we needed to do. They weren't letting anyone without four wheel drive and snow chains up into Badger Pass or down into Yosemite Valley.
Seriously, we're in a jeep with four wheel drive and snow tyres. If you need snow chains to continue? It's too dangerous to continue.
So, there was never going to be any skiing for us which was annoying, but the problem quickly became getting back down the mountain. The ranger said the nearest air for our tyre was at the bottom and to get the hell out of there because there was a snow storm coming and if it caught us, we'd be stuck up there.
We crawled down the mountain at about 5mph with our hazard lights on. Occasionally, there were wankers tailgating us and honking us. From the outside, the jeep looked fine, but it so totally wasn't--it was grinding and shuddering and swerving right (the direction of the massive drops). If they couldn't tell something was wrong with us, screw them.
Let me tell you, getting down an icy mountain in two wheel drive with a flat tyre is some scary shit. I've never been more scared in my life--there are precipitous drops of about a thousand feet all the way down for about 15 miles on this road (on the side of the road we were driving on) with nothing whatsover to stop your fall. You fall off the edge of the road, you are dead, no two ways about it. Either you wrap youself sideways around a tree midair or you plummet to your death.
There was only one near miss, since we were going so slowly, but we skidded right and ended up with our front right tyre about two inches from the edge of the cliff. If we'd skidded a foot more to the right, we'd have been over and dead.
They closed the roads behind us because it was too dangerous. On the way down, we saw five or six cars in trouble. Two had huge dents in the metalwork, one had a split fender driven into the tyre, one was off in the trees in the other side of the road--those could have been us.
We've played this down to our relatives because they'd have heart attacks if they knew how close it really was, but I feel I need to tell someone that we really almost didn't make it back down safely.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that some poor sod did go over the edge of the mountain today, but I'm not going to go looking, because it could so easily have been us.
Some of you may know that I'm on holiday in California, visiting my brother-in-law's family and that they own a 75 acre plot of land near Yosemite National Park.
We stayed up there last night and since Yosemite has great skiing, thought we'd (me, my sister and her husband) get up at 6am to reach the slopes early enough to get proper lessons. The drive should've only taken about an hour and half.
About an hour and forty five minutes in, we were ten miles from Badger Pass and ran into problems. It had snowed pretty heavily overnight and it was still early enough that the snow ploughs and gritters hadn't had a chance to get through yet and the road was turning to ice. We had a couple of scary skids and one minor bump into a snowbank, but nothing major and most people were in the same situation.
We reached the intersection for Badger Pass (5 miles to go) and the snow ploughs had been through and compacted all the ice on the roads and created a huge ice bank in the middle of the road. We skidded slowly into it at about 15mph from a distance of about two metres and knocked the right front fender loose. Not even hard emough to scratch it. No biggie, right?
Well, we hit the ice wall sideways and the force blew the pressure from the tyre and ground the gears in the hub together until they weren't fitting together properly and we lost four wheel drive. There were rangers nearby who were luckily able to tell us what had happened (they all saw us crash) and what we needed to do. They weren't letting anyone without four wheel drive and snow chains up into Badger Pass or down into Yosemite Valley.
Seriously, we're in a jeep with four wheel drive and snow tyres. If you need snow chains to continue? It's too dangerous to continue.
So, there was never going to be any skiing for us which was annoying, but the problem quickly became getting back down the mountain. The ranger said the nearest air for our tyre was at the bottom and to get the hell out of there because there was a snow storm coming and if it caught us, we'd be stuck up there.
We crawled down the mountain at about 5mph with our hazard lights on. Occasionally, there were wankers tailgating us and honking us. From the outside, the jeep looked fine, but it so totally wasn't--it was grinding and shuddering and swerving right (the direction of the massive drops). If they couldn't tell something was wrong with us, screw them.
Let me tell you, getting down an icy mountain in two wheel drive with a flat tyre is some scary shit. I've never been more scared in my life--there are precipitous drops of about a thousand feet all the way down for about 15 miles on this road (on the side of the road we were driving on) with nothing whatsover to stop your fall. You fall off the edge of the road, you are dead, no two ways about it. Either you wrap youself sideways around a tree midair or you plummet to your death.
There was only one near miss, since we were going so slowly, but we skidded right and ended up with our front right tyre about two inches from the edge of the cliff. If we'd skidded a foot more to the right, we'd have been over and dead.
They closed the roads behind us because it was too dangerous. On the way down, we saw five or six cars in trouble. Two had huge dents in the metalwork, one had a split fender driven into the tyre, one was off in the trees in the other side of the road--those could have been us.
We've played this down to our relatives because they'd have heart attacks if they knew how close it really was, but I feel I need to tell someone that we really almost didn't make it back down safely.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that some poor sod did go over the edge of the mountain today, but I'm not going to go looking, because it could so easily have been us.