Slow Down

When Kendall and I were riding the lift on Saturday, we rode up with a guy one time that lived in Granby (just north of Winter Park). We chatted a bit and he said he usually boards at Copper and they have some great snow up there.

As we were talking, I mentioned that we'd seen the gates on each side of the Pass (Berthoud Pass) and wondered why they were closing it now. We've been going up to Winter Park for years, though not for 3 or 4, and the gates didn't used to be there. He said that too many people were driving unsafe they he sees lots of accidents coming back from I-70. He thought they closed it now when people weren't likely to drive safe.

As we started home last night about 6:00pm, we saw some of that. It was snowing, really a blizzard and we could barely see 100ft in front of the truck. The lights in the truck aren't great and get dirty easy, so I was glad Tia was driving. She sees much better than I.

As we headed up the pass, there are 2 lanes up, 1 down, and she was taking it easy, 35-40 in a 45-50 zone. A few people passed us, some of them unsafe, doing so on curves, just trying to get up and over. We commented on that, and then a few minutes later, caught some of them as they were stuck behind a semi.

With 4 or 5 of us behind this semi, going about 20mph, each of us a safe distance behind the other, 2 more trucks passed us. How insane is that, and unsafe?

And for what? As we crested the pass and headed down on the South side, we ended up within taillight sight distance of most of the cars. So they took a chance on an accident, a potentially really bad one on that pass since the north side of the road is a hundred+ foot drop almost straight down at any point, to gain hundreds of yards?

Crazy. Glad they're closing the pass, though it does make me rethink going to Winter Park if there's a chance of a storm.