Day 3: Donner Pass again

Earlier start today, much to do. Did some quick errands and then was off up the hill to try and catch the Amtrak. Evidently I missed that so decided to go exploring and try and find the Norden snow tunnels. The road I was supposed to take is now a snow trail, so enquired at the ski booth about snow shoeing in there, but it was going to be $25 just to stomp through some snow! Wandered up to the tracks to have a look and spied a Union Pacific worker, so had a chat to him and he told me about a short cut :-) Wandered back to the car, just missed a downhill freight (snow sucks up sound) so jumped in the car and chased him downhill, aiming for a Yuba Pass meeting. No sooner had I hit the I80 than I saw him crossing a big grain train, so quick U turn at the next off ramp and was back at Soda Springs in a couple of minutes. Found the shortcut and snow shoed into the snow sheds. Missed another freight while getting ready… seriously?! Not even midday and I've already missed 3 trains!

So plod plod plod down the hill I go, into position I get and a few minutes later my grain train comes creeping around the corner with a couple of GE "wings" on the front…

Just the one shot, trying to pan and zoom the video camera and snap off shots at the same time is tricky! Had a nice brand new SD70ACe on the rear in DPU mode, the snow shed does wonderful things to the bass of the engine :-)

Norden Snowshed / Looking the other way, lovely signal gantry and the slope I plodded down.

Knowing the next train would be a while, I sloshed around to the other side, made myself comfy and waited.

A train would be nice…

And waited… and waited… and waited. And I went for a bit of a walk, and waited some more and eventually gave up and started to walk back. (You know what happens now). Not so far away I hear the sound of an Amtrak horn at Soda Springs, so I "sprint" (really hard work in snow shoes!) back up to my spot and just have time to get a crooked video of the California Zephyr as it comes past. Considering it had 15 minutes to get to Truckee I think it was running rather late. Silly trains!

I plodded back to the car and climbed in, exhausted. Snow shoeing is really hard work, especially when carrying several kilos of camera equipment and a tripod!

I decided to be brave and revisit that snowy road from yesterday (after various "my grandma does 80 through 3' drifts" type comments from Jesse!) and down and up again, with lots of fishtailing and waggling. Back on the sealed road the poor thing was spitting up snow for the next 10 minutes, goodness knows where it was bringing it up from.

Then I headed down Donner Pass Road and came across an amazing lookout.

Those black lines in the first picture? They're the snow sheds from the first railway line, before they bored the new tunnel. Even now, weeks after any fresh snow, the sheds were almost totally covered.

Once at the bottom I spied a double stacker making it's way back up, so screech of tyres and I was heading back up again. Flew down (at a sedate 10mph) the snowy road to try and grab a shot of it exiting "The Hole", but it beat me by seconds. So squirreled back up the snowy road, by now quite mushy and rutted, and headed for Soda Springs. Spied a suspicious looking character with Nikon camera poised next to the tracks, turns out he's a fellow Train Orders member. Got some (potentially) great footage with lots of horn play as the massive double stacker crossed the road.

Jumped in the car and headed down to Yuba Gap (getting good at this!) and jumped from hole to hole in the snow to get into position. Around the corner she came and into the last rays of sun. Not bad if I may say so myself.

Back up and over the hill, down to Truckee. Found the specially modified GP35s for snow fighting service sitting powered up ready to go, should a snap snow storm appear. Will definitely get some shots of them tomorrow, these locos are the bees knees of snow fighting. Special "clear view" windows, ice breakers, horn warmers, snow shields on the windows and so forth. Would be amazing to travel in one during a full on blizzard.

From there I went to find cheap accommodation, options were $90 for a hotel, $117 for a Best Western, or a rumoured $29 at Lake Tahoe. Hello, this sounds familiar, hunting for cheap accommodation in the dark around Lake Tahoe… why yes Angela and I did the exact same routine last time! This time I found the Tahoe Inn, where with a little bargaining I got a room for $29; a new record I do believe! It's a massive double-queen room with tropical like temperatures, only down side is the builder coming to fix the leaking ceiling in the bathroom at 7am :(

But that's ok, the weather forecast is sounding "good" ("near 100% probability of snow") for Helper in the near future… ;-) Tune in tomorrow for an exciting update brought to you from some anonymous motel halfway between Truckee, CA and Helper, UT.