Steamboat Springs CO Day Trip, 3-31-08

[PaperToast]

On the last day of march, 3 friends disembark on a trip to Steamboat Springs to hunt yeti in the 15 ft+/- of snow on the pass above the town.

Everything was going great until about an hour into the trip and the worst happens

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGG attack of the volvo snow demon ! ! !

(and yes those headlight wipers do come in handy)


We escaped from that rare creature and continued on our trip up US 40
The dry roads are a welcomed sight. Lots of snow covering the surrounding plains and mountains.




As we got closer to the pass, road conditions deteriorated to packed snow, but the XC didnt have a problem going up.


Take a look at the speed limit sign, that gives you an idea of how deep the snow was on the side of the road.


Finally made it to the top of Rabbit Ears Pass, 9426 ft in elevation. The wind was blowing hard and snow was coming down hard with big flakes. The snow on the XC was about 45 min worth of accumulation there while we hunted yeti

Look at the snow drift behind the car. it was about another 8+ ft or so higher than the top of the XC


The drive down was worse than the drive up. Visibilty was low and there was new snow on the road. But no problems whatsoever. The XC drove like a tank.




Made it down off the pass and we are greeted with blue skies heading S on US 40


Decided to take CO Hwy 9 S into Silverthorne to catch the interstate.


Got on I-70 East and headed through the infamous Eisenhower Tunnel. (thats the west bound side, the east bound side is the Johnson Tunnel)


Cool inside shot of the tunnel. some nice motion blur


The exit side of the tunnel, still snowing


All in all it was a fun day trip. A kool little factoid, the route we took we crossed the continental divide twice (the first one was Berthoud Pass @ 11307 ft elevation and the other was Rabbit Ears Pass). Roundtrip it was about 335 miles.
I had never seen so much snow ever

[Mink]

Wow - cool pix. No, make that freezing pix! Love the one in the tunnel.

[PJ810]

Great pics. Might have to take my XC for a snow drive this winter.

[PaperToast]

Great pics. Might have to take my XC for a snow drive this winter.

sweet i'm glad i could inspire you.
i'm curious what kind of snow do yall in the down under?

[PJ810]

sweet i'm glad i could inspire you.
i'm curious what kind of snow do yall in the down under?

We get a few months of snow in the... you guessed it... Snowy Mountains.
That's about 5-6 hours drive South from Sydney. In some areas chains or AWD is compulsory, so yeah, it's real snow.

About once per decade we may get 10 mins of snow in an isolated area in Sydney, though I've never seen it.

[PaperToast]

We get a few months of snow in the... you guessed it... Snowy Mountains.
That's about 5-6 hours drive South from Sydney. In some areas chains or AWD is compulsory, so yeah, it's real snow.

About once per decade we may get 10 mins of snow in an isolated area in Sydney, though I've never seen it.

thats kool, i didnt know Australia got that much snow
that little trip we took was only a 3 hour drive NW from the denver area
this last winter the mountains got record snows
one ski area didnt close till end of may, first week of june i think and will open again prolly in october

[PJ810]

Do you guys use snow chains? Here they are compulsory for all non-AWD cars. Would you recommend them for an XC? How's your traction and how slowly do you drive? I have very limited 'snow' experience.

And as we don't have a proper winter here, we don't have winter tyres. I'm running the standard Scorpions.

[PaperToast]

Yes and no. Yes in that snow chains are a required for commercial trucks and no in that chains are optional for passenger cars, depending on the weather. Heres the official colorado site that explains it
http://www.cotrip.org/winterdriving/chainregs1.htm

You can buy volvo oem snow chains that fit the different cars. I wouln't use them unless im trying to drive across the artic or antartic. For 95% of people out there that drive in snow regularly good tires will get you by.

On the XC I had studded snows and it wouldn't hardly slide at all. I tried and it wouldnt. I even turned off traction control and no sliding.
Back in late december myself and some friends took a trip to new mexico. We left during a snow storm. We drove from Denver to Sante Fe on snow packed interstate and averaged around 65 mph. Thats around 7 hours of solid snow driving.

For this pic set the car has potenza's and it did fine. Where I live we didn't get a lot of snow this winter but where we went in this pic set there was more than enough to find out for sure that the swedes know what they're doing as regards building cars that can handle well in the snow.

In answer to how slow I drive, that depends on how icy it is. If its solid ice, I won't drive faster than 35-45. But if its packed snow, I'll go as fast as 55-65 depending on what traffic is doing.

I hope this helps you out. Feel free to fire any other questions about snow driving. I'll do my best to answer them.

[Beiner]

That's pretty cool!

The family and I will be headed to Meeker Park (outside of Estes Park) in two weeks. I'm sure it won't be snowy like that but the inspiration will be the same.

[instarx]

PaperToast - thanks for the memories! I used to live outside of Steamboat about a third of the way up Rabbit Ears Pass. You had pretty good weather actually. Many times I have driven across Rabbit Ears in white-out conditions from snow-marker to snow marker. For those who don't know, snow-markers are tall black and white poles set up every 30 yards (or so) along the road in winter so the rotary snowplows can tell where the road is! Otherwise they would get lost and drive around randomly above the tree-line all winter!

Steamboat Springs is in a valley and lower than Rabbit Ears Pass, but even Steamboat averages 350 inches of snow every year!

PJ810 - driving in snow is all about inertia, not so much speed. Like PaperToast, on an open highway I often drive the speed limit, but in any congestion you have to slow WAY down because you never can tell when you might have to get that thing stopped. You have to plan everything out about five times further than you normally would and also have to look out for the other drivers that forgot to plan ahead. 4WD and AWD actually change safe driving habits very little in snow. Even in Steamboat Springs where they know better, every spring we would hear about a bad accident by some local in a 4WD who would forget that every car has four-wheel brakes and his pick-up couldn't stop any faster than any other car in snow. I will say though that I had a 4WD Jeep with skinny studded snow tires with very deep lugs that would stop faster on snow than on dry pavement, but it was the exception because it was set up specifically to get me around on Rabbit Ears Pass in off-road deep snow. Talk about fun!