State still digging out snowy roads
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK (AP) – There may be no more potent reminder of California’s humongous snowfall than the plows still clearing roads that snake across the state’s highest mountains as summer approaches.
Crews have been digging, blowing and blasting for months – and the work is not finished, though an approaching heat wave could speed up the process.
“We’re almost at the middle of June and we still have lots of passes that aren’t open,” said Florene Trainor, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation.
Few roads traverse the Sierra Nevada, the rocky spine running 400 miles up the state that is home to Yosemite National Park. Mountain passes are typically open by Memorial Day.
The only road through Yosemite, Highway 120, remained closed at the park’s eastern entrance this week as crews dig out from snows that topped 20 feet and drifted well over 50 feet.
On a recent day, the eastern entrance station at 9,945-foot high Tioga Pass was snow.
But the serenity of the Sierra Nevada, with birds chirping beneath snow-crested peaks that tower above 12,000 feet, was shaken by the roar and beep of plows, exca- buried in vators and massive machines carving through towering snowbanks and moving giant blocks of snow. Big snow blowers sent plumes arcing through the air and off the side of the road.
As the Caltrans crew dug the entrance out from the east, a crew from the park was working from the west to clear the road that winds its way to Yosemite Valley, the park’s top destination.
Caltrans had begun inching its way up the treacherous road more than two months ago when it seemed more like winter. It snowed on and off throughout the spring, with a late-season storm hitting last weekend.
The air is clean and views are stunning, but working here is not for the faint of heart as drivers maneuver large machines along narrow ribbons that feel suspended above an abyss. Helicopter footage shot this spring for Caltrans showed the small margin for error in places where the road clung to cliffs and then vanished under a white blanket where the path was obscured.