Couple of days after I returned from my drive down to Cali and Vegas, Sk and I went to Chelan in the East, to collect M the dog from her family, who she was chilling with for the past three months when Sk was in Nepal. They previous few days had been quite snowy and rough weather-wise, but our planned day seemed good. Sk said you know what fuck it we don't need an SUV I'll take my two-door car, and I went along. We did add some snacks, blankets and bottles of water in the trunk to be sure we'd be well fed, hydrated and warm if there was a fluke snowstorm on the way, since we didn't have tire chains or socks, and off we went.
The first part of our trip went...alright, after we left at 10.30 in the morning. Then it started getting weird. Google would increase the expected time for the journey the longer we drove. It was a bit concerning at first, we figured there was probably some minor traffic incident ahead that'd soon clear up and didn't bother ourselves much. Only when the expected delay was up to 50 minutes did we start worrying. Even then, we figured it wouldn't be much of an issue.
Snoqualmie pass was easy, clean, no rain or snow. A big relief, we thought we'd made it and the rest of the day would be eventless. How wrong.
An hour later, we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic around Blewitt pass, unclear what was happening ahead of us and how long we would be waiting. No concerns though, we could stay in Chelan for the night and come the day after, so I took out my kindle and started reading.
It started raining. Small drops at first. Then larger drops. Then the drops got bigger and bigger until the drops started bouncing off the windshield. It started snowing. The snow picked up pace, and soon the road was covered in a thin layer, and the snow shovel was removing it off the road.
We evaluated our options. To wait might mean we'd be stuck in between, because we were not prepared for winter driving, we could find ourselves in a situation where we'd be snowed in from both the directions. So it was decided that the best decision would be to turn back. Also a guy from the other side said there were two semis which had hit each other and there was no way the road was gonna open.
We drove back for 30 minutes, and I checked the directions the other way again and it seemed the expected wait time had gone town. We reconsidered, and figured it might be worth another shot. So back we went, expecting some of the traffic to have cleared up. We were back in the same line, except two miles behind our original location.
The traffic did eventually clear up, we got to Chelan safely, collected the doggo, and drove back through Blewitt without any incident. Except this time around there was massive wind, rainfall and show around Snoqualmie pass, the 'atmospheric river' the PNW was supposed to have gotten from Hawaii. And yeah it was rough, much rougher than anything we'd seen in our 6 day trip to down south in the middle of winter.
Eventually reached home safely with no incidents at quarter past nine. Phew.
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