The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

Caltopo, my go-to map-making app. The weather part of the app is actually a very minor feature.

 

Moffit Ranch

 

Sunday morning at 7 in Mammoth, bugging out before the big snow hits.

 

If that's not the big snow, it IS time to bug out!

 

The amount of snowfall has been pretty incredible this year. I've been following a couple of YouTube channels...

https://www.youtube.com/@plowbrother365/videos

https://www.youtube.com/@LifeintheEasternSierra

 

craziness. I was looking at these other pictures online of mammoth lakes and man a lot of snow. Mountains look beautiful in California

 

Watched a video of a heli flight up 395. You could barely see the edges of the road. Every now and again, there looked like a small avalanche crossing the road. Holy cow, even a Chinook parked at what looks like near the overlook.

 

395 just north of Lee Vining. A few years back Caltrans installed chain link fence along that entire stretch. It was too help catch falling rocks and small avalanches. Guess what is now over the road and buried under that snow?

 

Above that section of 395 on Warren Bench, Caltrans installed snow blasters.




Caltrans: “… permanent propane and oxygen gas explosion chambers (GazEx) at the head of avalanche chutes, approximately 3/4 mile upslope from U.S. Highway 395. The GazEx system consists of exploders mounted in the avalanche starting zones above the highway. The exploders are large tubes, closed at one end, open at the other, with their open ends located above and directed onto the snow. The exploders are filled by remote control with propane and oxygen, then remotely detonated. The shelters contain the remote control system and the oxygen and propane tanks for the system. The operator controls the system from a safe location using a computer linked by radio to the control systems in the shelters. The propane and oxygen tanks would be removed in the spring and replaced in late fall/early winter (October 15-November 1). This would avoid having propane and oxygen gas tanks on the mountain during fire season."

 

Is that the stretch just north of town where it burned up to or over the road a few years back?

 

Yep. Stolen from Caltrans District 9 Twatter feed.

 

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

In late 1945, one-armed John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) gets off a train at the isolated Californian desert hamlet of Black Rock. The residents immediately appear suspicious, as this is the first time in four years that the train has stopped there. After Macreedy states he is looking for a man named Komoko, several of the local men become hostile. Hastings, the telegraph agent, tells him there are no cabs. The hotel desk clerk, Pete Wirth, claims he has no vacant rooms. Hector David threatens him. Later, Reno Smith informs Macreedy that Komoko, a Japanese-American, was interned during World War II.

‘Black Rock’ has nothing to do with it – the script was called Bad Day At Hondo until John Wayne turned up in 1953 with a movie called Hondo. Writer Millard Kaufman stopped for gas in the tiny town of 'Black Rock', Arizona, and a new title was born.

Interiors were filmed on the lot at MGM, but the desert exteriors were shot on the edge of Death Valley, at Lone Pine on Route 395, central California. The Lone Pine Branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which once linked Mojave and Lone Pine, has long since gone.

 

Now I want to watch it.

 

Black Rock Movie Town Site

 

Current Precipitation Conditions 3-20-23

 

wow thats crazy. I wonder if this will be the norm

 

It's raining right now. Better tell those boys to update the graph. lol

 

Been dumping in Mammoth all day. Was a bit windy on the mountain for a hot second but otherwise very calm with consistent heavy snow. Easily over a foot so far. Driving to Canyon the snow burms along the road were 20'+. This was my wife in the condo parking area before this storm. I've seen some crazy conditions up here, and this is the deepest I've ever experienced.

 

Unreal!!