Memorial Weekend – Ebbetts Pass and Sonora Pass? Maybe.
I just checked the California Mountain Hiways page at Caltrans and it looks like Ebbetts Pass and Sonora Pass may now be open – do check directly before driving up there, but I’m optimistic. The opening of these two passes is often an indication that the opening of Tioga Pass Road may be about a week away. Fingers crossed…
Memorial Weekend – Glacier Point? Yes. Tioga Pass? No.
The most recent update at the Yosemite National Park web site confirms what many suspected, namely that Glacier Point Road will likely be available over the upcoming holiday weekend but that Tioga Pass will not open quite yet.
Glacier Point Road:
The Glacier Point Road will open on Friday, May 28 at noon, conditions permitting. Expect 30-minute delays between Chinquapin and Badger Pass Sunday night through Friday afternoon (except Memorial Day).Tioga Road:
The Tioga Road will not be open for Memorial Day weekend; there is no estimated opening date.Plows have reached Tioga Pass and will now be working on widening the road. Plowing continues Monday – Saturday. Average Snow Depth is 4 to 6 feet. Plowing operation will continue today.
As I have mentioned before, this has been an unusually cold and wet May. Just this morning I heard that chain requirements were up on Interstate 80 over Donner Summit. As of today, Ebbetts, Sonora, and Monitor Passes are reportedly still closed. You can be pretty certain that Tioga won’t open before them, though it frequently opens perhaps a week or so after they open.
Quick note about Tioga Pass and other interesting things
I posted a few times during recent weeks concerning the opening date for Tioga Pass – something that many of us look forward to every spring. Tioga Pass Road did open the middle of last week, and we “west siders” once again have a more efficient (and quite stunning!) route to the east side.
(The pass opened about one day earlier than I estimated it would – I was expecting a Thursday opening. If you are interested in more information about when this route is likely to open and close, there is a history of opening and closing dates on the web.)
Of course, a lot of people are going to be very pleased that the pass opened in time for the Memorial Holiday weekend – not only the travelers who want to cross it but also the businesses on the east side that rely on the traffic. (I’ve been to Lee Vining in the winter when the only access is via a long drive from anywhere else – and things can be very quiet over there.)
As to my plans… a variety of factors are going to keep me from traveling this weekend. I’ll stay right here in the SF Bay Area and I won’t even have much opportunity to get out on the trail or do photography – lot’s of other things to take care of. But I can’t complain. It won’t be too many more weeks until my annual period of “gainful unemployment” as a college faculty member begins, and at that point I’ll try to more than make up for the stay-at-home Memorial Holiday weekend.
May 22 Opening for Sonora Pass?
Sierra Journal reports that the opening of Sonora Pass is scheduled for May 22. This is significant for a number of reasons, including the following:
- The availability of the Sonora Pass route considerably reduces the time/distance that SF Bay Area folks must drive to get to the eastern Sierra.
- This suggests that other routes like Ebbetts and Monitor Pass will also be open at that time.
- Tioga Pass often seems to open within about a week of the opening of Sonora. If that happens this time we could guess that Tioga might open before the end of May.
I’m ready!
(Although it is not a “pass,” the Glacier Point Road opened early this week.)
Glacier Point Road Set To Open Friday… Or Maybe Not?
According to a variety of reports that have been floating around for the past couple of weeks, Yosemite National Park’s Glacier Point Road is scheduled to open tomorrow, May 1 “conditions permitting.” That last pair of words may well be important this season, as a respectable storm is scheduled to pass through northern California on Friday.
My bet at this point is that the NPS will delay the official opening of the road a bit.
Informal updates on Tioga Pass Road indicate that a decent chunk of the road from the west has been cleared, and I’m betting that other portions have also been cleared. The NPS won’t say in advance when it will open and I haven’t heard any unofficial announcements (I sometimes manage to pick up on a few of these a week or so before the opening) but it is likely to be at least a few more weeks. I’m betting against the first half of May, but I’m pretty confident about the second half.
Update: Right after posting this I saw an update on Tioga Road at Yosemite blog. The short story is that they have made it to the May Lake turnoff.
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Dan's Outside 
Annual Tradition – Predicting the Opening of Tioga Pass Road
Sierra Nevada fans, especially those trying to get to the “east side” from the Bay Area and those on the east trying to get to Yosemite Valley, watch eagerly each spring for the opening of Tioga Pass Road, the trans-Sierra route through the park. The opening date varies from year to year based on a range of factors: the amount of winter snow fall, late storms, the condition of the underlying road, and so forth. Over a period of many decades the average opening has been very close to the end of May. However, I’ve been up there earlier in dry years, and during one memorable wet season in the mid-1990s the pass did not open until July! (I drove over shortly after it opened and was amazed by the amount of remaining snow and by the unbelievable amounts of runoff water everywhere.)
So, when will it open this year? If anyone knows, they aren’t telling – and, in any case, Mother Nature has a way of throwing surprises at us. The NPS does offer periodic updates, and sometimes you can “read between the lines” and get some idea of when the opening might be. (And I understand from some friends who know about these things that the word does start to get out informally a bit before the official announcement. For example, it might help if you knew someone working on the road clearing…)
This winter produced a somewhat above normal snowfall, though not anything record-breaking. The season has lasted a bit longer than usual, with new snow still arriving as we approach the beginning of May. Both of these factors suggest a somewhat later opening than in the past few years. Some work on the clearing is already underway, as per the link above. However, it isn’t enough to simply plow across the pass. Various kinds of debris (fallen trees, rocks, etc.) must be dealt with, turnouts and side roads must be opened, and avalanche dangers must end.
I have no inside information on this at all, but I’m going to guess that we’ll see an opening fairly close to the historical average day of May 29.
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April 27, 2010 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | california, clear, conditions, date, historical, national, nevada, open, park, pass, prediction, road, sierra, snow, tioga, trans-sierra, Yosemite | 2 Comments