Winter On Highway 395

Driving highway 395 from northern Nevada to southern California is always interesting, even more so in winter when on average the snow is about 6 or 8 feet deep for several months.  Makes for a challenging drive.

The way the snowplows have artfully and skillfully carved around the snowpoles and signs...

Sometimes the snowplow drivers have been smartasses though.

Oh...did you want to make a call at one of the last surviving, and the only payphone booth in several hundred miles...?  Just to be extra dickish, this particular pay phone is also a Geocache.

In Lee Vining the icicle crop is  just grand, thank you.

And at the bottom of Conway Summit, some crazed skiers have been trying to die by skiing a sheer rock field that terminates ON the highway. Not just a few times, either, as you can tell by the tracks.  These folks made a day of it.

At the top is 395, which curves and drops a few thousand feet in very short order.

At the bottom is the highway again, very suddenly.

The rocks sticking out are just a warning--this area is solid loose rocks the size of your head and fist.  Don't know why someone would risk good skis by skiing here, it's damned dangerous in about 9 different ways.

At any rate, driving 395 in winter is a real maybe/maybe not kinda thing, depending on the weather and your nerves.