So, already this is interesting. I opened the curtains and it's raining. It's not Southern California, so I shouldn't be surprised. It's not forecast, and it's not on the radar! Hopefully, this won't be following me very far.
So, being a pilot, it's not unusual for me to contemplate whether I can get over the top of a low set of clouds before the temperature reaches freezing. It was obvious that the rain that wasn't showing up on radar wasn't letting up either. Some friends warned me that there's about a 50 mile stretch of high elevation and it was possible to encounter ice there. Indeed, the temperatures were falling rapidly as I climbed higher into the Sierras. I set my limit at dry roads by 35 degrees or, find a place to pull over and wait for it to clear or warm up. Fortunately, it only got as low as 37 and when I got to about 7500 feet, I started to see blue skies peaking through. I wasn't out for a long while; but, the break up in the clouds was enough to get the temperature to start inching higher. When I arrived in Bridgeport, the locals there assured me that I'd come through the worst of it and temperatures would continue to rise.
This ride was characterized by two things. The first was the snow capped mountains and the other was small completely abandoned communities. There must have been 3 or 4. I'm now regretting that I didn't stop for more pictures of those. Maybe I'll get my friend Jeff out on a ride. We can do it all in a day - 4 hours up and 4 hours back.
More likely than not, these pics would have been pretty awesome with some clear blue sky behind them. That said, the pics give an appreciation for how cold and inhospitable it looks up there. I edited the last pic. There was so little blue in it, it nearly looked black and white. It's converted to gray scale. The videos I shot were uninteresting. The mountains were too far out on the periphery to really show them off.
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