“I had to drive through a mountain pass in a blizzard once. Conditions weren’t great beforehand, but they were manageable enough and holding steady. For the first few miles of the pass, it was pretty standard: squalls from wind gusts, but no fresh snow falling. Then all of a sudden, it started snowing again. It was night, the wind was up, and literally, everything outside the car was shifting and moving like TV static. I couldn’t see the road; I could barely see the end of my own car. There was absolutely nothing but whiteness outside, and it was making me feel dizzy because there was just no sense of direction anymore. Oh yeah, to my left was a wall of rock, and to my right was a huge drop. And I’d never driven in a blizzard before. I had never even really driven in heavy snow before.
It was so unbelievably tempting to stop, but I’d actually read from some more experienced blizzard drivers online that stopping is the worst thing you can do because you’ll just get bogged down as the snow continues to fall. In fact, we passed a car abandoned at the side of the road that seemed to have fallen into the same trap (the people weren’t stuck there, we slowed to check). Ended up being saved by a semi-driver who let all the smaller cars ride in convoy inches from his bumper. Everyone followed in the deep tire tracks and stayed close enough to the car in front to see the rear lights. Considering we were all going about two miles per hour at most, it worked out.
It took two and a half hours to go about 35 miles. After getting out of the past, there was still another couple of hours to go, but they were easy compared to that. When we reached our destination I had a stiff drink for the nerves for the first time in my life and went straight to bed. It was the scariest driving experience of my life. Huge shoutout to that truck driver.”
