Highway 395 Closed

Highway 395 closed yesterday just north of Bridgeport due to snow.  I know that road well.  I’ve ridden it a bunch of times and it’s a favorite, but wow, the weather can turn on a dime up there.  Once you leave Bishop heading north, the elevation goes up abruptly, and in the next 30 miles or so it can go from cold to damn cold mighty quickly.

Highway 395 in warmer times. As I recall, temperatures were in the triple digits when I shot this photo around Manzanar.

I once rode my KLR 650 up to Lake Tahoe on a press junket and the weather was okay.  Moderate, not too cold, nice riding weather on the roads in and around Tahoe.  The ride home was something else, though.  Tahoe is pretty high in elevation and I dropped maybe two or three thousand feet coming down the mountain to Highway 395.  That’s when the cold really set in.  I had good gear on, but no electric vest, and the cold was brutal.  I stopped at the Bridgeport Inn maybe a hundred miles down the road and went in for breakfast.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I went in to warm up, and I wanted to just sit there for a couple of hours sipping coffee after breakfast.  It worked, but it took a while.

The KLR 650 on Highway 395, with the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the background. It was cold going north; it was way colder coming home.  This is an interesting photo – you can see the moon peeking out just above the mountains.

You know, the funny thing is that another hundred miles or so south when I rolled through Adelanto on the 395, it was so hot I took most of that gear off.  The temperature had gone from near freezing on the 395 north of Bridgeport to nearly 100 degrees down in the desert.

The KLR 650 was a good road bike and a great traveling companion.  I rode it all over Baja and through a lot of the American Southwest.  It’s gone down the road now (I sold it to a friend of a friend who may still have it).  Good fuel economy, it could touch 100 mph on a good day, and the thing was just comfortable.  The ergonomics were perfect for me. It was was one of the great ones.

I remember the bad weather rides way better than any of the ones with clear skies and moderate temperatures.  That ride back from Tahoe will stay with me for a long time.


More epic rides are here.

8 thoughts on “Highway 395 Closed”

  1. As an armchair adventurer, I google earth your stories and this road is very cool… er…. probably cold as you say. The elevations changes are pretty intense, and in winter comes the snow, I bet it is some driving experience on four wheels or two. I had a client in Bishop California that used to order 10-foot fluorescent lamps which required delivery from my San Jose warehouse to his Bishop sign shop. It was a trek and mountains all around. Now that I look again, I might have traveled this road on the way from San Jose crossing the Mountains thru Yosemite to Bishop. I guess I should have paid more attention to what and where I was going. I do remember the mountains had snow on them and if was cool in higher elevations, hot in valley so it must have been summer. I was driving a Datsun pickup not my bike, I thought next time but I guess I didn’t. Thanks, sharing another adventure!

  2. One of my favorite m/c experiences was near Bodie SHP, between Bridgeport and Mono Lake. I had visited Bodie, which is an interesting story in its self. I left Bodie on a minor road to the south and was traveling thru a verdant valley when I came upon a large herd/flock of sheep. No shepherd in sight; a donkey was leading the herd. When it walked the herd started to walk; when it stopped to graze, the herd stopped, but the only signal to stop was running into the sheep in front of you who had stopped (by running into the sheep in front, ad infinitum). I saw several sheep pushed up on top by the “crush”. At the end of the herd was the sheepdog, laying down, watching the herd, and WATCHING me. After watching the sheep for twenty minutes I decided it was time to move along. When I started the bike the dog was up, taking a few steps toward me, and watching. As I rode away he went back to his business. For me it had been a bucolic respite.

    1. With that donkey and sheep following it description, I thought for sure this was going to be a joke somehow related to politics.

      Sounds like an interesting experience, Dan. I hear those sheep dogs can be pretty vicious. You remember the time we rode to see the cave paintings in Baja? I once saw a sheep dog working a flock in those Sierra Gigante mountains. It was pretty aggressive and the sheep did what he (or she) told them to.

  3. I know the 395 from Carson City to Reno to State Line very well while on the Highway Patrol in Nevada. I also drove 395 northbound to go to Portland. You are so right that 395 has some extreme weather changes.

    1. I always wanted to take 395 north as far as it goes. I think it goes all the way up to Canada. Come on out here in your Vette and we’ll make that run. You can be Buzz and I’ll Todd (cue in the Route 66 music).

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