tioga pass?

[JLL]

I came over I 80 from Reno last week.  There is a lot of construction on doner pass.  There is obout 10 miles of one way where the lane is narrowed down to where there is just enough  room to get thru.
I had to leave my bus in Reno for repairs and came back to Fresno in my toad. I'll be going back to get it in a few days. From Reno I'll go to Tahoe and then back to Sacramento on 40. I sure wouldn't recomend 80 over Doner now.  They have cement baracades separating the lanes. In a couple of places the center has been bumped and  made the lane even narrower.
JL

[Ed Hackenbruch]

I usually drive more 2 lane roads than interstates with the bus and i have driven it almost 40,000 miles. I was once a logger and spent a lot of time in the mountains on narrow roads in pickups even when i wasn't working. I am an equipment operator and am used to moving around in very tight places with just inches to spare at times, so i would say that i have enough experience and confidence.  I don't worry about me and my abilities.....it is other people that i have to worry about. I could run my bus over Tioga 100 times and probably not have a problem.....but yesterday if i had been there with the bus there would have been an unavoidable accident. There just wasn't enough room to get out of his way with a bus. We just barely made it with the jeep.

[MikeH]

Maybe a little off-topic, but has anyone seen this show? Go to this page and watch the video clip: IRT Deadliest Roads. It might make the road over Tioga pass seem not-so-bad.        

Mike

[happycamperbrat]

I "can" maneuver in tight roads without a big sweat, I just prefere not to if I have a choice. Has anyone here gone down Main Street in Virginia City on a packed weekend? I did with cars parell parked on both sides of the skinny road and tons of traffic on the little 2 lane road built for a horse and carriage! Not fun, but definitely doable.

[artvonne]

  We airflighted a Harley guy off the corner down here last night. They think they can take that 25 mph corner at 60 mph, it dont always work out so well. The people and the kids in the car he totaled with his Harley were fine, but he probably would have done better bouncing his head off the pavement with a helmet. The point is, you cant ever anticipate what everyone else is going to do, all of the time. Statistically, more accidents are head on, on straight road, go figure. You would think curvy roads and corners would be number one instead of number two.

  If the Bus can clear everything with enough room, and you have enough power (or can pull off here and there) to not have a train of cars behind you, I say go for it. I never wanted to be the slow a$$ motorhome in front of a mile of backed up traffic. I either drive fast enough to keep em off my butt, or pull off and let em go.

  I dont know about this Tioga Pass, but if you dont do it, you might forever wish you had. You only get to go around once,.... no guts, no glory.

[Ed Hackenbruch]

I have been looking forward to that show.   Tioga is not as bad as those roads.     It does have a few turnouts at viewpoints but not many to allow traffic to pass. The places that you can pull off are usually rough, with a dropoff of a few inches from the pavement, narrow, and not very long. A lot of the road has the fog line right at the very edge of the pavement and then you either have a bank, trees, or a ditch right there.  There are plenty of places where they could widen the road and make turnouts, etc. But they haven't put the money into it. This has been a park for well over 100 years so you would have thought things would be a lot better. They are however grinding and repaving  a lot of hiway 41 in the park and that is a big improvement just from the first time that we went in on it on this trip. With all of that said, Tioga is do-able with a bus, but to really enjoy it,..... take the toad.