Snowstorms Block Western Roads, But "Mystery Couple" Helps

A road along Carson Pass, about 8,600 feet up in elevation in
the Sierra Nevada mountains over the weekend. Photo via
Twitter by Steve Allen of Saratoga, California. 

So far in my life, I've missed out on the "joy" of getting stuck on a highway for multiple hours when things grind to a halt in a snowstorm.

By a fluke of timing, I just barely avoided getting trapped on Interstate 89 for four hours, as others did, during an ice storm earlier this month in northern Vermont.

It might happen yet, as there seems to be a number of cases where this happens somewhere in the nation every winter.

In California and Oregon, winter has kept people stranded on roads for hours -- even up to a day.

Let's get into the negativity first, then we'll end on a positive note.

California's Lake Tahoe region received nine feet of snow in the seven days ending Saturday. Hey! Nine feet of powder on President's holiday weekend! Let's go up for some powder runs!

Not so fast. Have you even tried plowing away nine feet of snow? It's not easy, to put it mildly. The main route up to Tahoe, Interstate 80, was closed. State highways were no better, and often worse. The following tweet from Placer County Sheriff Lt. Andrew Scott pretty much summed it up: "State Route 267 is so deep that plows can no longer plow. They have ordered up a large blower to try and clear the pass."

The California Highway Patrol begged would-be skiers not to head up to Tahoe, because they wouldn't make it through the snow-clogged roads.

In Placerville, California, the California Highway Patrol posted this partly all caps message on Facebook: "STOP DRIVING UP HERE FROM OUT OF AREA. We cannot handle the amount of vehicles that keep coming up and getting stuck here...Just please stop coming up here. The situation is too much for the area to handle and there is nowhere for you to go." 

Did people listen? Of course not!

The inevitable happened. People got stuck, big time.

Many people had to stop in the tiny town of Pollock Pines, almost 60 miles away from Lake Tahoe, says the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The tiny town is ill-equipped for people. Stuck would-be skiers ended up sleeping overnight in their cars parked along Pollock Pines streets or in the Safeway parking lot.

Tempers in Pollock Pines and other tiny communities flared as there were so many people that cars double and triple parked on streets. Fights broke out, The Weather Channel reported. 

Fun ski vacation, huh?

In Oregon, people late last week were stuck along Interstate 84 in the Columbia River Gorge.  A recent storm there had hundreds of people sitting and stewing and freezing in their cars for up to 19 hours.

Jade and Quintin Stell spent hours on Interstate 84 in Oregon handing
out food, water and gasoline to people stranded on the highway
for up to 19 hours during a recent winter storm. 

That's way, way too long. The problem was caused in part by people who did not put chains on their tires, or even have decent tires on their vehicles when the winter weather hit.

As is often the case, police arrived to hand out a little food and water and gasoline to the motorists who needed it.   Then a mystery couple appeared on the scene, reports KGW8  

The man and woman had been briefly caught in the traffic jam, but found a way out. When they learned hours later that a lot of people were still trapped on I-84, they stepped right up.

"The couple came in here early yesterday mrning, bought a bunch of groceries - water and bananas - and I asked them if they were stocking up. They said they were going to go take it out to everybody that was stuck on the freeway, said Katie Murphy, who works at a grocery store in Cascade Locks.

The pair had moved to the area from Los Angeles back in December.

Some people trapped in the snow storm snapped photos of the couple and posted them on Facebook. That helped KGW8 track the couple down and identify them as Jade and Quintin Stell.

The Stells said motorists try to give the couple money, but for the most part they refused. They made an exception at one $100 donation. At that point, they were almost out of food to give away, so they took the $100 back to the grocery store, stocked up, and returned to the traffic jam.

The couple said they were heartened by how motorists kept an eye out for each other. People in one car turned down food and pointed the Stells to another vehicle whose occupants were hypoglycemic and needed a snack. Other motorists directed the Stells to cars with babies and children.

"It was an experience that seemed so simple and such like a nothing thing on our part, but it was so rewarding to be able to love on people in that way," Jade Stell told KGW8.

People always tend to band together and help when there's some sort of crisis, disaster or problem. Still, it's nice to remind ourselves that there's a lot of people like the Stells out there who are willing to help when we need it.

I hope it inspires the rest of us to lend a hand when others need it.

Here's a news report about the I-84 backup: