Winter pass conditions in northern utah

Blake.P

Blake.P

Active member
i may be driving from Boulder to Seattle late december, depending on conditions of the passes and stuff. so the only area i really dont know what to expect in is basically between Cheyenne and Twin Falls, going i-80 into the SLC area and the i-84 north.

anybody have experience on the passes around this area, and how the conditions will be? i have a completely capable car (4wd ford escape with snow tires) and am a very experienced driver in the snow, i would just be on a time frame and dont want to be slowed down too much if passes are closed or completely stopped. i would be trying to make it from Boulder (leaving at about 1 in the afternoon) to Boise/twin falls that night, and the time would work assuming i dont run into too many slowdowns
 
I drive across a pass in northern utah to and from work every day. If they're deadly I'm about 1000x more likely to die than you. Hope that helps~
 
the main concern between cheyenne to utah is wind. i 80 closes with any major storm because of the drifting snow across the HWY. Another thing to consider is the amount of semi-trucks on 80. None of them can drive period, so forget about it in the Winter.

I haven't made the drive past cheyenne, but I know that on the Utah side there are always the automated signs with road conditions: "Chain required" or "i 80 westbound closed at mile marker__".

Chains or 4wd are required. Just be smart, and you should be straight, you'll know before you leave cheyenne if you're going to need to stop into town to wait the storm out.

 
that shouldnt be too much of a problem. if its closed i can always take 70 to 6 and go past Moab then north to SLC but its like 2 hours longer so i would rather not. but it beats getting stuck in WY
 
I drove that Cheyenne to Utah stretch when I moved out here. Just time your trip carefully.. I made sure there wasn't any snow in the forecast and I breezed right through. Pretty lonely stretch of road, definitely not somewhere you wanna get stranded.
 
buy extra coolant, your car might overheat trying to keep speed on the passes. My car blew radiator fluid outside of Cheyenne and though I was fucked but managed to nurse my car to some random ass gas station and topped off with coolant.

Also when you start to drop in elevation buy the according octane. 85 octane at 1,500 feet will make your engine ping and knock.
 
i think i'm good on that. i just had all my fluids topped off and had a ton of fluids flushed and stuff like that. and i did the drive from seattle to boulder a few months back so im not worried about elevation and stuff like that, just road conditions
 
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