Today started innocently enough. We knew we’d be dealing with rain no matter what, so we had multiple escape routes planned and if all else failed we’d head to the freeway.
We began the day with a fill up and headed past the theater and immediately into the mountains. Good roads greeted us and we seemed to be getting really lucky weatherwise. The clouds looked ominous but the road just seemed to skirt their edges. Before lunch we had probably been rained on about 3 times, but nothing too worry about. The rain would stop and scenery just kept getting better and better. We saw painted hills just like we did in Oregon, but a whole lot more. We laughed, in Oregon we had to seek them out and in Utah they are in people’s fields. We rode passed giant eroded red cliffs and actually rode through 2 tunnels that were cut into the rock. It was really cool. We had a few random animal encounters, cows in the road, a farmers dog chased me, a big flock of birds, and a peacock in the middle of the street.
Since it’s been raining here the usually dry gullies have chocolate milk colored water rushing through them. We saw streams slightly swollen, you couldn’t see their banks but instead their edges just kind of disappeared into the ground cover.
Towards the end of the day we were crossing over a 10,000 ft pass. Rain was scheduled, no big deal right?  Wrong. Around 7,000 feet I noticed the rain wasn’t running down my visor,  but instead bouncing off. Oh hail nah! It was hail mixed with smaller sleet. Higher we went. Now it’s snowing and not a little. Small hail and sleet are no big deal because they bounce, snow sticks to your visor. Visibility is shit and we still aren’t at the summit. Constant wiping of the snow has soaked our left glove hand and is getting really cold. Snow would occasionally freeze to our visors too. We reached the highest point, the snow was much worse.  Yeah we could turn back, but now we’re dead center on the mountain crossing. We push on, slowly, and pass closed ski resorts and dump trucks heading uphill to sand the roads, I assume. The roads will be really bad tonight. Our windscreens had accumulated enough snow that they were no longer transparent. This wasn’t our first time riding in snow, but it was the longest, the most snow, and the most technical roads we’ve riden in the snow. As we descended, snow turned to sleet, relief was close at at hand. Soon rain, then blue skies! It was probably in the 50s or 60s buy to us it felt so good. I wonder what the random people who were going the opposite way thought when two motorcycles appeared out of the snow in front of them.
Epic day. We are exhausted and looking forward to some down time and grown up beers.