Columnist Susan Snyder: We aren’t too slick in wet weather

Monday, Jan. 3, 2005 | 8:23 a.m.

When we lived in Utah's Wasatch Mountains, a foot of snowfall meant great skiing and a few inconveniences caused mostly by snowplow drivers who blocked residents' freshly shoveled driveways.

Not that I'm still bitter.

About the only time the roads up the canyons to the ski areas carried restrictions were when avalanches closed them. Tire chains often were recommended, but those who ventured forth without soon faced penalties worse than traffic tickets.

If you were dumb enough to try, you were dumb enough to sit in the ditch.

Then we moved to the desert. After storms leave a little ice on the lower portions of Lee Canyon's State Route 156 and cover its upper portions with snow, officials launch into the chains or four-wheel-drive requirement to travel up. And why?

"We have people who come up here who just don't know how to drive in it," Monetta Bean, a ski resort office worker, said Thursday afternoon. "If they wreck, it would close the road. We've only got one way in, and one way out."

And let's face it. We've got some pretty myopic mouth-breathers behind the wheels of our cars. You saw the pictures on television during Tuesday's downpours. Every newscast had video footage of some goofball who'd stranded his or her SUV in a muddy torrent -- driving around barriers and "Road Closed" signs to get there.

Metro Police were called out to at least 400 crashes and Nevada Highway Patrol responded to more than 100 wrecks during rain storms Tuesday and Wednesday.

For some reason, nothing says, "Drive fast and stupid" like a Southern Nevada rain storm. And once we've survived rain down here, we head up the canyons.

"They were plowing throughout the night, but it snowed all night and all day," Bean said. "During the day (Wednesday) it was raining down lower. But at night it gets cold and turns into ice. When we came up here at 6 (Thursday) morning, it was black ice."

Black ice is so-called because the slick, icy coverage is so thin the asphalt appears only wet or "black." Nasty stuff.

Bean and her husband, Jack, the ski resort's mountain operations manager, have been trekking up the canyon for more than 30 years of winters. And she says if the warnings call for chains and snow tires, we ought to take it seriously.

Just before the ski area is an open meadow and hills popular for sledding.

"They come right out onto the highway," she said of the plastic saucer set.

And stopping quickly isn't always an option.

So, when we moved to Las Vegas, we bought snow chains -- the first I have ever owned. And we'll play by the rules. At this writing, our plans are to ski up there Sunday.

However, the fact that you are reading this is no indication that the trip up was successful. I wrote it Thursday, a few hours before we embarked on what promises to be a snow-covered drive to Austin for New Year's Eve.

Nothing like driving U.S. 50 -- America's Loneliest Road -- in winter storm conditions. But why should we be any different from other Southern Nevada drivers?

Have chains, will travel.