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Road Through The Snow
image I seem to have a minor trend going with pictures of cars and snow. This picture here looks slightly suspicious to me because I can't imagine how the snow got so deep on either side of the road, or how they cleared it away so perfectly. But then, I live in Southern California, so I can't claim to be any kind of expert on snow.
Categories: Photos
Posted by Alex on Thu Apr 21, 2005
Comments (55)
More from the Hoax Museum Archives:
This looks like somewhere where snow is a permanent fixture.
Posted by thephrog  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  12:21 AM
Maybe it's a tourist attraction? Going by the clues of a large bus and a lot of people standing next to the road. On the way to a glacier, maybe? I have absolutely no experience with snow living in Oz.
Posted by Smerk  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  12:30 AM
I'm pretty sure it's real--I spent a few years living in Notrthern Japan, and in the winter they would dig out the roads like that to get up to some of the mountain resorts--it's not done all at once, but it builds up like that over the course of the winter so towards the end it can get that high.
Posted by Anonymous  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  01:02 AM
Hmmm, reminds me of that one James Bond movie...you know which one I mean. Terrible film, lovely setting--at that ice hotel, I think? I always think it must be so pretty to live somewhere way up north, but then I remember how cold and wet and miserable it is in winter...

:down:
Posted by Katherine  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  01:12 AM
I grew up in Lake Tahoe and we often had snow very high like that, but it was more pathways than roads. I don't think I've ever seen a road paved like that.
Posted by Dawn  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  03:16 AM
I've never seen real snow. Could it be like a frozen fjord?
Posted by Maegan  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  04:51 AM
You've never seen real snow? I suppose you wouldn't, in Florida. How odd. I can confirm that snow is great while it lasts, especially if you're very young. However, it's depressing when it melts away, and the fields are a dull, boring green again. Snow! It's fantastic.
Posted by Ashley Pomeroy  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  05:15 AM
Ice slides!
I love the snow.
Posted by Boo  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  05:42 AM
...Once I was in West Virginia & I saw a pile of water with bits of ice in it. It was melted snow...that's as close as I've come. Although, one Christmas when there was a really heavy snowfall in North Carolina, they put the snow in the back of a refrigerated truck, dumped it in a parking lot here, & set up Santa in a "winter wonderland." I was maybe 8 or 9. So, I guess I have SEEN snow, but it was dumped in a parking lot by a truck. It didn't flit down from the sky.
Posted by Maegan  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  06:24 AM
I've lived in the cold and snowy parts of Canada all my life, and I've never seen snow plowed that way, that high. On streets and sidewalks, yeah, it happens...but to cover a bus? Never in my life. I don't even know how a plow could reach up there...I think it'd take a very skilled, enormous, plow and driver to be able to do that.
Posted by jenny  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  07:05 AM
It has been more then a year since I have seen snow.
Posted by X  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  07:50 AM
Maybe it's THRU a glacier.
Posted by Maegan  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  08:17 AM
It's been more than a week since I last saw snow...
Posted by Boo  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  08:36 AM
I've seem plenty of snow in my life. This is either Photoshopped or a picture of a street with fake snowbanks. Like someone mentioned in a previous post, there is no way you could get vertical snowbanks that high unless you had a snowblower 15 feet high. Roads that are plowed don't look like that. Plus the pavement is bare. Not something you would expect for a place that get this much snow. And the bus has no signs of snow on it or frost on the windows. Also the people walking along side don't look like they are dressed for winter.
Posted by Captain Al  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  08:50 AM
The most snow I
Posted by Accipiter  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  08:53 AM
i believe this picture is of tateyama in japan in toyam prefecture. i've been there in the winter time.
Posted by f  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  08:58 AM
sorry toyama. it's real.
Posted by f  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  09:00 AM
Looks real to me, too. The plow doesn't have to be 15 feet high because the snow falls over the course of a season in smaller increments, not all at once. Nor is it significant that the pavement and bus have no snow on them -- it can just be a cold but dry day, not unusual at all.
Posted by Sam  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  09:13 AM
I've driven road conditions exactly like that on
Trail Ridge road in Rocky Mountain National Park.
The road goes over 12,000 ft. high and the plows
had just cleared it in early June. They have to
cut it that clean and vertical because they are
clearing as little as possible to open the road.
Posted by Larry DeGraff  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  09:24 AM
I vote real, since I see roads like this in the mountain passes around here. I've personally seen 2 story high snowbanks near Zopkios Ridge on the Coquihalla highway. You mount the snowblower on the boom of a front end loader to do this. Or, you use the bucket of the front end loader to "shave" the bank and pick up the snow off the road.
Posted by Eric  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  09:24 AM
They have snowplows that, rather than simply shoving the snow to the edge of the road, take it up and blow it out of a spout so it lands off away from the road. Something like that could clear such a path as the one in the picture. And snow can linger with temperatures up into the 40's or 50's, so that could be why the people aren't wearing winter clothing and the bus isn't all frosted.
Posted by Accipiter  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  10:33 AM
Come on, anyone who's lived in the mountains knows this is not only possible, but true... as an example: this website of a pass near where I grew up...

http://community.webshots.com/album/39171693DzFeQs
Posted by skepticjon  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  11:49 AM
...But how are the walls so perfect, so high up?
Posted by Maegan  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  12:22 PM
For one thing, the snow blowers are big... and leave a relatively even wall... for another thing, this type of snowbank is probably not just from one snowstorm, and so the driver has the way pretty much laid out for him. Not to mention that melting makes the snow even smoother.

Hell, you can see the snowbank reflected in the bus's windsheild.
Posted by skepticjon  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  12:41 PM
http://www.indospectrum.com/travels/crater_lake/files/cd036_03jul04_crater_lake_64.html

Similar sight (not as tall) at Crater Lake.
Posted by Eric  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  01:05 PM
It's real. I took a picture just like this in northern Tajikistan when I was there in 2003. I'd post picture but I'd have to go home and scan it first. The only road from the south of the country to the north of the country went through this crazy glacier. The crazy thing is that I took a picture just like this in July when the road was open. For about 8 months of the year the north and south of the country are cut off from each other by the glacier (until the new tunnel is built).
Posted by brian  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  03:44 PM
I think it's probably real. I've seen similar banks built up from winter-long repeated snowplowing (in Alaska), but not quite that high. On a mountain road, it might get that high.
Posted by Big Gary C  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  04:11 PM
I've seen snow like that (not that high though) up on Pike's Peak in Colorado. The best I can think to explain it is this: Say it snows 3 feet. A snow plow then comes and plows through the three feet of snow to clear the road. The road now has no snow, both sides of the road now have three feet of snow. Say the next day it snows 2 more feet. The snow plows come and clear the 2 feet off the road, but both sides of the road now have 5 feet of snow.
Posted by Saribellum  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  05:04 PM
It looks like ice on the side of a carved out hill to make a road.
Posted by KPC  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  05:05 PM
Repeat after me, "rotary snow plow". Yes, it gets that deep.
Posted by martinelli  on  Thu Apr 21, 2005  at  08:06 PM
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