Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion US 395 closed north of Bridgeport

I know this is a little north of the Whitney zone, but... I drove from Mammoth to South Lake Tahoe today and encountered a little unexpected detour. 395 is closed from Bridgeport north to the Nevada state line due to a wildfire west of the highway. The sparsely signed detour takes you on a scenic tour of western Nevada state routes, narrow two lane, of course. I was fairly lucky not to be stuck behind slow moving traffic too much. Car in front of me got pulled over in a 25 mph zone in a little rural community that screamed "speed trap." I mention this because I've seen no mention of it and neither Apple nor Google Maps show it. My notice was a lighted highway sign by Mono Village. California DoT has it posted.

That part of the country has few areas marked 25 MPH. They are either schools or what the locals call "downtown" despite the lack of buildings over 10 stories tall (or maybe even over 2).

Bing gives routings around the blockage without explanation. One of the alternates earlier tonight was through Bodie and Aurora. Bodie may have a speed limit below 25 MPH and those towns lack pavement.

Dale B. Dalrymple

Its the Slinkard Fire 3,000 acres 0% contained and growing fast. I knew CA 89 was closed over Monitor Pass, my usual route to the Eastern Sierra. That's a really big chunk of CA 395 to close for this - all the way down to Bridgeport. They're escalating it to Level 1 and probably need the highway to bring in resources, plus there's not many East/West connecting roads in the area. The NV casino town of Topaz is evacuated but it's also close to the towns of Coleville (ranchland) and then Walker (tourism). There's also a military commissary in the area for the Marine's Mountain Division training off Sonora Pass.

Calfire Incident

Bodie, Bodie? Are you kidding us? No way! You guys are lost.

Just follow the posted detour signs. The detour southbound takes Nevada route 208, just north of Topaz to Smith and then 338 and 182 to Bridgeport. Northbound is the reverse: 182 from Bridgeport to 338 to Smith and then 208 back to US 395 north of Topaz. The road is not as fast as 395, but not bad and takes about an hour. I've done it, and my wife will be using the detour to get to Minden from Bishop this morning.

The much longer alternative is between Carson City to Bishop via 50, 95 and 6. Adds a couple of hours to the trip.

Many years ago, US-395 was severely damaged by flooding in the Walker River canyon. US-395 was closed for many months while they rebuilt the road and did all sorts of work to prevent erosion in future wet years. It sounds like the detour around the fire is the same one we had to use during the road repair. It only adds about five minutes to your trip.

We guys aren't lost Bob. And we're not kidding. We're just pointing out that the web based services like Apple Maps, Google Maps and Bing Maps don't fare so well away from active highways as they do in big cities. Trust in those services at the edge of the grid can be dangerous and the issue is worth a reminder when people reveal that they are using those services..

Sorry you couldn't follow the discussion.

Dale B. Dalrymple

Oh, ouch! There are other road condition reports that are more reliable than things like Bing and Goggle Maps:

http://www.dot.ca.gov/cgi-bin/roads.cgi
http://nvroads.com/
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5559/

It might just be possible that locals know more about local conditions than city folks (aka Flatlanders). Only kidding...of course. I realize that you are a very experienced mountain man, and I respect that of you.

Exactly the same detour as during the great flood. With heavier than normal congestion on the road, the detour might add a little more than five minutes. I haven't timed it lately, but will ask my wife when she gets back from Minden.

15 minutes.

Well, you just listed three examples of non-local sites that you think give good info. I agree.

I expect locals are like web sites, some know what's going on and some don't.



I can't cite from memory like you so I'll have to ask. Isn't the "great flood" where that local, Noah, built a boat because a non-local told him there was no good detour?

Dale B. Dalrymple

In January 1997 a record-setting flood along the West Walker River destroyed 10 miles of U.S. 395. It took 6 months to rebuild the road.

It's cool that you have learned to fact check,but...



Not so cool to plagiarise.

Remember, Wikipedia is in the same scale as Apple, Google and Bing maps, only not professionally supported and nowhere near as good. It may have parts where it is as good as dot.ca.gov, inciweb.nwcg.gov and nvroads.com, but in other places it can be pretty poor. And you are responsible for the quality of what you choose to post, especially when you don't reveal the source.

Dale B. Dalrymple

That's a bit harsh, dbd. Wikipedia is as good as the people who contribute to it. Yes, it is a crowd-sourced information source, but I have found it extremely useful a number of times. I'll take a Wikipedia article over most other sources. So much so that I personally contribute $ to it every year. Maybe, Bob could have identified his source, but this is not a peer-reviewed or even a high school level term paper. Information shared here, no matter where it comes from, improves everyone's knowledge. Shooting the messenger is poor form.

I read a story about Jimmy Wales, Wiki's (co)founder. Not able to find it, so it's probably apocryphal.

Apparently, Wales met a woman at a party and asked his personal assistant to find out everything about her - "but don't use Wikipedia", he was said to have stated.

In areas where I do have experience, I see that Wiki comes very close to factual truth. Politics & religion not so much.

I was "watching" a cricket game on CricInfo where the current 3 highest run-scorers were all playing. It was amazing to see the all-time run ranking table change literally seconds after a run or runs moved the player up a notch. Same thing goes for motor racing. I suppose some people need a life.

A properly cited reference would be about as long as the two sentences Bob posted. Who cares, its a simple fact that a section of CA 395 was destroyed in the flood of 1997 and today's detour is similar.

There was a really cool video taken from a CHP dashcam as he was the last driver through that section before it failed. I told the kids that same story every time I drove around that corner. I can't find the video, but it's pretty dramatic.

A tributary river near Walker also jumped its banks in that flood. My colleagues spent months getting it back into the original channel. I still have a lingering case of PTSD from emergency response in 1997. Working days and nights without sleep and watching levees crumble that I just drove over, ah the memories.

The “great flood” on the West Walker River occurred in 1997. I saw the damage and drove the detour many times. The Biblical “great flood” never happened.

1997 was the flood of record in most of Northern California. It was much greater than a 100-yr event in some places, but not everywhere. By comparison, high hazard dams are designed for a statistical recurrence interval of tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years. Smaller low-hazard dams are designed for nothing less than a 1,000-yr storm.

Here's the 1997 data for the Walker River Basin USGS Report on Flood of 1997

Multiple sources have repeated the same information; especially from local sources, newspapers, radio, and first-hand witness reports. Mr. DBD seems a bit miffed after I called him out over his suggestion to take the Bodie road as a detour.

There are still signs of damage in the West Walker canyon, showing the incredible height of the flow against the surrounding mountain slopes.

The married Marines stationed at Pickle Meadows had to drive long distances from their homes to the base. This is first-hand information from an NCO friend of mine who was stationed at the base as an instructor...not info from Bing.

No it isn't as good as the people who contribute. People with good intent have different viewpoints, applications and vocabularies for the same concepts and Wikipedia lacks an adequate method to resolve this. This is like the Blind Men and the Elephant problem:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-blind-man-and-the-elephant/


I find it very useful too, but not to be trusted. Wikipedia itself requires citations for information sources. This allows a user to verify the quality, viewpoint and vocabulary represented by wiki content and interpret it correctly. As someone who follows these chains of reference, it is amazing how often the citation conflicts with or fails to contain the wiki content. Some contributers seem to prepare their content and then shop for a citation when required by Wikipedia. That Wikipedia has no ability to recognize these cases doesn't make Wikipedia useless, just a tool that needs to be used with caution. It does make me concerned to know when Wikipedia has been used as a source. I don't suggest not using it, just using it carefully


I'm not concerned with where it comes from as much as with accuracy, correctness and completeness and how to determine them. That's what decides whether everyone's knowledge has been improved or not.


The "shooting the messenger" meme refers to a time when literate nobles sent messages to other literate nobles in the hands of illiterate serfs. When you play with crowd sourcing, there are no more illiterate messengers with no knowledge of or power over the message content, everyone who participates is a literate noble and responsible for the content they present. I think your drawing a correspondence between Bob and an illiterate serf is poor form and inappropriate.

What we have here is a bunch of knowledgeable, well intentioned people how aren't familiar with dealing on the web.

Dale B. Dalrymple