History does donner pass ever give up the dead?

after returning from overseas many years ago, i set out driving a big rig coast to coast . many times i went over the infamous donner pass in north central california. the times i wasn't shutting my eyes,i did notice the carcasses of many old cars laying way down in the bottoms of some big drop offs. these could not possibly be seen from the cab of a car because they could barely be seen from an old cabover freight shaker.
has anyone else ever seen these cars? have they ever been retrieved?there were also old tractor trailers and semis down in there.
just wondering. that is one of many mountain passes i saw old iron down in the bottom of.

 

Good question. Why don't you take a hikeing trip and go down there and check? It would make a terrific thread on the HAMB.

Frank

 

i would..kind of hard to do crippled up.

 

not really up to date or recent usually, but if you can find them on google maps or us bing birds eye view, you might be able to tell if they've been there in the past few years.

 

Hotrod is a retired firefighter , correct?

 

I was going to suggest the new google earth, I'm going there now. Donner pass killed my 67 Ford pick up one hot vacation day.

 

no,disabled vet ,agent orange crap,diabetes,neuropathy,head wound,eyes going,ptsd and retireing from the govt. other than that..hell i'm in good shape dude.

 

Sir I thank you for your service. Welcome home.
Aaron

 

Do you have any landmarks (roads, towns, etc.) that you could give as a reference to the area you're talking about. Donners Pass covers a pretty extensive area...something to narrow the search might be helpful. Looking at the terrain maps there only seems to be a couple hundred feet elevation change in most areas, at least where you would be looking down...just curious

 

there used to be a lot of old wreck cars in deep canyons off of snowqualowmie [spl] i used to be on the lookout for that stuff, i was gonna comeback and get it one day..but life got in the way.
bedtime..meds are kicking in..later jim

 

This is weird we were talking about this stuff at the shop. Has anyone found a body or skeleton in one of these found cars. I know some years back some hikers near me found a missing cadet from West Point. He went off the mountain in his car in the 60's his car landed in a tree and was never found. He was still behind the wheel...creepy.

 

And she's right.

But back to the canyons- I have to wonder what kind of shape cars would be in down there.. I mean, they are at the bottom of a canyon right? I picture a good shove and a lot of gravity..

 

I'd hold off until summer. A hike there right now would likely see you winding up in a similar fashion to the passes' namesake.

 

Same thing with my dad. The tumors in him haven't grown....YET, so the Dr. just keeps an eye on them. All thanks to Agent Orange in jungles of Vietnam. My pops just retired, I hope he around a long timie to enjoy it, and you too.

 

Still taking them as well


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Got all of the live ammo out, as well as the luggage. Big pile of aluminium slag on the side of 80 the next day though

 

My father in law succumbed to it in '98. Multiple cancers, kidney failure, heart, you name it. I miss him.

 

Donner's a hell of a dangerous road if you don't know what youre doing... They have locators buried in the asphalt so the snow plow operators don't drive off the cliffs when they are clearing the snow. I'm gonna go ahead and say that having hiked in that area it's have to be something pretty damn precious to go after if its already down there...

 

The pass is not a place to go playin around. That is one hell of a grade. Unless well equipped I dont even know how one would even get down to all those wrecks.

Right now its snowing pretty good in that area.

 

In the early 60s a scuba diving club in SE Penn found an old car in a flooded mine that they were exploring. It was a convertible of an orphan manufacturer. I want to say an Essex. There were skeletal remains of a woman in the seating area. They pulled it out with intentions of restoring it. The newspaper report speculated that it could have been a mob hit. I was only in the area for a few weeks and I never heard any follow up.

 

Wasn't that story on snopes.com? Seems awfully familiar...
EDIT: here's the one I was thinkning about http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/lostwreck.asp

 

I have no idea. It was a news story in the Philla. Inquirer or the Bulletin when I read it in my grandmothers kitchen. I can't pin point the year. The old car is what got my attention.

 

sorry guys,i didn't plan on all this ghostly speculations. i had hoped to find one or two guys that had pulled some useable parts off these cars . maybe the day crew can surprise us with a duece found long ago abandoned in a ravine around trukee or along the pass.

 

Google says there's a Snoqualmie? in Washington?
Could you have got your routes and names mixed up on that one?
I sure do some times!

Looking at the Google Map, there is an area between Truckee and the Nevada border where the I-80 goes N-S and it looks fairly steep to the East side of the road. is it East of Truckee and Donner Lake area or West of those places or was it more like between Auburn and Truckee?
I have a Brother who lives up there and I'm going to be visiting in the spring...
I have enough projects for myself but I could always use a little adventure!

 

I got a starter off a ravine car once. Worked great for many years. We have alot of em here in Az and they dont rust away. If theyre worth getting they would have to be REAAAALLY valuable. I wonder how many movie cliff cars are still out there?

 

snoqualomie..can't spell that on is in washington state where the dude lives. that's another mountain i used to drive over and see old cars down in canyons way below.
if i remember right about donner pass is the cars wrecked seemed to go from truckee to the grass valley area along 80. i know donner pass is shorter but those treacherous roads went on forever.

30 plus year memory may be off a bit. you would have to be up higher than a car to see a lot of these old cars.
trucking gives you an opportunity to cover a lot of grond fast,if you can remember what you saw and where it was.

 

The last time my girlfriend and I drove over the Donner Pass,
we stopped and ate each other in memory of the lost Donner party.

...sorry.

 

Snoqualmie pass is full of snow at the moment. I'm not sure it is a place I'd want to spend time on the side of the road looking for cars though.

 

I crossed donner pass in 91 on a trip to Pebble beach. My wife and I were hauling a Packard 12 in typical 24' tag trailer. She was nervous, scared shitless really, and I didn't understand why. Well I did a bit later looking over the edge. I have a fear of heights that I'm shy to talk about. I mean, I can get dizzy on a thick carpet! I hate it man, ladders, roofs, looking into deep holes and excavations. Hell my palms sweat when they show that shit in the movies. The spooky part was how slippery my hands got as I was on the way down but I had to play it cool just for her sake. On the way back it was no big deal (heading east) and I think it was because of the mountain side giving a sense of security. We have a video of the rest area at the top and I do recall a mess of surface rusted iron down there somewhere. I figured it was a scrap yard in a lil town or something. I didn't know.

Worse yet was when we met my friend who owned the car at his place in Tahoe. The way he brought me in to Incline Village, well let's just say that's as nervous as I've ever been towing down a grade. It was hard to keep it at 25MPH and everyone behind was gettin pissed. I found a place to pull off and let the truck and trailer brakes cool down. She was in tears and refused to look out the window. I don't know what was worse, her crying or my worry! Once we got there that 'smell' of hot brakes was very apparent. Thanks for a fun topic and bringing up fond memories. Tahoe is where we got married on that trip.

 

I have drivin over donner many many times,and I have always wondered if any cars ever went to the bottom.I was told the road was changed many years ago way before I was born im 35,because of how bad it was then.Not sure exactly when but the way I understand it is they rerouted it to a different spot over the hill.Can anyone confirm this?

 

I wrote my trailer off on Donner Pass a few years ago. It was a bad day....