State Route 108/Sonora Pass has been closed at Kennedy Meadows due to snow.
State Route 4/Ebbetts Pass also has been closed due to snow, from the east end of Lake Alpine to Wolf Creek Road.
Travelers are advised to seek alternate routes.
“[IN THE CENTRAL CALIFORNIA AREA & SIERRA NEVADA]IS CLOSED FROM 7.2 MI EAST OF STRAWBERRY TO 5.3 MI WEST OF THE JCT OF US 395 /SONORA PASS/ (TUOLUMNE,MONO CO) – DUE TO SNOW – MOTORISTS ARE ADVISED TO USE AN ALTERNATE ROUTECHAINS OR SNOW TIRES ARE REQUIRED FROM 3.8 MI WEST OF THE JCT OF US 395 TO THE JCT OF US 395 (MONO CO)” – Cal Trans
Currently, there is no estimated time of reopening for SR-4/Ebbetts Pass or SR-108/Sonora Pass.
Motorists can visit quickmap.dot.ca.gov/ for current road conditions across California.
Wheezus,
Sonora Pass is an amazing place to snowmobile/ski/snowboard. It would outshine Mammoth and Squaw in acreage, vertical and elevation. Depending on how you laid it out the base could be at 7,200′ – 9,000′ and it would top out at just over 11,000′.
Right now environmentalist groups actively lobby and sue the forest service to try and close down the area to snowmobile access. The anti-snowmobile lobby just shut down a large portion of the riding areas west of the pass in the Stanislaus NF this last year. Every year these “environmentalist” pool their resources and money to come up with ever more clever angles to close riding areas.
Here is one of the Sierra Club’s little brother’s who does the boots on the ground work: https://winterwildlands.org/stanislaus-osv-ruling-forest-planning-2021
In 2009 there was a massive area to the South of Sonora pass that was open to snowmobile accessed riding. After heavy lobbying and congressional intervention environmental groups including the sierra club successfully lobbied congress to approve a massive expansion of the Hoover wilderness closing 60,000 of acres of riding areas.
Please keep working on solving global carbon emissions and figuring out how to sequester what’s been already dumped into the atmosphere.
The public would be better served allowing for new responsibly developed ski resorts to be created. The current situation creates a supply/demand imbalance. That is why you are seeing real-estate, food and ticket prices inflate at higher pace then the rest of the economy. That economical phenomenon is what ski corporations base their financial models on and allows them to buy out family ski resorts at crazy prices, build up the disneyland villages and sell out to the rich bay area ppl. If we stay on the same path in 20-30 years its only going to be way worse. That coupled with global warming is going to be a depressing experience for those of us that love the sport and experience.
Its time for those of us that love the sport and hate what has happened to look forward 20-30 years and come up with ideas on how we are going to make things better, not worse.