I took a snow day yesterday, which in addition to my (semi-)snow day last week meant that I probably shouldn’t work at home today again (I had to do a presentation today anyways). So I woke up this morning and started my trek to work.

Since it had snowed the entire night, the plows and salters had not had a chance to plow my route yet so the roads were covered in (packed) snow. It felt like I was driving in the prairies or in Colorado, except i didn’t have snow tires, studs, or chains. The tricky thing about these scenarios are the hills, and seeing as how I had to cross (and climb) the Don Valley to get to work, it was very tricky indeed.

I don’t really have alternates that bypass hill climbing. If I take Yonge, I have to climb north of Steeles. If I take Bayview, I have to climb north of Finch. If I take Leslie or Steeles, I have to climb around that intersection. So I took my normal route, Finch which has two hills. One between Leslie and Bayview and another approaching Don Mills. I didn’t realize or think about this much until I approached the first hill where traffic started to back up. At this point, a lot of cars did a U-turn (because conveniently the other lane was blocked further ahead by cars stalled while climbing hills) but I trudged on since I had no viable alternate.

I mosied along up the hill, which is actually the gentler of the two, and at the same time witnessed a big oil tanker in the other lane leave plenty of buffer in order to build up momentum, but that was all of naught as he eventually stalled and blocked the road. I made it up to the top without issue but at which point I was forced to stop at a red light and then got stalled. After trying the usual tricks, I eventually got going again after a minute and made my way towards the next hill.

The Don Mills hill is even steeper and I’ve seen cars getting stuck in the truck lane on previous days. However, there was less of a traffic jam so it was smooth sailing. Even the top was partially cleared of snow! Surprisingly, there was one last challenge before the 404. There was one traffic light on the crest of a small hill which had for some reason accumulated a lot of snow (and some leftover cardboard traction by other cars), but I was able to pace and get by without stopping.

The 404 was surprisingly clear of all snow, and in retrospect I should have just taken the 401 to 404. Markham was also plowed, and that seems to be a pattern. Toronto needs to get its plowing solution together.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: driving, toronto, winter