Sierra Nevadas and Donner Pass

This morning our train left Reno Nevada to begin it's trip crossing the Sierra Nevadas and into California state. In crossing the mountains the train climbs the Sierra Mountain Range, climbing some 7,000 feet. The scenery here is awesome, white snowy covered mountains and pine forests, it is almost like being in the White mountains of New Hampshire, only the mountains are higher.

For several miles we followed the Truklee River , eventually our train began it's final ascent during this part of the trip and into the infamous Donner Pass. See if you can find the Donner Pass in Google Earth it is located at:  39° 18′ 57″ North Latitude, 120° 19′ 17″ West Longitude.

During the winter of 1846 blizzards trapped a party of settlers from the midwest, who had been traveling this route to California.  By the time help arrived in February of 1847 about half of the group had either straved or frozen to death, some members of the Donner party had  gone mad and even resorted to cannibalism to survive.

The views of Donner lake from the top of the Donner pass are absolutely stunning. In the section of track from Truklee to Sacramento there were at one time 37 miles of snow sheds , which some had described as 'railroading in a barn'.  Although  many of these snow sheds are no longer being used there are still about four miles of sheds remaining  today in this section of the Amtrak line.