They say getting there is half the fun...travel nightmares!!!

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

For many of us we put an awful lot of hours on the road, on planes and even trains every ski season. They say getting there is half the fun but it can also be stressful. Post some travel nightmares or ski trips from hell in this thread.

This is an hour by hour look at my travels to Jackson Hole this past January...

Picked up in Apartment at 530AM
Arrive at LVIA/ABE airport at 540AM
Through baggage/security by 6:00AM
Board plane around 7AM
Arrive in Chicago around 8AM Central Time
Dick around in the airport for an hour an a half..
Board plane for Jackson Hole around 10AM Central time
Ontime Departure enrute to JAX
$6 Cocktail..crackers and hummus from Chicago..
Announcement from pilot due to zero visibility we will be landing in Denver...Noon Mountain time
In the massive Denver airport..with hundreds and thousands of weary travellers..wait we're not the only flight re-routed to Denver..

Hang out in Customer service line..for an hour and a half..see one guy almost get booted out of the airport for a tandrem thrown at a customer..my options were 3 flights ending in Idaho Falls which was also experiencing inclement weather..standby on the next days Jackson flight..fly back to Chicago and try again tomorrow on standby from Chicago..and fed up I said..I'm driving to Jackson Hole.

4PM..Have baggage..hop into Hertz rental car shuttle..think about how OJ Simpson used to be the spokesperson.

430PM..I have the keys to a 2008 cherry red Suburu Impreza..

5PM..Weaving in and out of traffic..

6PM..driving

7PM..driving

8PM..stop for gas and snack

9PM..horrible driving conditions on I-90..

10PM..see 9PM entry

11PM..pull into Rock Springs..get gas..crappy motels were overpriced and I had 175 miles left up 191..

Midnight..leaving Rock Springs..40 degrees dry roads

2AM..5 feet of visibility..18 degrees..trucks passing out of nowhere..sketchball city

3AM..Powernap in front of a closed gas station..

4AM..white Knuckle driving through Hoback Canyon

5AM..arrive at the 49er inn..25.5 hours after leaving PA..powernap..bagel..coffee..and a foot+ of cowboy powder...

 

[icedtea]

It has taken me over 12 hours to get from NJ to VT before in ice storms. I remember rollin to the cabin at like 5 am after an exhausting 12 hour ride, waxed my shit and then just went straight to the mountain for some pow. Luckily a friend was already up in VT so he drove to the hill.

But man, those are some white knuckle memories.

 

[frozencorn]

2001, I believe. Pick up my wife at work in Boston at 2 p.m.. Hear it might be snowing north.

Midnight, pull into our Colchester, VT hotel. Nice, easy, 10-hour drive including the most blinding conditions I've ever seen on 89. That was fun.

In 2003, we landed in St. Louis after a lengthy delay in Boston, and raced to make out connection to Colorado, leaving in a matter of minutes. On the other side of the airport. We dashed like anything to get there, rejoice to see the gate open, take our seats, and catch our breath......Then, proceed to sit there for another 25 minutes as the flight waits for the other people that were on our Boston flight to get there and make the connection. Awesome.

Of course, there's the non-skiing travel nightmare of spending 15 hours in the LaGuardia airport waiting for a flight to Florida, only to wake up the next morning and watch a whole new group of people bound for the same destination start boarding a flight from the same airline....Talk about an unruly mob.

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Another one: from the GSS archives..

My high school buddy and I decided to drive up to ski at Jay Peak for a few days during my winter break of my freshman year of college during my winter break. The drive up to Jay Peak was smooth and we were there by dinner time. There were huge snowbanks and we were so psyched. The next day was pouring rain and we got soaked but had fun and even did some woods. That night it continued to rain and we saw that there was an ice storm of Historic proportions going on in Montreal with 2-3 inches of ice. We thought it would be cool to hit up some of the adult establishments after the next day of skiing. Another day in the rain in pea soup fog and we were soaked. At least the tram provided some relief on the ride up.

We changed into dry clothes after skiing and drove to Montreal. We had no trouble at the Border but as we got closer the roads were real slick and it took like 4 hours to actually get into the city because of all the back up. We had a bomb deezy night hitting up St. Catherines street and were psyched to drive back to PA the next day. We started driving back with freezing rain still falling the next morning. We got to the border and the border was closed because the freezing rain had advanced south into upstate NY and VT and I-87 was closed north of Plattsburgh. We had to drive back into Montreal but by then the power was out in most of the city. We finally found a real gross place to stay in that was super expensive and we had to share a bathroom with the whole floor. We drowned our sorrows with some Molson and the next day the Borders finally opened but only the VT border and we had to take the long way back to PA via I-91 and by then we were so sick of each other. I got two days of skiing in the rain at Jay Peak, Adult entertainment, and a shared bathroom, but looking back it wasn't so bad. No Wonder I like skiing so much, My worst ski trip ever was kind of fun in a twisted way. If anybody wants to know more about the great ice storm of 1998 look up "Montreal Ice Storm 1998" in google and you'll have lots of info. I'm lucky I didn't get electracuted when we drove over downed power lines. Memories.

 

[icedtea]

ha another one.

2 buddies and I were headed to Colorado via Jetblue - JFK. If you have ever been in that terminal you know the sushi place. Well it was like 530 am so I took a nap on one of the couches there in front of my terminal. I ended up passing out, missing the plane, my friends did not wake me up and ended up getting to CO like 18 hours later. Hanging out in a terminal for 12 hours is not fun!!!

Definitely gave them both a couple of rights when I got to the hotel.

 

[Vortex]

Ha I'm flying to steamboat tomorrow and its looks like it will be snowing pretty good. So great for skiing bad for getting to skiing.

 

[Philpug]

I've driven that route from Denver to JH (through Steamboat, in two stages), it is a sucky drive. I was impressed that you did it..alone..in one trip.

I was in the JH airport, trying to get out when you were trying to get in. Needless to say, I got stuck on the other end having to stay in Jackson and ski an extra day.

 

[Geoff]

My train going from Santiago, Chile to Chillan got in a train wreck last August. It hit a truck hauling grain across the tracks to a pasta factory. Puts new meaning to "That trip was a real train wreck."

 

[ski_resort_observer]

:lol: GSS - I have driven from Jackson to Laramie or Denver many times in bad road conditions. It's about 500 miles to Jackson from Denver. I assume you mean I80 instead of I90 as I90 is near the Wyoming/Montana border. :wink: Not a lot of places to stop along the 200 miles between Laramie and Rock Springs I80. It's pretty flat, the snow fences help just alittle but the wind can be very bad, especially between Laramie and Rawlins.

Your a trooper plus if you didn't make it you would not be able to mention Jackson Hole in pretty much every post in here. :wink:

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

:lol: GSS - I have driven from Jackson to Laramie or Denver many times in bad road conditions. It's about 500 miles to Jackson from Denver. I assume you mean I80 instead of I90 as I90 is near the Wyoming/Montana border. :wink: Not a lot of places to stop along the 200 miles between Laramie and Rock Springs I80. It's pretty flat, the snow fences help just alittle but the wind can be very bad, especially between Laramie and Rawlins.

Your a trooper plus if you didn't make it you would not be able to mention Jackson Hole in pretty much every post in here. :wink:

I meant I-80..driving in the Rockies is an adventure..

 

[mikestaple]

Driving from the Cape to Sugarloaf. 4 adults, 7 kids under 10 in two Suburbans. Usually about a 5 hour trek.

25 miles past Portland ME, one of the Suburbans just dies. Have to run around in rural Maine trying to find a tow, then a garage that can deal with it all on a late Friday afternoon. Half the crew runs back to the Portland airport to pick up a rental car. All gear has to smash into one Suburban. The crew splits up into 4 in the compact rental. 7 - with gear, in Suburban.

Get to the 'loaf. Condo is basically a burnt out wreck. So after unloading most of the gear the ladies believe it would be a good idea for the men to go back and demand another condo. Get a different condo. AWESOME condo. Repack gear, kids, (hungry kids) get to other condo. Slam pizza in kids. Make them go to bed. Finally - beer appears - 9 hours after leaving SE Mass. Next morning - dad of broken down Suburban gets and has flu entire 3 day stay at the 'loaf.

One month, $3000 later, and an engine shipped to and back from Detroit, the sickly Suburban returns home too. Conditions were amazing though............

 

[Glenn]

Driving from the Cape to Sugarloaf. 4 adults, 7 kids under 10 in two Suburbans. Usually about a 5 hour trek.

25 miles past Portland ME, one of the Suburbans just dies. Have to run around in rural Maine trying to find a tow, then a garage that can deal with it all on a late Friday afternoon. Half the crew runs back to the Portland airport to pick up a rental car. All gear has to smash into one Suburban. The crew splits up into 4 in the compact rental. 7 - with gear, in Suburban.

Get to the 'loaf. Condo is basically a burnt out wreck. So after unloading most of the gear the ladies believe it would be a good idea for the men to go back and demand another condo. Get a different condo. AWESOME condo. Repack gear, kids, (hungry kids) get to other condo. Slam pizza in kids. Make them go to bed. Finally - beer appears - 9 hours after leaving SE Mass. Next morning - dad of broken down Suburban gets and has flu entire 3 day stay at the 'loaf.

One month, $3000 later, and an engine shipped to and back from Detroit, the sickly Suburban returns home too. Conditions were amazing though............

LOL! I love it! They decide after you've unloaded most of the gear to change condos.

Bummer on the engine thing...been there, done that...luckily it happened close to home.

 

[dmc]

8 guys...
NYC>Dubai>Delhi India>Kashmir And back...

Not one piece of luggage missing...
Lots of planes.. none late. Everybody got on...
Lots of guys with guns... Nobody detained...

But it was a ton of fun just getting there... :lol:

 

[snoseek]

I think it's safe to say tomorrow morning driving to Loveland in my little Civic will be an adventure.

 

[trtaylor]

This one's a little different. December 2007 had a business trip to western Kansas, via Denver. Got in early enough to ski Loveland for half a day. Get back to Denver area and stop on the south side for some dinner. No problem, just took longer than it should. Head east towards Kansas after dinner and about 30 minutes into the trip, it starts snowing. And gets harder and harder. Gets really bad the further east I drive on I-70.

Snow is now coming absolutely sideways, and except for the occasional tractor-trailer, I am the only guy on the road. Temperature is rapidly dropping and the defroster in my rental (a Hummer H3) can't keep up. So, I have to drive with the driver side window down so I can reach out and grab the wipers every other time they go by, to try and bang the built up snow and ice off of them. By now, I am starting to think karma is a bitch and I am getting paid back big time for doing the ski ting at Loveland without asking for the time off. I am scheduled to be the lead instructor at a software training semianr the next day, and not being there is not an option when the weather was nice and sunny when I landed in Denver 14 hours ago.

At every chance I get, I pull off into a convenience store to get cups of hot water to defrost my wipers, only to repeat the procedure all over again.I finally get to my exit, but it is now 2am in the morning. The snow has stopped, but now it is freezing rain. I tell myself that if it is more than 30 miles to Scott City, KS I am just parking it. Next sign I see says 28 miles to Scott City, so off I go.

I finally get to Scott City and it is about 3am. But, I can't find my room - was supposed to be staying at a nice bed and breakfast place, courtesy of a customer of ours. I pull into a motel parking lot, figuring I am just going to pay for a room and the hell with it. I step out of the Hummer and immediately my feet go out from under me - frozen rain. On the way down I bang the back of my head on a brick wall. I am so tired that I don't even get pissed. I just totally resign myself to defeat.

Well, I can't stand being beaten, so I pull out my laptop, get a wireless connection from the hotel whose parking lot I am in and search for the lady's number who owns the B&B I am supposed to be at. I reach her, waking her up, of course and relate my tale of woe.

I did get to my room and grabbed a few hours sleep. Naturally, my original plan to was to prepare for the next day's training when I had origianlly planned to arrive. So, did a crash course pf preparation and did my best at the training session.

Decided I'd never try to sneak in a side trip like that ever again

 

[JasonE]

This January - my wife and I were on our annual ski vacation. Staying at a little hotel near Attitash. A friend of mine, who has been unemployed all season, had come up for a couple days of R&R and we'd gotten him his own room. Tuesday was an off-day of skiing, and we decided we wanted to go snowtubing. Cranmore, right down the road, wasn't running their tubing that day, so we stupidly decide to make the 2-hour drive south to Gunstock for tubing. I mean, what the hell, we're on vacation, right?

The drive is very, very long on dark, country roads. It is bitterly cold that day. We don't get down there until close to 6 o'clock. As we drive up the access road to Gunstock, we can see the lights from the mountain (but haven't reached the parking lot yet) when my car gives a hell of a lurch and all of a sudden I've got no power to the wheels at all. Nothing, nada, wheels aren't moving.

Call AAA. They can have someone there in 45 minutes. OK, great. On second thought, takes an hour and a half for the wrecker to arrive. Oh... crap... the wrecker can only take two passengers - we've got three! Call AAA - can you find us a taxi? No? Really? Shit.

Finally a Gunstock employee shows up and offers to drive my friend (and all our skis) down to Laconia, where the car is being towed. We get dropped off at a hotel in Laconia. Two rooms - not a bad price, not a bad place either. But the problem is, all our stuff is up in our motel room in Bartlett! No clothes, no nothing. And we were decked out for tubing, which means all we've got is our thermals and our snow pants. Yikes!

We were supposed to ski Wednesday with my parents at Black mountain. Called my parents Tuesday night to explain the situation and let them know we'd be late, but not to worry, meet us there and if you get there first just start skiing.

We made the best of it for the night and the next morning call Enterprise for a rental. Uhm... ok... what do you mean you have no cars? Spend close to an hour calling every rental car place we can find in the yellow pages before we finally find one in Plymouth (yes, in the shadow of Tenney Mountain) that actually has a car available.

Call my parents who fortunately haven't yet left their condo in Lincoln and ask if they can make the drive down to Laconia to pick us up and take us to Plymouth to get the rental car. We get the rental car and make the drive back to Bartlett, arriving too late to ski Black. But Thursday we drive up to ski at Bretton Woods. The day was fantastic - bitter bitter cold (one of those days they tell you at the ticket booth to make sure you don't have any exposed skin), but the conditions were picture perfect and we had the time of our life. The problem arose with the ride back to our motel - driving a rented Ford Windstar mini-van through Crawford Notch on a 12-degree day with absolute glare, unsanded ice across the entire road. It is one of the most terrifying drives of my life.

Friday, we were scheduled to ski Ragged on our way home. Thursday night I hear from my car dealer (my car was still under warranty). The transmission had blown. He doesn't want the work done at the Ford dealer in Laconia, it'll be cheaper for him to do it in his own garage. He's going to send up a flatbed with a loaner vehicle on it, drop the loaner vehicle off and bring my car back to Massachusetts.

So Friday morning we get up, pack all our stuff into the Windstar, and drive the two hours south to Laconia. I pick up the loaner car that has been left for me at the Ford dealership, and we drive the 45 minutes north to Plymouth to drop the rental car off. Transfer all of our stuff out of the Windstar into the... well, as it turns out, the loaner car was also a Windstar, go figure.

By the time all that was done, it was 1 in the afternoon and there was no hope of skiing Ragged. So we just came home.

So... what had been scheduled to be an 8-day, 5-mountain ski vacation turned into an 8-day, 3-mountain disaster.

Kudos, however, to the incredibly helpful and friendly folks from Gunstock. They made what was a horrible situation much better, and their quality of customer service (and we weren't technically customers at all) and old-fashioned hospitality has put that mountain on my list of must-visit places next year.

 

[dns1764]

my sophmore year of highschool 20 guys in my class went to innsbruck austria. everyone made it without any problems...but my roomate lost all his luggage. all he had was his skis, boots and some of his ski gear, and the clothes on his back. to make matters worse he is a big dude and couldnt find anything that would fit him

 

[darent]

wife and I fly from boston too steamboat for a week of skiing. bos to denver on time, get on flight to steamboat and circle steamboat forever because of weather, return to denver. a group of people all going to steamboat hire a bus. whiteout all the way there but arrive safely at 2 am.get to rental and the gear that I shipped out earlier{UPS}hasn't arrived yet so we rent skis. second day skiing wife breaks ankle in deep snow. she troopers on and lets me ski the rest of the week while she relaxes and reads. steamboat had 7 feet of snow that week and I owe my wife big time!!

 

[abc]

2 buddies and I were headed to Colorado via Jetblue - JFK. If you have ever been in that terminal you know the sushi place. Well it was like 530 am so I took a nap on one of the couches there in front of my terminal. I ended up passing out, missing the plane, my friends did not wake me up and ended up getting to CO like 18 hours later. Hanging out in a terminal for 12 hours is not fun!!!

Definitely gave them both a couple of rights when I got to the hotel.

This reminds me another one, not a "travel" nightmare but a nightmare of a different sort:

Got invitation to a house in Mad River Valley for the weekend, dirt cheap and fun group. So invited an interested buddy and agreed plan to car pool together.

Thursday morning, send out e-mail to confirm meeting spot for car pool. Forecast was for snowing throughout Friday, driving was expected to be hairy. Was informed he's going with a girl (which I know) and there's no space for me in her car!!!

Got seething mad and decide to lie about there's no extra more room in the house for the girl! (since I was the contact person) He reluctantly agree to go up with me...

Wait till end of day, called said girl and invite her to ride with "us" in my car (since the house magically openned up with extra spaces). She happily agreed. 3 drivers rotating driing through the drifting snow and got to the house very late...

Needless to say, I've never gone ski with him after that. A month later, met another skier and got story of this guy pulling the same trick on her, on accord of the same girl!!!

Said girl moved out of state at end of season, WITHOUT him.