What's your favorite mountain pass by car?

[Ted]

If it were up to me, I would be crossing mountain passes every single day of my holidays.
Nothing beats getting out at the top, doing a little hike and firing up the stove and make some nice ham&egg sandwiches.

The best one till now is the 'Cime de la Bonette' in France, 2802 meters

As far as I know, it's the highest paved road in Europe.

There's a gravel road in Spain that goes over 3000m, but I haven't been there yet.

This is a view of the top (red arrow).

http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/p1.jpg

The road goes around it and it's about 50m higher to the top.

Panorama shot from the top

http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/wide.jpg

click here for a bigger one (http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/p2.jpg)

So, any other good mountain passes? :D :)

Ted

[DAYWALKER]

Aloha Ted!

Wow, beautiful! I don't have any images of my fave, but I LOVED passing the mountains in Kaneohe on the Island of Oahu. I stayed with my sister once while she was living there, and waking up to them was awesome...

Only mountain here is mauna Kea...on a clear day,(which has been RARE as of late) you can see the observatory atop the sometimes snow capped mountain! *sigh*...poor Joyce, she thinks it's sunny here! LOL! Kidding joyce! :D

Great pics Ted!

[Pyrochazm]

I'd have to say the Natcheese (SP?) pass, over the cascades. I belive it was the first pass over the cascades connecting eastern and western Washington. But I could be wrong. I do know that it is still a gravel road, and has tons of good off-roading on it's capilary trails.

[Mr Blonde]

My absolute favorite to date is the Icefields Parkway in Canada between Banff and Jasper. Yes, it is a tourist attraction but compared to the Dutch polder-landscape it is just stunning, despite all the tourists. I will go back someday to turn the 5-hour drive into I dunno 10 hrs. Lots of beautiful scenery and wildlife visible from your car in the Canadian Rockies.

Highly recommended!

Wouter

[Ted]

Nice Wouter!

I visited a computer course in Seattle in 2002. I arrived on Saturday and the course started on Tuesday, so I had thought of driving to Canada and do the Icefield Parkway. But, it's a 600 mile drive from Seattle, so that was a bit too much.
Another plan was to cross the I20 through the North Cascades National Park, but the road was still closed (due to snow) by the time I arrived in Seattle.
So I drove up too Concrete and Marblemount and wanted to take the 'Mountain Loop Highway' - but had too turn back halfway due too snow.

http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/snow.jpg

I didn't have a 4WD and nobody had a clue where I was so I didn't want to take any chances :cool:
Anyway, had a couple of nice rides there. Went over Stevens Pass IIRC in heavy snow. Saw Lake Chelan, spotted some deer there while trying to cross the I971.

http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/deer.jpg

http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/lake.jpg

As I said, nothing beats driving through a scenery with snow-capped mountains for me.

Ted

[Ted]

I'd have to say the Natcheese (SP?) pass, over the cascades. I belive it was the first pass over the cascades connecting eastern and western Washington. But I could be wrong. I do know that it is still a gravel road, and has tons of good off-roading on it's capilary trails.

Pyrochazm, I can't find anything on Google about the 'Natcheese pass'. I would love to find some more info since I've been in the area. Maybe there's a typo?

Thanks,
Ted

[java]

Aloha Ted!

Wow, beautiful! I don't have any images of my fave, but I LOVED passing the mountains in Kaneohe on the Island of Oahu. I stayed with my sister once while she was living there, and waking up to them was awesome...

Ah, yes.....the Nuuanni Pali! Beautiful by mountain bike as well! Looking down at Kanehoe is quite a bit different from the windward side. All that water falling and never reaching the ground - awesome, dude!

Shaka, brah!

[Jurphaas]

Hi Ted - Straight North of Golden is the Rocky Mountain Park Highway in the Rocky Mountain Park. I liked that one a lot. Gaby & I drove it a couple of years ago on the 2nd of July and it just open two days. There were still mountains of snow everywhere. Great scenic ride!

On the other side of the ocean, I liked doing the Brenner Pass by bicycle!

BTW: how do i do "Quick reply"? ;)

[Ted]

Jur, for a Quick Reply, you have to be logged in. ( upper right corner of the page). Then hit the following button in the lower right corner of the post. Then start typing in the quick reply window at the bottom.
Ted

[ADS]

Hello everybody,
I just wanted to complement everybody on the pictures - they are all beautiful.

Ted - is that panoramic taken with a normal camera, or a digital camera? It's a great picture.

[Ted]

ADS, I took them with a Canon PowerShot S330 (digital) in panaroma mode. It's about 10 pictures put together with the Canon 'Stitch' software. Works really nice.

Here are a couple others - click on the pics for a large one

Cime de la Bonette - France
http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/cwide2.jpg (http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/wide2.jpg)

Mountain pass in National Park de Mercatour - France
http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/cwide3.jpg (http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/wide3.jpg)

Dachstein Mountains - Austria - not by car ;)
http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/cwide4.jpg (http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/wide4.jpg)

And not to forget, the view of the Ecrin massif from my favorite campsite in La Grave - France
http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/cwide5.jpg (http://www.ted.tweakdsl.nl/wide5.jpg)

[Mr Blonde]

Great pics Ted! Wanna see some of the wildlife pics I snapped from the car? I spotted Coyotes, deer, bighorn sheep, moose and bears. The local didn't think much of all that, well I did of course. The only wildlife you get to see in my part of the world are sparrows! Although, spotting moose was apparently pretty rare, as were the bighorn sheep.

For the Canadian/Americans among us, imagine you live in a flat wet country which is basically one big urban area with some agriculture in between. The only wildlife you regularly see are the smaller bird varieties. Imagine my surprise of seeing a huge black bear right at the side of the road while I was buzzing by in my rent-a-car! It was like only 2 seconds that I saw it, but maaan! Later on, a one-year old brown bear would oblige by posing for us in a park up north, which name I forgot. Ofcourse we stayed inside the car. I love wildlife and nature, so this trip to Canada was awesome. I never even got bored by the ever present and sometimes "aggressive" squirrels! Those littel rascals would pick your pocket looking for food!

I'll have to switch to my laptop for some nice pics, to overload the bandwidth on this thread!

Wouter

[Ted]

Yes Wouter, please upload them!
As you said, all the others here probably don't have a clue why we 'oooh and aaah' about snow-capped mountains and wild-life.
I have yet to spot a deer here in a real open forest (not the fenced National Park 'De Veluwe').

Ted

[Mr Blonde]

Attached are some of the animals I encountered, all of them are 'wild', as far as that is possible nowadays, except for the school of dolphins. That picture was taken during a whale watching ride in Victoria, Vancouver Island.

BTW, that first picture is of a squirrel biting me in the pants, because I was pretending to have some food for him, those rascals would really hurt you if they were packing Civilians! Don't mess with them!

Wouter

[Mr Blonde]

More pics, I hope they don't take up too much bandwidth! That fin in the last picture is of an orca.

[Nicky]

Great pics guys! I'm not home now but I will put some pics online later. Stay tune.

[J Smith]

I thought the Smokies were mountains but I guess not.

[Pyrochazm]

I'm loving all the beautiful mountain pics you guys are putting up. Next time i'm up in the mountains i'll have to take some pictures.

[Ray.Hood]

My wife would say France. I personally love the mountains, rockies, etc.
Blue Ridge Pkwy is amazing in the fall season. Later guys, Ray.

[RAT 54]

Very cool pic's guys.

Really must do the OE thing and see some of these cool places your talk about.

The attached colour image was shoot early last year on Banks Peninsular near Christchurch. Being close to Christchurch, Banks Pen makes a great place for a quick walk. In this case I started at 10:30 the night before, and walking into the hut by moon light. I got up around dawn, and snapped this and a few other pictures.

The BnW image was shoot in Aurthrs Pass, about 2 hours drive from where I live.

[java]

Man, there are some beatiful shots here.

Wish I had pictures of the road from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft New Mexico looking past the pines to White Sands and the Tularosa basin or driving down Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevadas.

BTW, that first picture is of a squirrel biting me in the pants, because I was pretending to have some food for him, those rascals would really hurt you if they were packing Civilians! Don't mess with them!

Wouter
Wouter

Cool squirrel! Most of my passes of late are under water with coral forrested hillsides. The indigenous life can get pretty demanding there too. None of the divers I know carry wobbegong treats on us and it seemed like this guy had a mouthful of mini-Salts... :D .

[Ted]

Very cool pic's guys.
The BnW image was shoot in Aurthrs Pass, about 2 hours drive from where I live.

Nice B&W shot RAT54! A bit like Ansel Adams - interesting contrasts with the dark rocks and the snow-capped mountains. All areas seem to have good detail. Good choice of exposure.
Do you have a bigger picture? Would love to see it.

Ted

[Mr Blonde]

Java, nice shot...but nasty too! :D

[RAT 54]

That looks more than a little painful Java....

Ted, there's an e-mail on its way.