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California Zephyr, Part Two

© Lynne A. Williams

Leaving Sacramento, the train makes a gradual climb in elevation, from the low rises of the Sacramento Valley up to 7,239 feet at Donner Pass. It passes through Auburn and stops at Colfax, an old railroad and farming town. After Colfax, the train begins its crossing of the Sierra Nevada, which means "Snowy Mountains." Right outside of Colfax, the train crosses Long Ravine Trestle, the steepest slope on the Zephyr's route.

With the climb in elevation, there is a dramatic change in the vegetation viewed from the train. On this trip, each one thousand foot increase in elevation is similar to a level 300-mile journey from Southern California up to Northern Canada and Alaska. Up until about two thousand feet, the trees are deciduous, mainly oaks, along with some pine trees. This part of the trip includes the trees that change color in the fall, and provide the dramatic color along the line.

As the train climbs higher, the Ponderosa pines proliferate, along with sugar pines, which have the longest cones of all the pines, up to two feet long. Continuing to the higher elevations, there are few trees or shrubs that are not evergreen. Viewed from the window is an endless forest with an occasional lake interspersed. You will rarely see a car on this part of the trip, known as the Emigrant Trail, because the train crosses over Route 80 only a few times, and there are no other roads visible from the train

As the train passes through Norden, you will be go through a few of the sixteen sheds that were build to shield 38 miles of track from the severe snowfall in this part of the Sierra Nevada. That snowfall, averaging over 34 feet annually, was one of the reasons that most people believed it would be impossible to build a railroad through these mountains.

When the train crosses the summit, at 7000 feet, it travels through a long tunnel built right through Mt. Judah. Mt. Judah was named after Theodore Judah, the chief surveyor for the Central Pacific Railroad, a visionary who strongly lobbied for a transcontinental railroad long before anyone else in the country thought it was possible.

Coming out of the tunnel you will see a ski lift crossing over the tracks. This lift is part of the Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, one of the oldest in the Truckee-Tahoe region. The train then passes alongside Donner Lake, named after the doomed Donner Party, and begins the long descent into the Truckee Basin.

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