Abandoned Jeep found under twenty feet of snow in Donner Pass

You guys have heard of Donner Pass, right? The dreaded mountain pass in the northern Sierra Nevadas out in California where an ill-fated group of mid-19th century pioneers got lost and fell to cannibalism to survive? Of course you have. Well, it seems that the pass has claimed another victim. It's not a pack of overly-optimistic farmers from Illinois this time, but a sad and lonely Jeep Cherokee.

Last Thursday, the California Highway Patrol base at Truckee, California, posted a picture of the rear end of a forlorn-looking XJ with a mangled rear end buried under a veritable mountain of snow and ice. Discovered by a CalTrans truck-mounted snowblower around Serene Lakes near Donner Summit, a CHP representative told Jalopnik they believe the old white XJ has been sitting there since the beginning of winter. More than twenty feet of snow and ice are piled atop the Jeep, a winter's worth of snowplow leavings.

Thankfully, the CHP found no bodies or anything else untoward in the XJ when they were arrived. CHP Truckee suggested that the Jeep's owner left it there, perhaps after a breakdown, and left it when successive layers of snow and ice entombed it. Since it's not blocking traffic and doesn't pose a safety hazard, CalTrans decided to leave the Jeep where they found it.

The XJ's owner hasn't been identified yet. Hopefully they're not in too much of a hurry to get their Jeep back, because that thing isn't moving until late spring at the earliest.

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