It’s only happened once in the last seven years, but watching as snow creeps up to the top of a remote stop sign on Wyoming’s Togwotee Pass has become an popular winter spectator sport.
To make it more interesting, Wind River Outdoor Co. hosts its annual Stop Sign Snow Challenge to guess if and when snow will bury the stop sign a Wind River Lake on U.S. Highway 26/287 — and the challenge is live again.
People have until midnight Sunday to submit their guesses for when the stop sign at Wind River Lake on Togwotee Pass will be completely buried in snow.
“It’s only happened once in the seven years we’ve been doing this,” said Ron Hansen, the owner of The Wind River Outdoor Company in Lander. “It’s just a fun contest, and after a year like this, where it seems like everything under the planet is political, this is 100% opposite of political. It's a fun, almost mindless activity.”
Before the stop sign gets buried in snow, the challenge will be buried with guesses of when that will happen, and the person who guesses the correct date (or closest to it) wins — if that happens.
When The Snow Goes
The stop sign at Wind River Lake had a dusting of snow at its base Friday. That can and will change dramatically over the next few months.
“I would say this is on par for every year so far, with one exception,” Hansen said. “In 2020, we had a lot of snow early, and then it just stopped. But this is on par with an average year, historically.”
Hansen started the Stop Sign Snow Challenge as an amusing winter diversion. He and hundreds of others would check the WYDOT webcams installed at Wind River Lake and watch as the sign was slowly buried in several feet of natural snow (plowed snow doesn’t count.)
Over the years, the annual challenge has attracted hundreds of ardent followers who regularly check the webcam and see how much of the stop sign is still visible.
“When it gets to the end of the season, it generally takes just one big storm,” Hansen said. “If you get the right storm at the right time, it'll bury that stop sign in pretty short order. Unfortunately, we almost reached that point in the last two years, but that storm never came.”
In 2023, the sign was only buried halfway up the post at the end of February. The next week, a blizzard dropped 3 feet of snow on Wind River Lake, burying the sign up to the bottom of its red octagon by the first week of March.
It was at least 36 inches feet of snow, but not enough. The sign remained exposed and unburied when the snow stopped, and the spring melt began.
As of Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024, the snow was just a dusting at the base of the stop sign. (Courtesy Wyoming Department of Transportation) 
Now had reached about halfway up the stop sign by Feb. 28, 2024, in last winter's Stop Sign Challenge. The snow didn't make it over the top. (Courtesy Wyoming Department of Transportation) 
Keeping tabs of the stop sign is as easy as checking a Wyoming Department of Transportation webcam. (Courtesy Wyoming Department of Transportation)
Hedging Your Bets
Participants have until midnight Sunday to submit their guesses about when the stop sign will be buried. Hansen said that historically, most people hedge their bets between late January and mid-March.
“I imagine we'll get between 200 to 250 entries this year,” he said. “Thanksgiving is when things start piling up. The storms are more loaded with moisture as they go over Togwotee Pass and into Jackson Valley. They call it the ‘hydraulic river’ that goes up through the Snake River Basin. That's when the snow starts stacking up.”
The Farmer’s Almanac calls for a much colder and wetter winter in the Wind River Range. Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day anticipates a colder winter that should be disproportionately snowier for northern Wyoming.
Hansen doesn’t speculate with the authorities, so he’ll gauge winter’s progress by watching it accumulate around the stop sign. Regardless of who’s right, the content usually comes down to the last storms of the season.
“It's a roll of the dice every year,” he said. “If you get the right storms at the right time with the right frequency, I think it's pretty easy to bury that stop sign.”
A Life Of Its Own
If there is a winner of the seventh annual Wind River Outdoor Company Stop Sign Snow Challenge, the prize will be swag from the Lander store and gift cards for in-person or online purchases.
“We've got several supplier promotions that will pass those on as gift cards,” he said. “Things like a Yeti mug and some other stuff that they can use and purchase online or at the store if they’re in Lander.”
Hansen has enjoyed the spontaneous community that’s formed around the annual tradition. He recalled a time when some of the challenge’s followers visited the sign in December and decided it needed to get into the spirit of the season.
“A couple of years ago, some people wrapped it in garland and put Christmas ornaments on it,” he said. “WYDOT frowns on that, but it was fun. And the stop sign is definitely not being used at that time of year.”
More than anything, Hansen sees the Stop Sign Snow Challenge as utterly devoid of division and politics. Wyoming and the United States might be extremely polarized right now, but the only polarizing things about the challenge are the polar snow and temperatures burying Togwotee Pass.
“There's not a lot of brain matter that's wasted trying to figure this out,” he said. “It seems like everyone is so polarized on everything, and this is the complete antithesis of that. There's nothing political or divisional about it whatsoever. It’s purely to make people laugh and have a little fun. I think we could all do a whole lot more of that.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
