Winter Wonderland

While much of the rest of the country, except Hawaii, laments the heavy snow and related problems, we wish more snow was here. Heavy snow to us means winter fun and spring/summer water, which is badly needed in this semi-arid part of the country. Kids wait for school buses in shorts, a T-shirt, and a light jacket in 25 degree weather as their Father clears 4-6 inches of snow off the walk before going to work. We are just set up for it here and it has to snow "feet" before the system starts to breakdown.

We have been here for 7 years and this year I finally broke down and bought a snow blower. We have a corner lot and in the past I used a plow attachment for my lawn tractor to clear the 200 or so feet of walk.....and often my neighbors 100 feet or so. Around here it is usually the first one up in the morning that does the walks because the machines make it easy to do. This year I decided to buy a snow blower because the past two years there has been so much snow that the lawn tractor would bog down pushing it down the sidewalk......I often had to plow two or three times in a big storm just to keep ahead of the snow. The reason is that as you clear the sidewalk you create a trench in the snow and there is nowhere for the snow to go until you reach the drive, or the end of the walk, so it eventually overloads the tractor. A snow blower throws it to one side and truly clears a path. My new blower throws a 25 foot rooster tail of snow and clears everything in about 30 minutes.....with the plow it was over an hour to get the job done. I guess I can also claim a carbon footprint improvement because last winter I filled the tractor tank up after every second event......the snow blower has half the tank size and its been used four times on one tank.

The big winter benefit here from snow is outdoor sports. We have a nice little ski hill nearby (about 30 miles away) that we have used a few times and I even went over to the "dark side" and learned the basics of snowboarding; but Jane and I got rid of our downhill skis a few years ago. They were 20 years old and needed to be replaced.....the cost was so much for the number of times we would use them that we just rent skis when the urge to share the slopes and wait in lines calls us. These days we are into cross country skiing and snowshoeing. No lift lines, no crowds and all the exercise that you can handle. The Cache National forest is literally just outside our door, so we can walk up to a nearby trail head, or for a bigger challenge just drive 20 miles up a nearby canyon.....then snap on the skis and disappear into a white wilderness of absolute "quiet". In the upper canyons, at about 7-8,000 feet we sometimes don't see another person all day in 2-4 hours of skiing. The evidence of wildlife is everywhere but you rarely see it because cross country skiing is not "silent" and they have plenty of time to get to cover.

A couple of weekends ago Jane and I went up a trail called Temple Fork and encountered about a foot of fresh powder. Jane is a lot fitter than I am, and I carry the pack, so with those excuses I'll admit to her breaking trail. Here is a picture of her at the top end of the run, well up the mountain, still smiling and urging me to go just a little bit further. Jane still runs Marathons, and trains even in the Winter. She has attachments for her running shoes that enable her to run on ice and hard pack snow; and she has a pair of snowshoes made specifically for running across snow.

My main exercise is the walk from my desk to the men's room at the factory........and an occasional two hours jaunt through these mountains on skis. You can see from my picture what the depth of the new snow was. Jane, at 125 pounds was breaking trail and compressing it by about 6 inches, then her pet Walrus (me) came along in her tracks, at 185 pounds, with a 20 pound pack, and crushed it down to the hard pack. The pack has safety items in it, tools for repairing skis, camera, snacks, water (you drink A LOT of water cross country skiing--or should) and something hot to drink. It took us a little over an hour to get this far up the mountain....sorry for the lack of pictures but the camera battery died......but only 45 minutes to get back down.

When we started there was another skier about 200 meters ahead of us, and he was breaking trail from the roadway, so we had the advantage using of his track. We stopped to use a Forest Service outhouse (loo to my UK friends), and so he got well ahead. It took about 15 minutes for us to cross and return the 100 feet or so to the loo from the trail because it hadn't been used for many days and the unbroken snow was well over two feet deep. As we headed up the mountain he was coming back and warned us that it was almost impassible to "skinny skis" beyond a bridge. After thanking him we pressed on knowing that we had done this trail in new snow before but glad he proceeded us for part of the way. Most back country skiers use a version of a downhill ski for this back country because of the deep powder......they are wider than skinny skis, with steel edges and a flare to give control on downhill runs.....and they can lift the heel for gliding and climbing. We don't have them, so we made do with our conventional cross country skinny skis and managed to more than double the distance from the bridge and get well up the mountain. Along the way we passed Elk trails.....they look like a narrow snowplow track through the drifts, and deer.....they look like a series of Sitzmarks as the deer bound from spot to spot, and finally, a big cat (a Cougar) trail near the end of our push up the mountain. The cat track was very interesting and quite fresh because it was snowing and I could clearly see the claw/pad mark in the snow where it stopped.......as well as the tail drag in the snow between the landing spots as it bounded through the deep snow.

At our end point we stopped for some snacks before heading down, then at the halfway point it was a stop for hot chocolate. All in all, a great day on the mountain.