Saturday's Whiteout

 

Saturday was a day of great expectations that simply did not pan out.  We drove up to the pass in the sunshine.  The slopes in the south bowl and on the 'Three Tree' run untracked and beautiful.  First tracks! At the parking lot I put on my sunglasses and put a pair in my pocket for Nora.  It looked like it was to be a sunny afternoon on the slopes.

And then just like that it got cloudy, and then by the time we reached the top it had started to snow.  We decided that we would still ski the south bowl and out the 'Three Tree' run.  To do this we had to negotiate a complete white out in the top of the south bowl.  I led and I could not see a thing.  Total vertigo - I had to snow plow. Then I looked back and there everybody was on the slope above me - I had not realized it was so steep.

But the snow was good, and when we got a little further down we could see and the exposed bushes gave the landscape some '3D'.  It was time to rip.  And rip we did all the way down to the road.  

Of course after we got home it cleared up and got sunny again!

Patrick

Last of the sunshine with the parking lot behind

Other skiers - including Nora's cousin

Road in the distance - time to rip

Saturday's Sunshine

 

Saturday morning was gorgeous.  I knew the snow would be too deep for the dogs on Pyramid; so Nora and I took the dogs for an early walk before we went skiing in the afternoon.  It had frozen over night so we wanted to wait until late afternoon to go skiing, and give the crust and snow a chance to soften up in the sunshine.

At the beach Nora commented, 'It's so hot'. I agreed, and we joked that with the crashing waves that it felt like we were on a Costa Rican beach.  That is if you could look past the snow on the mountains, dead brown grass, and freezing cold water.  The water was so cold even the dogs were reluctant to go swimming.

Patrick

Bode already has a tennis ball - now how to grab the stick and keep the ball?

Tale of two walks

 

Yesterday it snowed HARD all day.  A wet sloppy snow accompanied by high winds - depending on location it was a blizzard.  We spent most of the day inside by the fire, but did get out for 2 very different dog walks.

I was worried the snow would turn to rain (and it did in the evening) and so the first 'walk' was a cross country ski in the trees above Buskin Lake.  Nora drove out with me and stayed in the car while I took the dogs skiing.  It was a full on blizzard.  You could barely see the road and all the trees were swaying in the wind.  But once in the trees it was surprisingly calm.  And the snow was just pouring down and sticking to everything.  All the trees were pasted with white and the trunks black. We skied to the river and back, and saw my first bear tracks of 2022.  The bears are coming out of hibernation.

Later in the day, Nora and I took the dogs under the spruce trees at Abercrombie.  Some snow was making it down to the ground under the trees but not much.  In places you could see the tree tops and all the spruce boughs were weighted down with snow.  It was snowing just as hard up above as it had been on the earlier walk, and when we got to the lake you could see the storm raging outside the trees.  But in the trees it was a bright green sanctuary.

Same day, same town, same storm, but two very different walks.

Patrick

If you look carefully you can find Nora and Bode

Spring Carrot Harvest

 

Last fall we had a sudden freeze and it caught my carrots unharvested. I'd harvested some of them but there was about 5 gallons of carrots still in the bed.  I was super bummed when the ground froze, and I could not pull the rest of the carrots.  This happened once before and the freeze thaw cycle of winter turned all the carrots to mush by spring.  

Last fall I thought it might still warm up and let me get at the remaining carrots so I put 2 folded tarps over the bed for insulation - to keep it from freezing even more solid.  But it stayed super cold for almost 2 months with temperatures even down to around 0 degrees, and I gave up hope on the carrots.

Then last week I peeked under the tarp and found that the carrots had survived.  Crunchy sweet carrots there for the harvesting!  They are in such good shape that I only harvested about a 1/3 of the bed and left the rest for later in the spring.  

Whhooooo hoooo freshly harvested garden carrots in the spring!

I'm thinking that the tarp insulation kept the carrots from thawing out during the freeze thaw cycles of late winter and that this kept the carrots from turning to mush.  It's a theory anyway, and I know they did freeze  solid.

Patrick

Abercrombie Park and Buskin Beach

 

Here are some pictures from recent dog walks in the last week.  Lately we've mostly been going to Abercrombie State Park or Buskin Beach.  

At Abercrombie it seems to have gotten a lot greener recently, and our recent snow has not been making it down to the ground through the tree boughs.  We have a lot of snow in the yard at our house.  So at Abercrombie you go into the trees and the green is slightly shocking in comparison.

Lately our trips to Buskin Beach have coincided with high tides and so we have not been able to hike the entire beach.  This makes for a short hike.  So to make up for it Nora has been throwing sticks for the dogs.  We figure the extra swimming makes up for the less walking.

Patrick

Banner Snow Week

 

Yesterday at the pass - a new foot of snow!

This is yesterday and below is just over a week ago.  It's hard to believe, but just last Thursday it was getting hard to ski all the way down to the road.  I was resigned to an early end to the ski season.  Then it started to snow.  We got a major dump of snow last Friday and it has been snowing every other day ever since.  There is now so much snow on the ground that it has gotten hard to even drive to the pass.

Patrick

A little over week ago at the pass

Last Saturday's foot of snow