Snowrun Feb 24, 2008

Myself, Eric Kokernak & Mike Mole met up at the Somerset intersection (Hwy 16 at Grizzly Flat Rd) at 8:30 am Sunday morning.  Several others indicated they would be there but no others showed up so the three of us headed out in a light drizzle. Eric had Will and Laura along for the run. Mike and I were singles.  We were a little concerned because the weather reports were all saying it was gonna be windy and ugly most of the morning. The wind never really blew much. It did snow on us most of the time we were up there but it didn’t seem that cold. Not anywhere as bad as they were saying…

We hit snow at Grizzly and it was fun as soon as we passed the point where they stop plowing on Capps Crossing Rd. Almost immediately we encountered a huge tree down across the road. Pretty big. Too much to just drag out of the way. I neglected to bring my trusty chain saw or we could have taken care of that. We aired down at that point. It was raining/sleeting/snowing. Mike laughed at me when I broke out my big ole umbrella but it kept the wet stuff off me while airing down. It’s amazing how much heavier an umbrella gets when the snow piles up on it…  There was an easy route around the tree. The snow was deep enough that we only left tracks in the snow.  The snow got deeper pretty quick and it was drifted pretty bad in places. The first really tricky spot was in a curve and it sucked Mike’s Toyota towards the downhill side and he was in danger of sliding off into the trees. I tried to tow him backwards but that only made it worse so Eric turned around and winched him back up into the groove. From then on, it was lots of fun. Deep snow and huge drifts. The deepest snow we’ve driven through so far. There’s one open spot that always drifts bad and we had a feeling that would be the end of our run but somehow Eric managed to crawl along slowly and pack it down enough that we all got through that section with little trouble. Eric did have to back up numerous times but he did a great job.

It just kept getting deeper and it was snowing pretty good but we managed to keep moving along, getting stuck occasionally and having to do many backups to pack it down. Eric got bogged down in one corner and after a few back and forths, managed to slide nearly off into the trees. I tried to yank him back with a tow strap but that only pulled me into the same drift and it took me quite a few bonsai runs back and forth to get back up. Eric had to run his winch all the way across the road to a tree to pull himself out of that predicament. Yes, he did use a tree strap and we didn’t damage anything but the snow. While Eric was stuck, Mike figured he would just drive around him. Well,  Mike got stuck too. He broke out the shovel and managed to dig himself out enough to get out of that drift. After Eric got back on track, we moved on and it just got deeper and deeper…

Mike led for a bit and was having a bit of trouble. He had to air down more and finally let Eric back up front. We had just about hit our limit, Eric was busy getting sideways and making progress by only inches when I just happened to look in my rear-view and saw an orange Toyota sideways in the snow right behind me. I didn’t even see him come up. There were two Toyota pickups and they were busy trying to turn around. I think they were getting skeered… We didn’t get much further and came within about a mile of making North/South Rd. After some jockeying around, we managed to get turned around and headed back down. It snowed all day and it was a wet snow. Both Mike’s and Eric’s jackets were apparently not waterproof. I think Mike was soaked pretty good but he kept smiling. Good thing the girls stayed home. My wife is a wuss when it comes to cold weather. She saw the report and said, ‘forget that, I’m stayin home’.  It really wasn’t bad though We all got out a couple times and had a little snowball fight. I think Will got the worst of it. He was pooped out by the time we headed back. But, he was still grinning…

We had little trouble coming back down but just had to be careful not to get out of the deep grooves. I couldn’t believe some of the drifts we were able to get through. Eric did a super job of breaking trail. He loves that part I think… There were some ya-hoo’s down at the bottom. They had torn up that spot where the tree was down. The whole place was a muddy mess and you could see where they had driven up and down the hillsides and into the woods in several places. And they wonder why places get closed down. L

So, there will be a  lot of snow up there for a while. We got time for another run or two and I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the snowfall this season. If you’re all bummed about missing out on the snow runs, just be ready and watch for the next email…