Snow Country
08/02/14 04:36
My experience in this life has been mostly with places with similar climates. I think that it is fair to call the part of the world where I live temperate, but I’ve always lived where there is a bit of winter. I like the snow and over the years I’ve had some great times with winter sports and activities. But nearly two decades in the hills have dulled my memory of what it is like in the high country. In the hills we get snow and then it melts off. We had a big blizzard in October this year. But the snow was gone a week later. Even in the winter when we get colder temperatures, the snow doesn’t seem to linger for months.
In the high country, however, that first layer of snow is still there, under a lot of other layers, when spring rolls around. The people who live in the high country get used to the snow. They know how to drive on snow, how to walk on snow and how to go on with their lives. They equipment to move the snow around so that they can go on with their lives.
We are in Red Lodge, Montana, preparing to head back home today. We’ll have a bit of driving in the snow. Red Lodge is supposed to get 3 to 5 inches today and other places along the way have forecasts of snow flurries and showers during the day. The roads were all dry when we drove up here, so we aren’t expecting much trouble getting home. However, when you travel in this country in the winter, you always have to have a “plan B” so we’ve got things covered at home if we encounter a delay.
When we were growing up we lived in an area that was on the edge of different weather systems. We could drive a few miles up the valley and be in the high country. The road was plowed 16 miles from town and later another 6 or 8 more, but there were plenty of summer cabins that could be reached only by snowmobile once the winter really set in. Most of the cabins were winterized, with the water shut off, and sat dormant until the spring thaws, but there were a few hardy souls who would venture up to a cabin for a winter weekend.
Our shop experimented with snow machines in the early days before there were many machines that were commercially available. Our first machine looked like a crawler tractor and was very heavy by today’s standards. It was steered like a crawler with two levers, one controlling each side of the machine. With one lever all the way forward and the other all the way back, it would spin around in a small space. But the machine was slow. That wasn’t much of a problem because we didn’t have to go very far with it. It was used a few years to do snow depth checks at various locations up the road. They were all places where one could drive with a jeep in the summer. After that we had a series of other snow machines and so we sort of watched the development of modern snowmobiles as each winter brought an improvement on last year’s machines. The strange thing about the newer snow machines is that they were fast. We found ourselves going 45 miles per hour on roads that were 25 to 25 mph in the summer with a car. I grew up, went off to college and other than an occasional winter break visit, I wasn’t part of the regular trips up into the high country to check the snow depths.
I did develop a love of skiing and so I’ve spent plenty of time in places where the snow gets deep. Red Lodge mountain, easily visible from the town, is a good hill with plenty of powder most years. Today’s snow should make skiing up there ideal. Folks who can take tomorrow off should be in for a treat after a week with temperatures ranging in the -30 range. Skiing isn’t much fun when it is below zero and the places that cater to skiers notice the drop in business when the weather gets cold.
I had forgotten many of the dynamics of life in snow country. I forgot how on street parking soon disappears when there is heavy snow. The plows will make passes through the city streets from time to time and the snow piled up along the edges keeps getting deeper and deeper. People will shovel or have a skid steer clear out places in front of their houses for themselves to park, but providing extra parking for others is a lot of work, so they don’t overdo it. You have to do a bit of planning about parking.
Snow may be light and fluffy when it is falling, but the stuff at the bottom of the pile is hard and compacted. There are plenty of places where we were walking yesterday that were a foot or more above the level of the ground when the snow is all gone. The snow gets as hard as rock on the streets where it is compacted by all of the traffic. And the snow in the big piles at the intersections and edges of parking lots is very hard. You’ll do serious damage to a car if you run into one of those piles.
The folks who live here, of course, are used to all of that. It is normal for them and they don’t get too anxious about that until March or April when they are ready for spring and able to endure the short season of mud on the way to the glories of summer.
It is a fun place to visit. I haven’t had to shovel or lift any snow since I arrived. But I know that it is a hard place to live. There is plenty of shoveling that needs to be done and some of the locals aren’t too excited about another 5 inches to move after today.
I’ll try to remember them when I’m shoveling my own driveway during the rest of the winter. We really do have it easy and are lucky to live in a place where the weather helps with the chores.
In the high country, however, that first layer of snow is still there, under a lot of other layers, when spring rolls around. The people who live in the high country get used to the snow. They know how to drive on snow, how to walk on snow and how to go on with their lives. They equipment to move the snow around so that they can go on with their lives.
When we were growing up we lived in an area that was on the edge of different weather systems. We could drive a few miles up the valley and be in the high country. The road was plowed 16 miles from town and later another 6 or 8 more, but there were plenty of summer cabins that could be reached only by snowmobile once the winter really set in. Most of the cabins were winterized, with the water shut off, and sat dormant until the spring thaws, but there were a few hardy souls who would venture up to a cabin for a winter weekend.
Our shop experimented with snow machines in the early days before there were many machines that were commercially available. Our first machine looked like a crawler tractor and was very heavy by today’s standards. It was steered like a crawler with two levers, one controlling each side of the machine. With one lever all the way forward and the other all the way back, it would spin around in a small space. But the machine was slow. That wasn’t much of a problem because we didn’t have to go very far with it. It was used a few years to do snow depth checks at various locations up the road. They were all places where one could drive with a jeep in the summer. After that we had a series of other snow machines and so we sort of watched the development of modern snowmobiles as each winter brought an improvement on last year’s machines. The strange thing about the newer snow machines is that they were fast. We found ourselves going 45 miles per hour on roads that were 25 to 25 mph in the summer with a car. I grew up, went off to college and other than an occasional winter break visit, I wasn’t part of the regular trips up into the high country to check the snow depths.
I did develop a love of skiing and so I’ve spent plenty of time in places where the snow gets deep. Red Lodge mountain, easily visible from the town, is a good hill with plenty of powder most years. Today’s snow should make skiing up there ideal. Folks who can take tomorrow off should be in for a treat after a week with temperatures ranging in the -30 range. Skiing isn’t much fun when it is below zero and the places that cater to skiers notice the drop in business when the weather gets cold.
Snow may be light and fluffy when it is falling, but the stuff at the bottom of the pile is hard and compacted. There are plenty of places where we were walking yesterday that were a foot or more above the level of the ground when the snow is all gone. The snow gets as hard as rock on the streets where it is compacted by all of the traffic. And the snow in the big piles at the intersections and edges of parking lots is very hard. You’ll do serious damage to a car if you run into one of those piles.
The folks who live here, of course, are used to all of that. It is normal for them and they don’t get too anxious about that until March or April when they are ready for spring and able to endure the short season of mud on the way to the glories of summer.
It is a fun place to visit. I haven’t had to shovel or lift any snow since I arrived. But I know that it is a hard place to live. There is plenty of shoveling that needs to be done and some of the locals aren’t too excited about another 5 inches to move after today.
I’ll try to remember them when I’m shoveling my own driveway during the rest of the winter. We really do have it easy and are lucky to live in a place where the weather helps with the chores.