Category Archive for ‘Snow storm’ at Beside the Stream

Archive for the 'Snow storm' Category

21 feet of snow

Published on February 27, 2008 in Snow storm. 0 Comments

Up at the ski area, they carefully measure how much snow has fallen. This year they’ve gotten 21 feet. The first storm dropped a solid 6 feet of snow; it has accumulated steadily since then, and it disappears as well through sublimation. There hasn’t been a melt, but so much snow has sublimed that 21 feet of snowfall is more like six or eight feet of accumulation, and less where the wind hits it. These are some shots at 10,000 feet.

This provides a new twist on the old snow-covered mailbox photo

You can see there is a lot of snow compared to a dog

Here is each individual snowstorm, layer after layer, worn away by the wind,

and the most remarkable sight is one that doesn’t even register. When you see a field, it is completely untracked.

There is not a single animal that walked across this field, marring its perfection. When snow falls this deep, it is a perfect blanket.

Sledding off the roof

Published on February 8, 2008 in Snow storm and teenagers. 0 Comments

A friend had her boys shovel the roof, and they built up a jump on the edge with a major landing site below. They were literally sledding off the roof.

They got big air

they had distinctive styles

and they all did runs

except for the youngest, who jumped.

And this guy did his handstand off the edge of the roof especially for you.

Another Snow Day

Published on February 7, 2008 in Snow storm. 0 Comments

After we cleared the roof, there was another big storm. So much snow fell in town that there was no place to put it. City government shut down, and so did the schools and the airport. I mentioned before how hard it is to show the scale of deep snow, since it falls everywhere.

Here you can see that the snow is over six feet high at the side of the road, but that is moved by machine. It’s the handwork that takes so much attention.

This is the path from the house to the barn.

Remember, this is a big dog.

There is really a lot of snow here.

Gone skiing.

Clearing the roof

Published on February 6, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey, Snow storm and teenagers. 0 Comments

Bob decided that with so much snow, we needed to shovel off the roof. The thought of moving so many tons makes me feel like a delicate flower, plus I’m sure the roof is a very dangerous place for me to be. Luckily, Sam and a friend were just back from skiing, and we picked up another friend making four strong men for shovelling.

The turkeys were alarmed by the noise, and perched high in the ponderosas until everyone was down from the roof.

By the time the job was done, the boys were ready for food and another adventure.

In some ways, teenaged boys are the most useful creatures on earth. They are so active and need so many calories that they’ll shovel tons of snow for goodwill and food. When I explain which treat can be ready by the time they complete some onerous task, the job is as good as done. At the core, their motto is something like “Can Move Mountains for Food”; mine is “Will Cook”.

Deer in a snow storm

Published on January 29, 2008 in Snow storm and deer herd. 0 Comments

When the snow is so deep, the deer hide under the trees.

Snow Day!

Published on January 28, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey and Snow storm. 2 Comments

For the first time since 1997, school is out for a snow day. In some parts of the US, four or five inches of snow is enough to cancel school; here it takes feet. This storm rolled in two days ago, when I was hiking high above the valley. The snow swept down from the north

and from the west

Two days later, school was called off and the turkeys are hiding out in the well of the neighbor’s pine tree.

Here is Bob clearing the driveway. I surely do love to see a man on a tractor doing some giant task, but I bet the first hour is more fun than the second or third.

He cleared snow for three hours.

Time: three weeks

Published on January 27, 2008 in Snow storm and time. 0 Comments

Here’s a corral at 8500 feet after a long storm dropped six feet of snow.

Here is that same corral exactly three weeks later.

Two or three feet of snow has disappeared into thin air. At high altitude, we have lower atmospheric pressure. When the sun shines, the molecules on the surface of this powdery snow get excited and leap into the air, moving directly from a solid to a gas in a process called sublimation.

It’s like magic: the snow disappears directly into the air without melting. Gone baby gone.

The Kindness of Strangers

Published on January 17, 2008 in Colorado women, Snow storm and horses. 8 Comments

Suzy lives beside a stream at 8,200 feet, and the storm last week left her with piles of snow.

About a mile and a half upriver of her house there’s a mesa on Ute Mountain Ute land; the tribe kept a herd of horses up there last summer. When the herd was moved last fall, one little yearling was left behind. She has been toughing it out alone every since, and was doing OK until the deep snow came and she got stuck. Since then, Suzy’s household has been taking the little horse hay every day. She was getting terribly dehydrated without access to water, so Suzy’s renter skied out with a five gallon bucket of water that morning.

I snowshoed and Suzy skied on a trail through deep snow–it looks reasonable except if you fall off this path you’re floundering around in three or four feet. It’s a little sketchy for my old dog, who steps on the back of my snowshoes for an assist every chance she can. We went over the river and through the woods,

across the fields, we turned left and right and I’m thinking that if this little horse depended on me to carry her hay every day she’d be a goner.

To get on top of the mesa is so steep and soft that the dog can’t make it, so Suzy keeps them down below while I snowshoe up and look who’s here:

poor little guy can’t get anywhere, doesn’t have any food. She’s totally wild, and would run away if she could (when there was no snow, there was no way to catch her, and now there’s no way to move her.)

And that strand of hay hanging from her mouth is from Suzy toting those bales by backpack. Suzy said, we named her Thankful. I think she really is.

Honey mustard chicken

Published on January 9, 2008 in Snow storm and recipe. 0 Comments

Still snowing, and I’m not the only one ready for a change in the weather. Bob pointed out this doe sleeping under a big ponderosa pine in the early dawn.

One of the best things to do when it won’t stop snowing is to cook. I like to cook a lot. When I was making honey mustard chicken last night, Bob said that in his opinion, that recipe was a whole lot more interesting than a steady diet of animal photos in the snow. So I pulled out my trusty camera and did a photo essay of dinner. Here goes:

Honey mustard works with pork or chicken, but my current favorite is chicken thighs so that’s what I’m using. In addition, a few staples.

You can use up your oldest back-of-the-shelf crystallized honey for this dish, since it cooks a long time. I use either Dijon or stone ground mustard, depending. Some people may not think heavy cream is a staple, but I’m from Vermont.

Start with a cast iron pan and a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. While you’re waiting for the oil to get hot, run the chicken under water and strip off the fat.

The chicken thighs go skin down, and should nestle together so each one is cozy but not crowded.

Then wash your hands, and use your fingers to smear a thick layer of mustard on the flesh. Wash again.

Over medium heat, cook these thighs until the skin is brown, flip ‘em, and wait until they’re fully browned on the other side too. You can’t rush this step because the recipe doesn’t work unless you have a crusty pan, and it’s not very good when it’s scorched.

Once both sides are browned and the pan has a brown crust on it, take out the meat, turn down the heat to low, and pour in 1/2 an inch of heavy cream.

Use your spatula to scrape down that pan until it’s clean. When all of the crusty brown bits are mixed in with the heavy cream, and the fat from the chicken has mixed smoothly with the cream, and it’s thick and reduced, dump the whole bowl of chicken and juices back into the pan.

Add chicken broth until it almost covers the thighs, maybe an inch or so in the pan.

Turn up the heat to medium, and stir it all up. Add a big spoonful of honey.

No, not that much honey! Less than this… I got carried away posing the spoon. You shouldn’t have that problem.

Mix it all up, add salt, and let it cook down over medium low until the thighs are falling apart in a thick mahogany glaze.

You’ll say, Dadgumit, that is a mighty fine way to cook chicken.

Served over rice, with salad, this makes a serious winter meal.

And this is, after all, a serious winter.

Out of Power

Published on January 7, 2008 in Merriam's wild turkey and Snow storm. 0 Comments

The snow hasn’t stopped yet. Avalanches have closed the pass to the north and the pass to the east. Our power was out for 28 hours, along with the heat and hot water.

The mountain had 26 inches of snow in 24 hours, so after our first night with no power we all went up to the ski area for first tracks in the morning. As they say around here, we got freshies. Bob has powder skis, long wide straight Big Kahunas. But Sam and I don’t, and the deep powder was heavy enough that it’d redirect our skis on sections that weren’t steep enough. We both fell more times than you’d choose to count. It was epic, but not completely in a good way.

We got home to no heat, no light, no hot bath, no computer and a refrigerator/freezer that needed to be emptied. The coffin freezer in the cellar had gone from 3F to 27F. And it wasn’t just our road, of course, but whole swathes of the landscape. Communities to the east are still without power. People are starting to use the cots set up at the county center, and this part of Colorado had sold out of generators.

I was tired, so I went to town with Sam for food and a movie while Bob, my hero, dealt with the refrigerator. We doubled up on covers and the power came back last night.

The weight of the snow bent down the light on the barn, but that’s our only storm damage

and the turkeys didn’t seem to mind at all.

Beside the Stream