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.
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.
.
It has been snowing all day, and these magpies perched on the top of the tallest tree beside the stream.
Count ‘em–six!–and one flew away.
I’ve noticed that when men look at a landscape, they want to climb to the highest point. They don’t want to walk along a stream; they want to be at the top of the mountain. Women are content to hike through a valley, but men want a different vantage point. Them and the magpies in the storm.
I was trying to get a decent shot of the stream when I realized I was on top of new ice.
It’s my dog’s job to rescue me if I get in trouble in the wilderness. But she’s an old dog now, and is lying around in the snow.
People with old dogs shouldn’t walk on thin ice.
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