Let it Snow

I arrived in the area on Jan 24th hoping to get up to the property to see how it was holding up. I procrastinated a bit over in a cheap Ellensburg hotel for a week. A week got extended to 2 then 3 weeks. Laying in bed eating Lean Cuisines and catching up on continuous episodes of Law and Order reruns.

I was rapidly working my way through the Seven Deadly Sins and needed a kick in the ass. Time to see how the property held up while I was gone. There wasn’t too much snowfall in January so I was able to drive up to the trailhead and hike the remaining 1.5 miles in. Nobody drives my access road in the winter so it just sits there and accumulates snow until spring thaw. Even with the dry January, it was still a struggle. My snowshoes were at camp so it was just me and my Sorel boots, slow going. It was a cold day but by the time I got to camp, I was soaked in sweat. That’s the good thing and bad thing about Winter Sports. If you stay busy, you stay warm. When you stop being busy, you die of hypothermia. I stayed busy. I dug out my snowshoes and got my supply sled hooked up and headed back to the car to haul some more stuff.

I took back a couple 5 gallon gas cans to get the generator going. By the time, I got back to the car I was soaking and knew that I would be freezing by time I got the cans filled. I decided to get a room in town to warm up and dry off. Tomorrow was another day.

The weather stayed nice so I headed back up with the gas the next morning. Loaded up the sled and headed in. Kind of a bad idea since a gallon of gas weighs 6.3 gallons and I had 10 gallons. I ended up hiding the cans under a tree and continued on.

 

The rest of the trip wasn’t too bad with the lightened load but only had the one trip in me. I returned with the empty sled and hid it with my snowshoes under a tree at the trailhead. I did not think that through. The next day a snow storm rolled through and dropped 2 feet of snow. I haven’t seen the sled since. I looked and looked but to no avail.

 

 

Winter around Camp

Without the snowshoes, my Sorels and I made the trudge in again to get a second pair of Snowshoes. This time, thigh deep in the 2 feet of snow. The snow was pretty fluffy so the snow shoes weren’t much help other than to pack down a trail for future trips.

The snow has kept coming so I haven’t been able to drive up in the last few days but I bet the packed trail is probably buried by now. I have been spending my days sitting at one of the coffee shops and reading magazines at the grocery store.