Can there be too much snow?
10:30am: It's dumping. Huge, fat, fresh, dry snowflakes since I woke up at 6:30 this morning to dig out my car. This on top of the 2+ feet that fell overnight shutting down Highway 80 as well as...agh, our access to Squaw. (I'm okay, i'm okay, i'm okay. Deep breaths. I'm okay.) Just 150-200 yards between me and getting down to a road steep enough to keep my car moving forward over the accumulating snow, still unplowed and just barely too deep to push my way through. But I have hope. I keep clearing off the new snow, waiting to hear a snowplow in the distance, following the lift status at Squaw - ooh, Yariv said an SUV just came by! Maybe he cleared a path.
All this snowy excellence comes right on the heels of the 2+ feet that fell all day Friday into Friday night. A 6:30am start Saturday to dig out, cram 5 people with ski gear inside the Subaru and barrel through the 8-9" of snow on the local road to get to Squaw just in time...to wait. Chair openings delayed until 9:30. Tease.
But then we were off into deep, fresh, lovely, luminescent snow across the lower mountain, bouncing through the trees, floating through the gulleys. Snow so deep that each of us had to dig ourselves out of a few spots that weren't steep enough to sustain momentum. Snow so deep that all day we heard parents say to their kids "Do not go into the trees." Snow so deliciously deep that powdershots sailed across our faces.
Which makes it mildly agonizing today to be surrounded by even more snow, with lifts running at Squaw and our Donner Party essentially snowed in. I'm not sure I'd say there can ever be too much snow, that's just inviting bad karma. It's my bad, really, for not having just pushed through the snow early this morning when there was 6" less and at least getting down to the main road.
3:30pm: KT, Red Dog and Olympic Lady ran all day long at Squaw. 80 is still closed. Our road is still unplowed. They shut 89 down between Tahoe City and Squaw Valley around 1pm for avalanche control. 3 of John's friends came to the house, on their way to get home from the Cal-Neva, waiting on 80 to open. Yariv and I went to go snowshoe around the state park and one of the locals asked us if we had beacons and shovels, if we knew about avalanche safety. Uh... He said he lost his brother in an avalanche at Alpine Meadows almost 30 years ago so he might have been more cautious than most but we took his warnings to heart and cut short our adventure. People are hot tubbing and drinking beers now, watching March Madness and checking the weather reports. You do what you have to in tough times.
7:30pm: John, our neighbor in Donner Lake, I love you. The plow came, I slid 100 yards on a layer of ice trying to get down the hill, got stuck, tried 4 more times, tried to put on chains, failed, wanted to cry, wanted someone else to deal, came back to the house to get a shovel, dug out the garbage, went back to my car and there you were. You had me at "you can park in my driveway." My car is now on flat ground, my hands around a glass of wine, my shirt soaked with sweat, my nerves calming down. Tomorrow we try again.
Can there be too much snow? I think not. Too little respect for the snow perhaps, but never too much snow.
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