Cold

We got a cold snap a while back. People in truly cold places in this country and around the world will scoff at our “cold” snap. The temperature was in the teens Fahrenheit. It might have gotten close to zero with the wind chill from the northeaster (Out here we include the “th”. I understand back east its pronounced nor’easter).

This isn’t in the same league as Great Plains, Dakotas, Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia etc. cold. Some winters here can be quite balmy, hovering around freezing or a little above for most of the season. Quite a few years, probably the majority, there is very little snow on the valley floor. I have seen about five winters with four or more feet of snow on the valley floor. The winter of 2014/2015 was absolutely freaky. No snow, even on the surrounding mountains and very few freezing days.

This year we got snow, about 18 inches in Marblemount. And we got a cold snap and with that, the northeaster. This was the first winter in about 20 years where I saw snowdrifts on the highway. Many of these drifts were in places where I had never seen them before.

On Wednesday, the 11^th of January I started out for work at the usual time, about 5:45 a.m. I start out plenty early so I make sure to get to work on time and three days a week during the winter I try to work out in the gym before work. It was cold and breezy in Rockport but the lights were on.

About six miles up the road at Rocky Creek there was a big maple down across the road. Bigleaf maples have a lot of limbs and make an enormous mess when they hit the ground. By the time I got there, one lane had been cleared and I was able to get through after a short wait.

The tree had taken down the power lines though. This changed my morning plans. The downed power lines meant that the power was out at mom’s. During the winter we keep a light on in our pump house, which is in the basement of the old house and made of 2 inch foam insulation. The heat from the light prevents the pump and water lines from freezing. Since the power was out we would need another heat source. Over the years I have lost two pumps when ice cracked the casings under conditions similar to this day. The pumphouse setup we have isn’t ideal and I hope to improve it some day but right now its what we have.

As I was preparing to turn into mom’s driveway I saw a string a taillights just up the road. This was a bad sign. More than likely it meant another tree was down in the road but I had other things to worry about at the moment. A top had broken out of a Colorado blue spruce and fallen into mom’s driveway. The top was small and I was able to get around it with only a few scratches on my car. I have several times debated cutting that tree down and this might be the deciding factor. I was able to drag it far enough out of the way to get by easily on the way out and that was good enough for the time being.

The wind was howling and blowing ice crystals into my face as I got out of the car. I made my way to the house with a small light I had in my glovebox and got in.

Mom was going to watch the kids that day so she was already up and had several candles lit. We decided to try an emergency candle for the pumphouse. The are good for quite a few hours and put out enough heat with the foam insulation around to keep things from melting. With a little difficulty I got one lit. The minute I stepped out the door, the wind blew it out.

Rather than try figure out how to keep the emergency candle lit all the way to the old house, I decided to use our Coleman lantern. It is a little more difficult to deal with and it runs out of fuel unless you are there to pump it up regularly but it would stay lit in the wind and it would work for the time being.

I decided to fuel it up in the basement in the new house. This is a no-no but I had memories of watching fuel blowing sideways in the wind instead of going into the lantern as with eyes watering profusely and fingers aching from the cold. I decided to take the chance of burning the house down. I put down a piece of cardboard and filled the lantern and got it going. Setting the cardboard outside to air out, I headed to the old house and put the lantern in with the pump.

After checking on Skyeball, she was loving the weather, seriously, she is a mongrel with a generous helping of some kind of sled dog, I continued on my way to work. Sure enough, I only got a couple hundred yards up the road and there was the state plow truck with lights flashing on the other side of a 2 foot plus diameter hemlock that had fallen across the road.

I offered to help the guy but he said I couldn’t for liability reasons. The hemlock had fallen and completely blocked the highway. It had also partially blocked the Diobsud Creek Road which goes back next to our Stump Farm and crosses the power line right of way. I told the guy there was a way around if the Diobsud Creek road was open so he cut the top of the tree out of the way. He only had a little saw and was waiting for a bigger saw which was on the way from Newhalem.

I went up the road to the power lines but saw that I wouldn’t be able to get through. They had plowed the Diobsud Creek road a week or two earlier after the last snow. This had left a berm on the power line road that had frozen solid in the cold weather. If I had been driving my pickup, it would have been easy to get through but I was driving my little car with virtually no ground clearance. If I tried getting through, I was just asking to get stuck. So I turned around and went back to the highway.

The big saw showed up soon and the big hemlock was cut out up. I helped swamp some of the smaller pieces before someone said that the would just use the plow truck to get everything out of the way. I hopped back in my car and cleared out of the way. The road was clear shortly and I was back on my way to work.

The day at work was relatively uneventful. On my way back home I had the thought that I needed to get the hemlock cut up for firewood. Though it had fallen across the highway, it was on our property so I figured I would take advantage of it. I planned on cutting it up on Saturday afternoon.

When I went out to feed several of the cows were walking around very carefully. The hard packed snow where I had been feeding had turned to ice with uneven, treacherous footing. Miss D, my favorite cow was gimping pretty badly. I think the ground might have contributed to the hooves on one leg splitting. Otherwise she seemed okay and healthy so I think she will probably make it through the winter. I don’t know how many hard winters she has left though. This winter hasn’t been that hard yet.

I checked the pump house. The lantern had gone out so I refilled it and relighted it and set it back inside. Even though the lantern was out, it was quite warm inside the insulated area. The lantern would go out overnight but the pump house would stay warm enough until morning when I could light the lantern again. Hopefully the power would be back on by morning and save me the trouble.

As I went home that night and happened to look over at the Community Hall as I went past. The coming weekend was Marblemount’s turn for the Upper Skagit Eagle Festival event. The county plow trucks had cleared enough space in the parking lot for the fire engines to get out of the fire hall but there wasn’t nearly enough space cleared for parking for any well attended event. Attendance at these types of events has always been spotty from my observation but if it happened to be well attended this year we would want to be ready. Getting people up here and getting them to stop is hard enough. It is even harder if you get a bad reputation for a poorly run facility.

The snow that the plow trucks had pushed up while plowing had frozen into rocky berms three to four feet high that you would have difficulty getting through with a full sized four wheel drive vehicle. I felt a twinge of panic. Our monthly meeting was supposed to be that day but had been cancelled because the power was out and I don’t know if anyone had made plans to get a machine to clear the snow. There was too much area to clear and too much snow, frozen too hard to clear by hand in any sort of realistic time frame to be ready for the weekend. I didn’t blame the county. It wasn’t their responsibility to clear our parking lot, beyond making sure the emergency vehicles could get out.

The power was on the next morning (Thursday) so things were a little easier. I made sure the light was on in the pump house and made my way to work. At work I tried to locate one of the guys who had access to a tractor that we could use to clear the Community Hall parking lot. He wasn’t there that day but another friend offered to let us use his tractor. I made arrangements to meet with him that night so he could line me out on it.

On my way back home that night I saw that the hemlock that had fallen across the road the day before was gone. It was on our property but it was also on the highway right-of-way and therefore up for grabs for anyone who wanted it. Someone had come along and cut every piece of it up for firewood.

Even though there is almost unbroken forest on the hills all around, cheap or free firewood is hard to come by these days so I don’t blame people for jumping on any opportunity for firewood. I was a little disappointed. I would have liked to have gotten some wood out of it but, on the other hand, it was one less thing I would have to deal with on Saturday.

I was up at about 6:00 a.m. on Saturday. I had been lined out on the tractor but I still wasn’t very familiar with it so everything would take a little longer. Jim, one of the Community Club members who has run a lot of equipment was going to be by some time that morning but I wasn’t sure when. He would be able to clear the parking lot pretty quickly but if I ended up doing most of it, it would take a lot longer. So I wanted to get an early start. The event was scheduled to open at 10:00 a.m.

 It was cold again on Saturday, probably in the teens. I had my long underwear on and a heavy coat, warm gloves and my raingear for a windbreaker. After a little fumbling in the dark and experimenting, I got the tractor going and on the road. It was only about a mile to the Community Hall and my clothes kept me from getting too chilled though my eyes were streaming the whole way there.

I started trying to move the snow. It was a lot harder than I expected. Fortunately Jim was there and took over. He had the lot cleared in a little over an hour. Meanwhile, Jerry and I worked on getting the steps and the wheelchair ramp free of ice. This involved a lot of ice melt and chipping ice.

I went home and got a small mattock and chipped ice with that. Where people had been driving the snow had been compacted. After the previous snow it had rained a little and saturated the snow and then after the last snow, the sun melted everything a bit and everything promptly refroze as soon as the sun left. The result was a layer of ice from several to about six inches thick. We worked on that for over an hour with some help from Jim with the backhoe on the tractor.

We succeeded in getting the main entrances ice free but the rest of the lot was a mess. The traction on the ice was actually quite good as long as everything stayed frozen but when the sun hit it would become treacherous with water on ice. We would have to trust that folks would be able to navigate the ice without getting hurt. There was just too much to clear. I had a minor blister on my hand and my glasses were coated with water spots where the ice I was chipping had hit me in the face.

We took the tractor back and then helped things get started for the event. I ended up getting the pilot light for the water heater relit and the burner started so they could have hot water in the kitchen. There was also some scrambling because some of the appliances kept tripping one of the breakers. Everything was pretty much on an even keel by noon.

The event wasn’t particularly well attended that Saturday. There was a Seahawks playoff game which usually thins the crowds. And there is no predicting how well attended any of the tourists events or bazaars that I have participated in will be. Sometimes the crowds are big and you do well, sometimes they aren’t and, quite often, there is no apparent rhyme or reason. Sunday was much better attended.

Monday was overcast and everything was starting to melt. This was very welcome but it also made footing on all of the ice super treacherous. It was raining by Monday night which would speed the ice melting but, again, make everything very slick. We will see what the rest of the winter will bring. A little milder weather would almost be like a vacation.