December 27, 2008

We're Trapped!

These are pictures that Victor had taken Christmas Eve during his lunch hour, when the road was still plowed out. The above picture is a view of the mouth of Paradise Valley looking across the horse pasture. This pasture is usually the home to 30-60 white tail deer year 'round. I'm not sure where they are hiding at this moment.
The street signs here are unusually tall to accomodate the amount of drifting snow we get. This particular drift is about 8-10 feet high. The picture below is of Clint, Rachael and Megan climbing the snow on the rock-cut. This particular road is only traveled on by 4 families, so it gets very little maintenance.
We are so grateful to our neighbor, Jim, for the time and energy he spends keeping the road plowed. Christmas Eve, during the day, was so pretty. I sure do miss it, as I write this!
This is the view now, on Sunday. The wind is 75 mph with gusts up to who-the-heck-knows. It's about -20 below. The roads are drifted over about 4 feet deep and impassable. We have lots of food and toilet paper so for the moment we are fine. We still have electricity and heat and are grateful for it. The kids are playing the game of Life, Monopoly, Rummikub, Sequence and card games. They are totally happy.... this may change if the power goes out.Wind. People would tell you that it is an invisible force. One can only see the effect it has as in the rustling of leaves, etc... However, I would argue with them when it comes to the blowing of the cold, fine powdery snow we get here. Montanan's call it "Cold Smoke". It's bitter cold. It also sounds like a freight train is coming through the house. This wind is gutter-ripping, shingle-dancing, window-rattling and bone-chilling. AND WE ARE TOTALLY TRAPPED! We can't move the vehicles, and even if we could, we couldn't get down the mile and a half of gravel road to get to the highway. Last night a relative tried to visit but got stuck and we had to call a friend from town to pull her out. The only way out is for us to walk out. The ominous thing about all this is that the forecast is calling for at least another 5 days of this. We are expecting more snow with the continuous howling wind. Click here for our weather forecast, but just remember that it only applies to town and not for us here on the mountain. In the words of my sweet husband, Victor, "why the h*ll did I build this house up here?!"

1 comment:

  1. My thoughts exactly to what Victor said. I thought the same thing when I came in the Spring. It was freezing then and the blasted wind is awful. It looks like you had a tone of snow too. In Ogden they got 70 inches of snow. Here I am not sure how much, but Daybreak got an enormous amount too. Poor Emily wants to sled in it and I have yet to get her some snow boots. We are tempted to have her borrow Nicole's sued boots she left here the other day.

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