Hours of Daylight – 10:05

Well i’d hoped to break the streak of crappy weekends Annette and i have been dealing with by renting snowshoes on Friday and planning for two days of tromping about in the snow above Idaho City.

Suffice to say that plan failed utterly.

On Saturday we had heavy overcast in the valley with relentless rain. We headed out nonetheless and purchased a three day park ‘n ski permit at the town grocery store of Idaho City. The rain increased as we headed north up hwy 21. About 5 miles outside of town the rain began the changeover to snow. After ten miles the pleasant flakes became a blizzard unlike anything i’ve ever seen. Couple this with the fact we were driving a rear-wheel-drive, lead-sled of a car (granted we do have Blizzaks on all four wheels, but still) and i became nervous. While the slope of 21 is not too steep i’ve come to learn it doesn’t take much to strand a two-wheel drive vehicle if that vehicle happens to come to a dead stop. We made it to the summit, but there was no way we could continue on to our destination of the “Whoop ’em Up” park-n-ski lot. First, the snow was blinding, second if we spent the afternoon snowshoeing we would have returned to find our car, and the only road, buried in snow. We turned around at the summit and headed back down.

The next day we tried again. But while the weather was spectacularly clear the road up near the summit was now an ice skating rink. The plows had been through, but they’d left a glaze of ice and packed snow on the road that was worse than the fresh snow of the day before. There was nothing left for the snow tires to get purchase on. We stopped at a snowplow turnaround before the steep section. I got out to take the picture at left and nearly fell twice just trying to stand upright. Without some type of all-wheel drive vehicle there was just no way we were going to make it. The Volvo is just too heavy for use on slippery roads. That most other folks going by on their way up had chains on their rear wheels really convinced me going farther up into even colder air would be a mistake. So, once again, we turned around and came back down into the valley. Much gasoline was burned, and the string of crappy days remains unbroken.