It has been a couple of very busy days for us, and we've really put the Polaris Ranger to work. The cause of all the work is snow.

Early morning view of our improvised road to the cabin site.

It started with a scratchy phone call from one of the three couples that are living up here year 'round. They've been here for 8 or 9 years and know the seasons and the struggles well. And, even they have been caught off guard by the weather. The amount of snow, along with some freezing rain, and no chinook winds have really made a mess of the roads. They had been out with their Ranger and got stuck. They had not yet put the tracks on, and ended up in deep snow on the county road. They were able to walk to their house that day, and the next day hiked back to dig out. But, things did not go well and the Ranger ended up buried in a drainage ditch.

That can happen easily enough. A tire, usually a rear tire, drops off the side of the road, even an inch or two, and efforts to get back on the road surface just spin wheels and pull you further into the low spot. Pretty soon, gravity gets you and pulls you to the lowest spot.

Anyway, I was able to figure out where they were and that they needed help, so fired up our Ranger and took off. Lynne and I drove out Wapiti to County Road 89 and then south a bit to find them. Yup, they were buried and weren't going anywhere without help. They had done a great job of digging all the snow from around the vehicle, so all we needed to do was pull them out. I turned our Ranger around and used the winch. It worked great and pretty soon they were back on solid ground. But, the amount of snow meant they'd just get stuck again trying to drive home. So, I turned around, hooked up a tow rope, and then assisted them home. They could have driven most of it unaided, but when they did start to slip or get stuck, my constant pulling kept them moving.

The next day, our neighbor and I decided to try to open up the county road going north toward the state line. Usually, the wind has blown most of the road dry and there are just 2 or 3 places that need to have drifts removed. Not the story this time. There was enough snow in places that the truck could get stuck. If the snow gets deep enough that it starts to scrape the bottom of the truck, or gets up to the running boards, then not even snow chains are going to keep you moving for long.

Snow blower on a trailer, stuck in deep snow. You can see that I'm plowing a path to it.

We used a combination of the snow plow on the Ranger, and a snow blower to clear the road. We'd do sections of 100 yards or so. First, I make a run with the plow, staying as far as I dare to the leeward side of the road, piling the snow on the opposite side of the prevalent wind direction so that the pile does not create a "snow fence" and just make things worse for the next storm. Then, coming back, I'd widen the track, again moving the snow to the leeward side, but leaving a row of snow down the middle of the road. A third run then moved that pile out of the middle of the road. 

You'd think that would be it. But, no. Turns out, the Ranger, with tracks on, tends to ride on the top of the snow and not fall down through it. That is the beauty of the tracks and the reason we want them and trust them to get us anywhere we need to go, even in deep snow. So, even if I move a large amount of snow on those first three passes, there can still be a lot of snow. The best way forward is to continue the runs up and down the road, only now always moving the snow to the center of the road where my neighbor then drives along with a snow blower blowing the snow well off the road. Multiple passes with this strategy may work?

The road after a couple of passes witht he plow. The snow is still 12" or more deep at this point.

Except in those spots where someone has gotten stuck and dug themselves out, leaving piles of compacted snow in the middle of the road. Or, in places where the snow has drifted badly, then frozen due to the unusual freezing rains we had a few nights ago. In these spots, we tend to leave "humps" of snow that can be a foot or more deep. I can eventually knock them down by hitting them over and again with the plow, taking a few inches off each time.

We did all the above for about 7 hours on Saturday. We made good progress, but I am not sure we could get through with the trucks yet. We did drive the full route we need to take with the trucks, and I continued to move snow off the road where we could do it in 2 passes, but I suspect we'll need to put in many hours again today to feel comfortable driving out.

The good news is that the neighbors who got stuck the other day now have tracks on their Ranger, and are driving it to the state line where they have a truck parked. And, I'm taking Lynne up to meet them and accompany them to town! She had a relatively short shopping list because we really are pretty well provisioned, but she will definitely get a couple of boxes of wine! And, check the mail. It has been 2 weeks!

The commodity I'm starting to worry about now is gasoline. I'm down to 6 gallons for the Ranger and the snow blower. I'll go through that today, I'm sure. So, our efforts to get out today need to be successful.

As a lesson learned, I think we should also keep one of our trucks at the state line. After all, the Expedition is sitting here next to the cabin, stranded and of no use to us where it is. (Digging out the driveway and Hidden Meadows Lane is the next chore, but I'll need gasoline to do that.)

Update: After I drafted the above, we decided it was simply not possible to use the plow on the Ranger to move the deepest snow, especially since it is now very compacted and icy. One lesson learned is to never drive the Ranger with tracks over any place that you want to later use a snow blower. After busting the snow blower (track came off), and realizing the Ranger just does not have the ability to plow heavy, frozen, deep snow, we need to find a different solution. Stay tuned.

It is official. We are "snowed in". More than ever.

Keeping the driveway open is a futile effort right now.

I'd been able to keep the driveway open and create a road to our neighbor's where we could work together to get into town if needed. But, after many days in a row of heavy snow, blowing wind, with a little rain and sleet sprinkled in, there is no way we can get out of our driveway with the Expedition.

The Expedition is going nowhere.

There is anywhere from 6" to 24" of snow, some of it very heavy, in the driveway. I'll be able to clear it with a combination of the snow plow, a shovel, a pick axe, and the snow blower. But, not until it stops snowing!

The meadow.

It is a constant effort to keep a path open to the storage shed. The dogs just go out, do their business near the cabin, then want back in. Bella gets "castinets" in between her toes and goes "click, click, click" when she comes inside. Destin's curly coat captures every flake of snow and when we try to dry it the snow just rolls up into little snowballs. Hailey, bless her heart, slogs through the deep snow to do her thing, then "runs" back for a treat, completely coated in snow with her black eyes peeking out.

The prediction for today was that we'd get one inch of snow. I'm sure we are approaching one foot instead.

The storage shed is getting harder to find. There is about 4 feet of snow behind it.

Even our emergency exit strategy is buried in snow. Still the Ranger would fire right up and with the tracks would easily get us out of here. The plan is to take the Ranger on Friday and see just how big a chore it will be to attempt a trip into town on Saturday. If not Saturday, then maybe Monday or Tuesday. (It is supposed to snow again on Sunday.)

Our only hope!

The good news is that our summer preparations and provisioning are paying off. We have plenty of wood and food. It has been 10 days since we were able to get out to check our mail and run into town. It may be another 5 or 6 before we are successful. But, we are prepared. 

The bad news is the exception to our provisioning plans. We did not stockpile enough wine. We have, maybe, 4 or 5 days of wine left at our current rates of consumption!

Seriously, this is a bit scary. It is white everywhere. You cannot see the roads to navigate toward town. We'd have to go 6 or 7 miles before any hope of a plowed road, and there is  no way we could do it in either truck right now The wind howls, even causing the cabin to shake sometimes. In an emergency, we'd be screwed. (Is running out of wine an emergency?)

Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

~taken from Both Sides Now, by Joni Mitchell

If you've followed my old blog (a "new" Jersey Girl -- still active) or our new mutual blog you must have noticed that I post a lot of cloud photos. I have always loved and noticed clouds. When I was a little girl I would lay on my back in the grass and make out shapes in the clouds. Didn't you? I am lucky to be living in an area where the clouds are always amazing and ever-changing. I think the winds that we have help a great deal in the formation of so many different kinds of clouds.

For Christmas (and my birthday) Rick gifted me these two books so that I can identify the clouds I see. So cool! I alreadly have names for a few clouds I could not identify before.

Did you know that there is actuallly a Cloud Appreciaton Society? I am proud to say that I am one of their newest members. If you want to investigate further go to http://www.cloudappreciationsocity.org to view the amazing photos that people all around the world have shared, or even upload your own photos to their site. I haven't uploaded any yet but I certainly plan to!

The following clouds were shot coming back from Laramie the day before our latest big storm hit. Such a confused sky!

If you are not already a "cloud-watcher" just cast your eyes to the skies the next time you're out and about and take a look. You'll be glad you did.

As you know, we got a snow plow for the Ranger (for Christmas?).

Here are a couple of videos showing the use of the Glacier Pro snow plow attached to the Polaris Ranger. Just to show people how it works. The first is of the driveway, and second is of Hidden Meadows Lane from Wapiti Way to the driveway. The videos vibrate some due to the roughness of driving with tracks when there isn't a lot of snow for padding. Also, that annoying sound is the GoPro camera rattling. Will need to fix that next time.

We are undrifted! The roads to town are clear (except for a few passable drifts in all the usual spots) and I am feeling human again. We are expecting snow on Christmas Day, but not a lot. Just enough to make it a true White Christmas. The sun is making a return again much to the relief of our solar panels and batteries.

We managed to get to the mailboxes and into town the other day. However, on the way home Lex (our Expedition) sent us a message via the dashboard that we had a low tire. Not exactly what you want to hear when you are headed out of town on the lonely dirt road home. Rick got out and looked and could not see any noticable differances. When we got home he added air to the tires and let it sit overnight. In the morning, the tire was low again. Rather than risk a flat tire again (the first one was not pleasant), he decided to go back into town yesterday to have it looked at. He also decided to borrow the neighbors' trailer and take the non-working snowblower in to have it seen to as well. 

They could not find anything wrong with the tire—no leaks, no nails—so its lowness was put down to weather changes. Thank goodness. The snowblower had a clogged carburetor and it took awhile for Heggie Logging (they sell and service Husqvarna products—we take them our saw chains) to tear it apart and put it back together, but it is now working. YEAH! It might not be the best snowblower in the world but hopefully it will get us through this winter and maybe next winter we can buy a more powerful one with winter tracks that Rick has been salivating over. Poor guy left home at 10:00 a.m. yesterday and finally got home at 4:30 p.m. 

While he was gone I did two loads of laundry and although it wasn't the sunniest or warmest of days, it was above freezing so I hung the clothes out on the line. They didn't dry completely, but enough that it didn't take long for them to dry once I brought them inside in front of the wood stove. Today it's even nicer, so another load of laundry is in my future. We are out of clean dish towels!

In fact, it's so nice it might even be possible to sit on the front porch and also nice enough to use the pizza oven for our pizza tonight. Woohoo! Now this is the Colorado that I remember and not that New Jersey-like stuff we've been having for the whole month of December.

Okay, where did all that stuff come from? Let's move on to the topics that this blog post is supposed to be about.

Some things we've tried have not worked out. Like putting our potatoes, onions and squashes in a basket in the shed. We thought putting them there was a good thing -- after all they like being dark and cool. We found out the hard way that although it's true that they like to be dark and cool, they do not one bit appreciate being frozen solid. We were not really expecting the frigid single digit temperature or the below-zero nighttime temperatures that we had this past month. The shed is nicely insulated, but not for those temps.

When I brought a couple of potatoes in with the hopes of baking them—oops—. We brought them all in and defrosted them, dried them off and tried to revive them. We were not successful and within several days, most of them had turned to mush. Such a shame too since we had three bags of potatoes (jumbo russets, yukon golds & red), and a butternut squash that had to be thrown away. The onions, it seems, took the freezing in stride. Now I guess we'll put them down in the crawl space where they can't freeze. It's just such a pain to get down there. Everything has to come out of the closet (trash can, dog food, vacuum cleaner, cat kibble, broom, dog feeder stands), lift up the floor and get down a precariously tiny "ladder." But, some things just have to be borne.

Our fancy shmanzy appliances have been mostly working. The fridge is now running perfectly after its latest part trade-out, but the stove is being picky. It lights and all is good. That is until you are midway through baking Christmas cookies or a beautiful loaf of bread and when you go over to check on it, it is no longer heating, nor will the pilot light even come back on. You wait, and wait, trying to light the darned thing several times, and then it finally comes on. I guess it just needs yet another adjustment to the flame sensor. Adventures in cooking indeed.

Life on the frontier is good.