Merry Christmas, y'all! I wanted to share with you my idea of a great Christmas day. It'll help explain why we're FCKers here in the Four Corners--the best place around!
My dogs & I took a long snowshoe walk, so as to enjoy our white Christmas here in the southern Rockies--near Durango, Colorado.
I'll try & keep the commentary to a minimum. But I do want to say: MAN I love snow. I now feel like the 26 years I spent in California should have been spent up at Lake Tahoe instead of the Bay Area. Que sera, sera. I'm here now, with a crew of 2 dogs(and a lil calico but she doesn't snowshoe...) who love the snow as well. We all agree that a day spent stomping around in the snow is a good day.
A White Christmas--that's a stereotype, but one we can get behind. Please join us over the orange snow pile for a look at a snowy Christmas day spent out in the woods.
I took these pics today--Christmas. We had overcast skies this morning, an omen of snow to come. We left the hut about noon, and the drive up to Lemon Dam in the San Juan Mountains / Weminuche Wilderness was ...snowy.
A quick pic of the drive:
Lemon Dam/Lake is just to the immediate left on this pic:
When I got to the bottom of a/'the' hill up along the creek that feeds the Dam, it hadn't been plowed. I was thinking that it was getting deep enough that I no longer wanted to drive. There's a rule in Snow Country: Never pass the snow plow. And that goes triple for the grooming machine. If there's a grooming machine out--you're done diving. Getting ahead of the plow ensures you'll be plowing, and while fun it is a poor manner of driving. srsly.
I approached a wide spot in which to park, and what do I see? The grooming machine! I've snowshoed here 100 times, and many, many times the road/trail has been groomed. But I had never actually seen the grooming machine. What a treat! It just looks like something I'd like to spend an afternoon driving in the mountains. Check it out--and my new friend, the driver, Roger:
Nice ride, huh?
Here's comes Roger. He's coming up the road & catching me...& I had a 20 minute head start in my shoes. His actual grooming gizmo isn't down here, he's just truckin up to where cars are no more & skiers, 'shoers, and snowmobilers are the only way to get around... We'll see Roger's work in a bit.
Alrighty. For the next 4 miles, I saw no one. No sounds other than the occasional bird, squirrel, or chipmunk. It was so quiet I could hear the snow flakes landing on me. Yeah--it snowed most of the afternoon. Cool, huh?
The rest of the pics are shown in the order I took them. You'll see my two rescue pups, Fletcher & lil Chris, frolicking in the snow. They love snow as much as me, I swear! We spent almost 4 hrs snowshoeing. 80% was on Roger's freshly groomed snow, and the remainder was going up 'Norm & Debbie's Trail'. That isn't really what it's called, but I took Norm out for his first 'shoe adventure here & Deb was along too, ...so Norm & Debbie's Trail. It's a shortcut through the trees along Lemon Creek. It is suh weeet. Today it was over a foot deep in snow, and it's just getting started this year.
I'll shut up. Let's see the day's travels on snowshoes.
See? Not that cold. The crick is still a-running
About a mile & a half into the walk, Roger started to actually 'groom'. He even lowered his special attachment--the one that puts cross country ski tracks into the packed path. You can see where the groomed trail is going along and then BOOM! there's ski tracks in this pic:
Here we are at the bridge over Lemon Creek. Pretty sure that water is cold... Water, if moving, can get well below 32 degrees & not freeze. It'll be another week or 3 until the creek freezes over entirely.
Going through Florida (pronounced Flor EE da) Campground. Space available. Only $8.50/night in the off season:
YAAAAA HOOOOO! It's Norm & Debbie's Trail! WOOOO HOOOO!!
Fletcher. He pretty much runs the show around here.
Lil Chris. She's a faithful minion to Fletch & me. Here she's right by my side, awaiting ...God knows what.
The snowshoe trail I stomped down last Sunday, awaiting a re-stomp:
The sun came out for a little while:
It got to be getting late, and it was dark & cloudy(and snowing) on & off, so we went to the un-named creek & turned around & headed for home. This creek is well-known to me & the dogs. It was nearly frozen over, and too frozen/snowy to appreciate it's ...essence?:
Heading for home:
We finally got back to the truck. Roger was still up in the mountains grooming, and we drove on the newly plowed roads towards home.
In fact we, got back to the hut just in time to see this: A Christmas sunset.
There you have it, a day in the snow. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!