[SGVLUG] OT: Snow

[Jean Chen]

Thanks for the extra advice and stories.  I'm glad that everyone that
has been in bad weather trouble has gotten out of it.  Wow.

Jean


On 11/18/05, David Lawyer <dave at lafn.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2005 at 03:19:16PM -0800, Dustin wrote:
> > On Wed, 16 Nov 2005, Chris Smith wrote:
> >
> >
> > I spun my car into the interstate median somewhere between Miles City and
> > Glendive (you've never heard of them, and that's the point)
>
> Around 1959 I was in Miles City supervising the installation of a
> TACAN station for the FAA.
>
> But I've never really been cold for long, even though I spent 1 1/2
> years in Greenland, half way between the Arctic Circle and the N. Pole.
>
> One fun night experience with cold was falling thru a snow bridge at the
> outlet of Lake of the Woods in Desolation Valley Wilderness near Lake
> Tahoe.  My wet pants rapidly frooze and become heavy with ice and snow.
> But I got out my tent and sleeping bag from my backpack, took off my
> frozen pants, got in my sleeping bag (with the tent under it),
> shivered, and ate brown sugar which I had brought along for such an
> occasion.  After a while I stopped shivering and felt great.
>
> The other people I was with didn't show up till the next day at noon,
> by which time I was nearing the top of Pyramid Peak after having
> practiced self-arrest with my ice axe since it was getting icy near
> the top.
>
> A frightening experience was falling on an icy slope (an uncontrolled
> glissade) at night and sliding down a couple hundred feet on the S.
> side of Mt. Waterman well outside the ski area near Devils Can.  I
> expected to die so it felt good when I fortunately came to a stop due
> to hitting a small tree and softer snow.  But then my yellow sweater
> sleeves had turned red in the moonlight and it took me several seconds
> to realize that this red was my blood.  I've still got the scars from
> this.  Having lost both ski poles and my flashlight I had to use heavy
> tree branches as walking sticks and choose a longer, but less steep,
> route over the mountain to get back to the road.
>
> When snow is wet and sticks to trees, it causes some branches to break
> off and some trees to fall.  Being in a tent, when every couple of
> minutes you hear something crash, isn't much fun.  One crash collapsed
> our tent but it was only snow.  A one-person tent was completely
> burried by the snow.  This was in the Sierras during the heaviest
> storm of the year.  I though I knew how to camp in snow, since I had
> done it a few times before, but I didn't know how to cope with the
> worst storm of the season.
>
>                         David Lawyer
>


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known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves."
  - Paul Valery