01/08/2007 – Storm Mountain (Colorado)
I remember telling my wife (from California) that we used to have regular, winter snow in
St. Louis County, Missouri, where I grew up. Why one winter I remember we had snow on top of snow until we had about 12” down! How exciting! Maybe we did experience ‘Global Warming’, because after my early teenage years I don’t remember much snow accumulation in the winters.
In early 2004 my wife and I moved to the Estes Park, Colorado area, Storm Mountain, to be precise – a dream fulfilled. Somebody then told me that living in the Rocky Mountains ‘wasn’t for the timid’, but I thought that a predictable exaggeration. One thing I did notice was that the weather system(s) in the mountains seemed to be characterized by extremes. And since most of the extremes I observed were good ones, I guess I got spoiled. The bone-chilling 30° of St. Louis County was replaced with the mild, Spring- like 30° of Estes Park. I began bragging to out of towner’s that we had mild winters, and until a few weeks ago that was correct. I live in a little mountain community called Cedar Park/Cedar Springs. Both are interconnected and both are located halfway up Storm Mountain, or “Storm” to the locals.
Cedar Park and Cedar Springs are situated in little bowl-shaped enclaves, and have the bulk of Storm Mountain behind them to the west of the bowls. Currently, the only way into or out of these communities is by the forest access road now conveniently marked Storm Mountain Drive, off of County Road 43. We must really be hitting the big time – that new street sign appeared one day about 3 weeks ago, until then it was only marked by a Forest Access road sign.
My weather bubble burst on December 20th, 2006 when it began to snow. Finally coming down at about 2” per hour, I began to realize what real blizzards feel like. Not as much fun as I believed, and not nearly as romantic – more like a lot of work staring me in the face.
Thankfully, this snow ended when I had no more than 3-4’ of it in my driveway, which unfortunately is about 85 yards long, and gravel. My wife and I possess one snow removal tool among us – a good shovel! It took us 5 hours, in 30 minute shifts, to clear 2 tracks to the road. This task became very much like hard work-drudgery in fact, after the first 5 minutes. By 1:00 pm we were officially “dug out”, but I still had to put chains on the front tires to get down the road and through the infamous switchbacks to safely reach Highway 34, a 3 mile drive. Needless to say, I was praying for this experience to be an anomaly. It was a long, long day.
On the afternoon of the 28th of December, I was showing property in Pinewood Springs, about 10 miles out of Estes Park towards Lyons on Highway 36. I became somewhat concerned when it began to snow rather heavily during my drive to Pinewood, but I told myself that the multitude of tiny, miniature snowflakes wouldn’t be a big deal. Afterwards, at about 4:30pm, the flakes were still heavy, but very large. Visibility was down to about 150 yards in some areas of the highway, and 20 MPH seemed to work well for me if I geared down enough to benefit from my 4 wheel drive. By the time I had started for home, I had already been in 2 ditches because the loose snow on top of the old ice was completely unreasonable. I crept slowly towards home on Highway 34 out of Estes and finally reached the River Forks Restaurant at Drake. I determined to 4 wheel it up Storm Mountain Drive without installing chains, since I was only a few miles from home. I had also been out of cell phone coverage since leaving Estes, and I realized my wife would worry about me. Not puting on chains was a bad decision, as most of them are when based on laziness.
I made the first switchback, but the truck in front of mine came to a stop. As I lost my momentum, I began sliding backwards into an abandoned car at the bottom of the switchback. By this time it was completely dark, and the road I was sliding down backwards seemed even more awesome because on one side was the mountain and the other side the drop-off down the side of the mountain. Faced with no good choices, I was overjoyed to rear-end the mountain and crumple my bumper. It spun my truck around 180° and I then managed to steer my way back down to the restaurant parking lot where I determined to put on the chains I should have used the first time. With my chains on, I finally made it home, arriving at about 7:00 pm.
The next morning I found another 2-3’ of snow in my driveway, and was snowed in again. A neighbor took pity on us and plowed us out with his tractor!
On the 5th of January we had another 12-14” of new snow on top of the other snow. We managed to drive through it on the way out of the driveway, thus packing it down for the return trip.
Then last night at about 8:00 pm the wind struck us with constant gusts of up to about 80 MPH. *As I write this we have hard packed drifts of over 4’ the entire length of the driveway, and the winds are still blowing without let up.
All this and the winter is only beginning. Folks that have lived here for over 30 years are shaking their heads and saying they haven’t seen anything like this before. That’s not very comforting.
However, after lying awake all last night wondering when my roof would be torn off, I do know one thing for sure: I know why it’s called Storm Mountain!
And it really isn’t for the timid.
* This turned out to be an 8 hour job (no neighbor this time!).
