The Snowgloo

in Daily Bloglast year


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Yesterday, we got a rather serious amount of snow, well more than a foot of fluffy powder. According to our local newspaper, that amount was the second largest snowfall total for any single day in November.

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This morning as we unearthed ourselves from the white deluge, my face was alight with one of those smiles your story-telling uncle gets when he is about to lay on the words, "This one time in 68'"

(Maybe that's just me, but 1968 must have been a heck of a winter in the Pacific Northwest because I have heard that phrase a lot in my lifetime.)

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Anyway, as the kids and I brushed all that powder off of their cars, shoveled the resulting three feet away from their vehicles, and dodged the crazy Hawaiian flying about on the John Deere tractor (Pineapple Snow Removal Service is INTENSE), I was reminded of one of my very favorite snow removal instances.

As many of you know, I spent a chunk of my life in a logging camp in the Alaskan wilderness. Icy Bay, as the camp was called, was set right smack dab in the Wrangell-St. Elias wilderness, a forty-five minute bush plane flight north of Yakutat, Alaska. It was a place of extremes, and that's putting it lightly.

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For instance, one night we got, and I am not exaggerating, four feet of snow.

It was so much snow that the men stayed home from logging just to unbury the camp and shovel off the rooves as they were in danger of collapsing. I remember feeling a sense of gratitude for the rough cut beams that our single wide trailer had been reinforced with and an even bigger feeling of thanks for the dudes who were tromping about on our roof shoveling off that four feet of snow.

Now here's the thing, we had four feet of snow on the ground, and then the guys shoveled all fifty plus feet of length of our trailer roof off on top of it, the pile of snow next to our house was the size of a semi-truck!

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So, I did the only natural thing when faced with such a surplus of snow, I tunneled into it. We all did.

After many hours of digging, I had a two doored cave right next to our wannigan (add on building porch). It was so cozy in my snowgloo, I went in and got my polyester patchwork quilt that my grandma had made me out of my very groovy aunt's sixties wardrobe and proudly announced,

"I'm sleeping in my snowgloo tonight!"

Mom must have been feeling the snowfall cheer, because she was cool with it, and that evening I did indeed sleep in my snowgloo in my snow clothes, all wrapped up like a polyester burrito of complete kid on an adventure contentedness.

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I did have a flashlight, and one time when I clicked it on because I heard something I saw some very large shadows flickering through one of my snowgloo doors and onto the wall of my hand carved cavern.

Yep, that would be a bear.

You see, I always thought bears hibernated in the winter. Fun fact, they don't if there's food available.

And in Icy Bay, there were silver salmon still in the ditches and creeks in December.

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Thankfully, the bear didn't decide to investigate the glow coming from my snowgloo door, which was a good thing, because in my excitement to sleep in my new fort, I never brought out any weapon at all.

The funny thing is, I still managed to get a fair bit of sleep, because it was super warm in my snow fort. That said, I must have been a little bit snow crazy to sleep in the there in the first place.


But what's life without a bit of adventure.


And in true wild Alaska weather style, the rains came and melted every bit of that snow over the next couple of days, so I am glad that I did have a snowgloo slumber party.

Just like I am glad the kids, hubs, and I tied a sled to the back of the old Toyota pickup and went wild on Thanksgiving afternoon. Because when it snows there's an opportunity for glee even if you have to watch out for an occasional fence post and not hibernating bear😉

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And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's almost as useful as the tractor, well in a different way anyway, iPhone.


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Ah .The memories of snow forts and snowball fghts come to mind. Those were good times .An uncle bought a old ski-doo olympic snowmobile we nick-named it ole yeller cause of the color was yellow. If that machine could talk the trails we made with it. As we all got older newer machines were bought and we made different memories.We will never forget ole yeller and bring it up now and then when us cousins get together.

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One thing I miss about being a kid is the massive, all day long snowball fights. In Alaska some of them would drag on for months all across town or the logging camp. So epic! You didn't even want to stop to eat lol!

And Ole Yeller sounds like a marvel. I miss snowmobile towing too 😆 It sounds like you had an awesome snow-filled childhood for sure!

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I tried to post this reply to you yesterday, but it didn't go through, been having some connectivity fun up here lol!

No Problem .You did answer that's the main idea. Thanks and Living up in Alaska would be a child's winter wonderland. I can see why your snowball fights last for months and with daylight being 24 hours you wouldn't know if it's 7 am or 7 pm. You had some lovely memories of your own. Happy Holidays to you and your family.

You have the best fun, Kat! Snow forts ruled growing up, along with ice skating and snowball fights.

But, I had no bears~

AHHH!! Good morning! I typed up a lengthy reply to your replies as I squealed in excitement when I saw them because I most definitely noticed your ABSENCE. Then I had done connectivity issues and it wouldn’t post…grrr….

Anyway, I’ve missed you and as soon as I get back from snowshoeing I will totally try, try again to reply, because DS comments are the bestest. Just wanted to drop you a hey and howdy before I bolted out the door!!

😁😊

I was a kid living with my parents in the heart of the Columbia River Gorge the winter of '68-'69. We got a lot more snow than usual, and we had a "silver thaw", as the locals called it. I still don't quite understand that term, because everything was covered in a thick layer of ice, including the roads, and nobody went anywhere 'til it warmed up. I dug a little snowgloo in the bank of snow beside our driveway and hung out in it with the dog, but it wasn't big enough for a sleepover, nor did that occur to my cautious self. My mother would not have agreed to it, anyway, since I was prone to illness.

Once I got up last Wednesday, I began measuring the snow and then clearing it off every hour or two and measuring again. I came up with about 15". How about at your place?

That's right! I remembered when I read your reply that you spent a chunk of your young days close to where my family dwelled, and your recollection is a lot like the tales I have heard from my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, etc. That winter apparently was legendary. And a silver thaw sorta sounds like ice storm 96' which I do remember quite well, eeee.

Counting the snow before the now dump, I am definitely up around a couple feet, and shoveled at least the fifteen inches the other day. I need to do better about measuring it, because it's kinda fun to track the floof, especially for conversational reasons lol!

Welp, I gotta run, have to go to my former place of employment this morning 😉

Sometimes it's fun to be able to impress people who live in the Banana Belt (Post Falls) with snowfall totals. Other times, I'd really rather not know just now much is out there to deal with.

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