Fire and Ice 2011 - Day One

A couple years ago we visited the Fire and Ice festival at Cave Lake near Ely, Nevada. It was so much fun that we decided that we'd not only go again, but also participate in the snow/ice sculpting contest. So I sent in a registration form earlier this week and searched the Internet for tips on how to do snow/ice sculpting.

I found some friends willing to give it a try, and we arrived after lunch today. We found the park ranger in charge.

He said, "I was wondering where you were."

We said, "Are we too late?"

"Oh, no, you're fine. You're just the last group to arrive."

Gulp. Clearly we were novices. We found that some of the groups had made quite a lot of progress. Some had used plywood to help form their creations. We had shovels and sleds. That was good enough, right?


This was our starting point--a pile of snow on the shady side of the lake. That was better than I expected. First, it was better because we got to start with a pile of snow, so that meant less shoveling. Second, hopefully the shady part of the lake had thicker, stronger ice. A couple of the snow sculptures on another part of the lake were so heavy that they had sunk a bit and the lake water had inundated their bases.

Yikes!
We started piling the snow higher. What were we making? I'll get to that by the end of the post.

Yes, waiting is good. After all, my parents tortured with me the Twelve Days of Christmas, and now I do the same to my kids!

The Fire and Ice Festival is much more than snow/ice sculptures. There are tours around the lake, ice fishing, ice bowling, ice golf, ice skating, sledding, concessions, and beautiful views.

Here we are, flattening the top of our snow pile. What's it going to be?

Filling in the edges. What? You can't tell yet? Ha, ha. It sure didn't look like much at this point.

Other teams at work. I believe there are 18 teams entered this year. Top prize is $1,000. We won't be winning top prize. But I think there are some nice consolation prizes!

We took a little break to walk around and see what some of the other teams were doing. This is a man (with an outie belly button) sitting in a hot tub.

This polar bear is enjoying all the snow and ice.

After seeing some of these great snow sculptures practically finished, we were feeling a little out of our league.

Fortunately there were a couple other groups in our same boat, still in the blob phase.

Well, it was time to get back to work. It was getting late in the day and the temperatures were plummeting, making the snow grainy and harder to work with.

Here's another part of our creation.

Can you tell what we're making? Last chance to guess, the answer is below.

Why, it's Snowbucks! Come get your coffee and donuts!

Finally we decided to call it a day. We'll be back tomorrow. We have to finish by 3 p.m. Then it's judging time, with the results at 6 p.m. followed by fireworks.

Who knows what we'll add to our Snowbucks tomorrow? It's a convenient theme, because we can add all sorts of things depending on how many people come out to help. The only problem with this theme is that it makes me really hungry for donuts. So hungry I might have to go find some!

An Icy Pond

These photos were taken in mid-December, before we had the dump of snow that seems like it will never go away.

My husband took the kids and Henry over to our summer swimming hole, a.k.a. the settling pond for the pivot irrigation system. As you can see on the right hand side above, a lot of dark silt settled out of the stream water. Only enough water was left to fill the "deep" end (about waist deep during the late part of the summer), and much of it had frozen.

I arrived a little bit later and found them in a good mood. From Desert Boy's grin, you can see he was having a jolly time. And if you look carefully in the photo, you know why he's grinning.

It was rock chucking time!

The ice was just thick enough to hold most of the rocks on the surface, but every once in awhile, one penetrated and fell into the chilly water below.

Henry likes to chase things, like rabbits, and sticks, and balls, and rocks. And even though he's an extremely loyal dog, he's not always the brightest dog.

And when he chased one rock out in the middle of the ice...

...he went in. Fortunately it wasn't too hard for him to get out.

And then he just shook himself off and went back to chasing more rocks. Icy water was okay with him!

If all goes well, we may have another icy adventure next weekend.

The Great Cow Hunt

With all the snow we've had, we've been concerned about all the cows out on the range. Many of the shrubs and grasses they would normally eat are buried in deep snow, and some of the water sources are frozen over. The cows went out healthy, so we knew they'd be good for at least a few days. With the inversion it's been hard to go up in the airplane and get a good look at them, so on Sunday morning we headed out to look for one of the herds. We were graced with over an inch of new snow to start off the day.

This is the state highway. It wasn't particularly early in the morning, but we're about last on the priority list for the plows, so we were in the four-wheel drive truck. The temperature was about 27 degrees Fahrenheit. We took the kids with us, along with blankets, shovels, a picnic lunch, and a sled, just in case we got stuck.

Or wanted to go sledding. You never know when the mood might strike.

Before long we were off the highway and on a county gravel road, but to our surprise, it had been plowed earlier in the week and was in remarkably good shape.

The low clouds (and slightly dirty windows) made visibility really poor, but we were hoping we would be able to spot some cows.

And then sure enough, we did, black spots on the hillside. They had eaten through some of the snow and were nibbling on sagebrush and Mormon tea. Those aren't favorite foods for the cows, but it does provide nutrients and will keep them alive.

My husband wanted to get close to some cows to decide if they looked miserable or not. I asked what criteria he used to tell if a cow was miserable or not, and he said, "You can just tell." So alas, I still do not know exactly what to look for.

This cow was pretty close to us.

I asked, "Is this cow miserable?"

He said, "Maybe."

I grunted. I wanted a definitive answer.

"She's alright. She might be a little tired."

We kept driving.

We continued driving up the one-lane road, finding that the temperature was rising to above freezing as we rose in elevation. Although we didn't have so much fog, that temperature inversion was still in effect.

The cottonwoods and willows along a stream provided some relief from the white conditions. My husband explained to me that the cows would go eat the willows if they couldn't get to anything else. We didn't see any cows in that area, so we surmised that the rest of the herd was elsewhere, but we just didn't know where.

If enough looked miserable, the plan was to try to move them back to the main part of the ranch and feed them.

We had a brief moment of sunlight (on one cliff face), and hoped that the sun would shine more to melt more snow.

We turned around and started back into the colder, lower elevations. The sun disappeared. Dang it!

Then we headed north to look for the rest of the cows. The plow hadn't made it to this road, so we followed the deep tracks of some other truck that had dragged its transmission through the snow. We kept our eyes on the power lines, which in sections had been covered with a thick layer of frost from the inversion. This is one of the biggest reason for power outages around here.

The temperature went down into the teens, and we only saw a handful more of cows. If I were a cow, I wouldn't be hanging out in this frigid spot! Later my husband found them even farther north, where they had found a somewhat warmer spot higher on the bench to hang out.

The deep snow has turned out to be a record for December for a nearby spot and possibly for us. We're expecting another snow storm to come in tomorrow, followed by subzero temperatures. Brrr! I guess we better get ready for The Great Cow Hunt, the Sequel.

Into the Inversion

So we've managed to get an impressive amount of snow out here in the Great Basin Desert.

Even the old-timers are saying things like, "I haven't seen this much snow since my aunt wrecked the car by driving into a snow drift and then had to walk five miles home in a blinding blizzard (uphill), but instead she got lost and went in circles (uphill) for three hours, and then it was really like ten miles she walked (uphill), and she only survived because the Christmas star came out and guided her the rest of the way (uphill)."

Okay, nobody said that.

But I have heard a couple comparisons (or hoping that we aren't going to be compared) to the winter of '48-'49, which was a really bad one. So much snow fell and blew--and blew--that most of the roads in the area were closed and lots of livestock were stranded out in the range. Ranchers couldn't get out to check on them, because each time they started off from home in their Caterpillar dozers, the snow blew back over their tracks and they risked getting stranded themselves.

Sheepherders in lonely sheep camps couldn't even go far from their tiny abodes because of the deep snow. They despaired as they saw more sheep dying each day and they were helpless to do anything about it. They relied on the radio to get news of what was going on in the outside world. And fortunately they got news of something to help them out: Operation Haylift. The U.S. Air Force came out to help, dropping hundreds of tons of hay in western Utah and eastern Nevada. This real-life event took place using C82 "flying boxcars." You can read a pretty good account in this Time article. Hollywood also made a movie called Operation Haylift, using some real footage, and you can find it on Netflix.

Somehow I've managed to digress, because the real topic of today's post is the inversion we've had the past few days. I guess being in all the frigid weather with deep snow has put me in a wee bit of a gloomy mood with regards to weather.

Up high on the mountain, the weather has been great. It's snowy there, too, of course, but the sun is out and trees are emerging from their wintery weight.

Down in the valley, it's been a different story. Instead of the warmer weather being at the lower elevations, like it usually is, the temperatures have inverted, with a cap of air keeping the cold air down in the valley. Those cold air molecules have sunk, and they're trapped until we have wind to blow them out.

Entering an inversion is kind of an interesting process. You start out in the nice sunlight and see the cloud layer below. On the other side of the valley you can see the mountains poking out above the clouds, looking like islands in the mist.

The cloud layer made me think of the time when vast Pleistocene lakes, some as big as today's Lake Michigan, filled the valleys in the Basin and Range country. That was back in the days of the wooly mammoths, dire wolves, camelids, two different horse species, and an array of other animals that made their home here. Paleoindians roamed the area, hunting these animals. It was cooler and wetter than recent millenia.

We've gotten so much snow that the bushes are entirely covered, appearing as white hummocks from a fast moving vehicle. Or from a slow crawl. Or anything in between. This is the kind of weather you expect in Montana, not in Nevada.

The road straightened and the layer of clouds started looking more ominous. I could still see the mountains on the other side...

...but not for long.

It sort of felt like a bad horror movie. You know what's going to happen, but you just can't avoid watching it happen.

And then, there it was: the road disappearing into the clouds. And I was hurtling myself into it.

Help! Stuck in the inversion!

Fortunately this inversion cleared out in a few days. We don't have pollution stuck under the cloud layer with us (like Los Angeles frequently does), so although the colder temperatures (about 15 degrees colder that day in the clouds from up in the sun) and gloomier light might make everyone feel a bit grumpy, it could be worse.

When Desert Boy got up Christmas morning and asked why our stockings hung by the fireplace with care weren't filled with goodies (he had heard from a neighbor that they would be, and then I had promptly forgot), I considered telling him Santa Claus couldn't come in for a landing in the inversion. But I didn't. I chose distraction instead. Hopefully that was the right thing to do.

A Lot of Snow

We had a warm vacation the past weekend and then came home to over a foot of snow. Then we woke up this morning to another six inches. Then it kept snowing all day! Yikes!

In the photo above, can you see the picnic tables? I think there are seven of them.

Here's the barbeque and a round spool. I was taking the shortcut to the post office and the snow was up to my knees. It was tough walking! It was really amusing to watch Henry bound through the snow. He looked a little bit like a rabbit, hopping all over.

The school bus has stayed parked the last few days. The kids were supposed to have school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning this week. So far they have missed the first three. I guess they're getting a regular-length Christmas break after all! It's just too bad that they're missing all the parties.

In the late afternoon we finally got up the gumption to go out again. We took the sled, and at first I didn't take my camera because it was getting so dark, but then I changed my mind. My husband had thoughtfully plowed the driveway earlier in the day, allowing us to get out.

It was Emma's first time on a sled, and little Desert Girl didn't quite know what to think.

It didn't help that I dumped her out about six times on our walk. It wasn't too easy for her to keep her balance, and the ground wasn't exactly level everywhere. But she's tough, and I think she enjoyed the experience overall.

While we were walking, we found my husband busy with the backhoe. It's nice that he's handy that way!

He was clearing in front of the ambulance shed. Hopefully that will ensure that no ambulances will be needed.

Our forecast is for the snow to end and temperatures to get warmer, so we'll be sloshing around for a few days. This is the most snow we've gotten in the valley all at one time in many years. Down south they're experiencing major flooding, so I'm not sure what is worse.

Good luck to everyone who is traveling and has tough weather to complicate matters.