Back on the Planet Hoth

Globally speaking, this may be the warmest winter on record, but at any given time, some of us find ourselves caught in the extremes of this whole climate weirding process. Australia's Bureau of Meterology has added two brand new colors to their temperature maps to reflect the record-breaking heat. The brushfires are so widespread that they can be seen from space. 

Here in western NY, we're on the not-quite-so-extreme other end at the moment. We're talking single digits and wind chills in the minus territory.  Mr. Winter Outdoor Adventurer caught a ride with the neighbor instead of walking to work (or even walking to wait for the bus) this morning. It's actually warmer today ("warmer" being a relative term) than earlier this week, when the whole town basically shut down, but I guess he wanted to get to work earlier than usual.

He had some  adventures this past weekend, backpacking with a couple of buddies on the Westside Overland Trail.  Here, I'll let him tell the story:

Hiking through the hurricane. The Westside Overland Trail is usually a placid, gently rolling trail running for 24 miles north to south in western Chautauqua County linking several state forests with private woodlots and fields. The only hills to speak of are the valleys into and out of the small stream crossings like the Brokenstraw, Wing, and Prendergast Creeks. This is usually a quite hike. Usually.

Three of us, Marion from Canada, Garrett from Buffalo, and I camped at the southern end Friday night planning to hike north for 20 miles over Saturday and Sunday. There was a high wind warning and it started howling around 7. By 8 we were snug in our tents thinking the huge hemlocks we were under had seen many storms and were not going to fall. It was cold with a light coating of snow and despite the noise, we slept well. The wind was still raging in the morning, ripping through the trees, but with no alternative, off we went.

The winds dropped throughout the day and by afternoon it could only be called breezy and the temp had risen into the upper 30. Our camp for the night was in a deep glade of old growth hemlocks on Prendergast Creek. The evening was quiet and the sky showed moon and stars. I warned the others to expect snow by morning. We fell asleep listening the the brook.

At 3AM the wind started raging again, more ferocious then the day before. It was obvious that we had passed through the eye of the storm overnight and were now on the backside. Unzipping the tent, I shined my light up into the trees overhead and watched them twist and sway under the starry sky until icy pellets started falling. I zipped back up and snuggled deep into my nylon and down cocoon. I never did hear that creek, flowing right next to the tent, again.

The wind increased still more, screaming through the trees and battering the tent. At one point I rolled onto my side, one ear pressed into the stuff sack of spare clothes I used for a pillow and that pressed hard into the ground. I heard the wind screaming in the upper ear and a strange wailing sub-tone, fainter and in a higher key, but in tempo with the raging noise above. I don't know what caused it, maybe my air mattress was picking up the vibrations but is seemed like the earth itself was wailing and it was spooky.

I got up at 6 and in the dark and began to boil water for breakfast. By 6:30 I started to wake the other two when Mother Nature gave us a wake up call. A nearby tree, we could not see where in the dark, succumbed to the wind and came thundering down. We broke camp quickly, ate a fast breakfast and were off by 7:30 but not before another nearby tree came crashing down. Our pace was pretty quick. We had to climb over or around several other new windfalls.

After a couple of miles the snow began in earnest, not falling, but flowing sideways. We left the woods for an open field and I commented to Garrett that it was good to get away from the trees. He replied, "yeah, but now we might get hit by a cow." It was a crosswind and with the packs kept blowing us sideways. Within an hour it was all white and visibility was quite low, the temp had dropped 10 degrees since breakfast to 21. My wife, Susan, was to pick me up at the hike's end but we all agreed to call her and pick us up a couple of miles short of our planned destination. As they headed toward Buffalo, Sue and I turned toward home and had to drive around several road closures and accidents.

He had a blast. Clearly, he loves this stuff. I had two white-knuckled drives: avoiding deer and Amish buggies, in the dark, in the middle of freaking nowhere, on the way home from dropping him off Friday night.  And again on Sunday morning, in 60 mph wind gusts and white-out conditions. I guess you could say we both had winter weekend adventures.

It wasn't enough for him.  Monday he went out there again to ski. I stayed home. I wasn't worried. The LAKE EFFECT WINTER STORM WARNING wasn't in effect till that evening. There were flurries when he arrived back home--immediaitely snagged as he got out of the car by our elderly next door neighbor, who was frantic: her daughter and grandson, returning home from a weekend in Canada, had been in a bad accident on the Thruway.  The daughter had borrowed a phone long enough to say they were okay, despite her head slamming into the door, but we had to wait for details on the situation. Tom got on the phone to the state police, but they were busy sorting things out--accidents were shutting down the Thruway from just west of Buffalo all the way to the PA state line.

We finally got the news that Catherine and Ian had been taken by ambulance to the hospital in Irving (about an hour from here in GOOD weather) to be evaluated for her concussion. Around 7:30, she was judged good to go...nowhere. The waiting room. The car had been totalled, hit from behind by a semi and spun around into other cars for a 6-vehicle pileup that looked like this:

Almost miraculously, there were only minor injuries. But Catherine and her 10-yr-old son were still an hour away, and the weather situation was seriously deteriorating. So, on a night when normal people stayed home, Tom and I got back in the car for another adventure. We had the good fortune of getting behind a plow in both directions over the treacherous ridge. Otherwise, it would have been difficult to know where the road was. Happy ending for all concerned.

Tuesday, we stayed home and Tom baked bread.

 
It's cold. It's snowing. It's winter. It's okay.