The weather forecast for this weekend was to be mild cool temperatures with possible light snow flurries. I have found rather quickly that your never trust the weatherman's predictions, and this weekend was no exception.
In 2000, I sold my house in Florida and decided to move to Colorado for a few years. My wife found work at the same business in Colorado and move about 4 months earlier and lived with our son and his family until I sold the house and moved out there in October. After a month, I bought a pickup truck and later a pop-up camper, so our families could enjoy the outdoors when the weather warmed up a bit. In April of 2001, I had decided to take my granddaughter, who was 7 at that time, and my dog Blaze for a weekend camping trip up in the mountains of the Rocky Mountain National Park in CO. This was to be the maiden trip. I have photographed in this park quite a bit and in fact, every time it snowed the night before down where I lived in Longmont, CO., I would load up my dog and camera equipment and head up the this park for a day of photography. I would drive my truck up into the park bright and early the following morning. However, a crucial stop at the Mc Donalds in Estes Park was a must for coffee and a couple of sausage bic-ketts … that’s how we say it down here in the far south (Florida).
When my wife and I decide to move to Colorado in the summer of 2000 for a couple of years, we wanted to be close to my son and his family and our 6-year-old granddaughter that had moved to Colorado a couple of years earlier. When we made that decision, my wife was offered a job with the company she worked for here in Florida right away. So we flew my son to Florida to travel back with his mother while I stayed behind to sell the house and everything else I could. While traveling in a 16 ft cargo truck with what was left of our worldly positions, including a car hauler with my son’s drag race car in tow, I would stop every morning at Mc Donalds for coffee and bic-ketts … and I just had to get an extra bic-kett for my dog, Blaze. She loved them, so much so, that I think she actually could recognize the golden arches of Mc Donalds.
Blaze would get very excited knowing that her bic-kett was soon to come. So this was a continuing event … whenever we would go up into the Rocky Mountain National Park for the day photographing, I would stop at Mc Donalds in Estes Park for our morning fix.
So … the weekend’s weather forecast for that springtime weekend was lots of sunshine and a possibility of light snow flurries…great lets go!! We arrived at our campsite on Friday around mid-day, and as I got the camper set up there were the light snow flurries mixed in with warm bright sunlight, beautiful t-shirt and shorts were the dress of the day. The next morning it was cool with the gorgeous warm colors of the morning sun against the mountains. We all piled in the truck and with my trusty Sony digital camera and we drove around photographing the mountain streams and whatever wildlife presented itself.
One of my favorite areas was Moraine Park right around the corner of the campground. A moraine is where the ice and snow of a glacier rapidly advanced down a steep slope creating a wide flat area with scattered rocks, sand, and boulders. The land becomes flat with the trees and boulders and sand being pushed out to the sides of the moraine. Mountain streams formed later feeding the wide meadow’s grasses where the elk would gather and feed in late spring. The bull elk would gather up his haram and fend off rival bulls … a great place in late fall for photographing wildlife. But at this time of year most of the elk have migrated up to higher elevations in the mountains for the cooler air and the bull elk would have shedded their antlers. This was indeed a beautiful cool Spring Saturday morning. We drove around after having breakfast outside at the picnic table. Around noon, dark ominous clouds began forming overhead and by early afternoon it totally clouded up and it started to drizzle rain.
The rain didn’t bother so me much, as I very often would photograph right from the comforts of my truck. Later on, about mid-afternoon, the rain gave way to sleet, which is a mixture of rain and snow flurries. Great! Where are those possible light forecasted snow flurries? This time it wasn't light snow, but very wet. Another hour passed by, and now the sleet has turned into more of a light but steady snow shower, which quickly escalated into more of a steady heavy snowfall right before dark-thirty. I think perhaps someone missed the forecast here. When we finally made it back to the camper, I backed up close to the front overhanging queen size bunk, so that I could get up into the truck to brush off the snow that is piling up on the canvas top. I also was able to plug in the camper's 12-volt battery connection to the truck and leave the motor running a bit to make sure the camper battery was fully charged up for the night.
I have a propane heater in the camper however, the blower motor has to have full 12 Volts of power to run otherwise the heater burner shuts off … I'm thinking about how much we are really going to need that heat tonight. After dinner and before we went to bed, I went out again and got up in the bed of the truck with a broom to sweep the snow off the roof over the front bunk. I also cranked up the truck to recharge the camper's battery a little more, trying to keep it fully charged to able to run that heater blower motor all night. There was about another 2 inches or so of snow up over the front bunk already, from 6:00 to about 8:00. I began running the numbers of hours through my head to figure out how much snow would fall at the rate it was falling. So … let's see, 1.00 inches per hour times about 9 hours to daylight equals … ehhh … Oh that's a lot of snow for light flurries?
It's too damn cold out here to be doing this crap, I’m going back inside where it is nice and toasty warm. Whatever falls … falls. Just hope the canvas roof doesn’t cave in during the middle of the night. Later that night or somewhere in the early morning … who knows … I woke up with wet blankets …. hum, I wonder which one of those other two wet my bed?? I turned on the light and noticed water droplets forming on the underside of the canvas over our bed, with water drops steadily falling … Damn! The warm air inside the camper caused the cold air of the snow over the bunk to condensate…great!! I grabbed a couple of towels to help soak up the water drops and reluctantly went back to sleep. There wasn't much I could about it at this point in time. I sure wasn’t going to go outside and knock the snow off the roof over our bunk again.
The next morning I got up and looked out the camper door and to my total disbelief, saw 13 inches of snow on top of the picnic table …. yeah, I measured it. So the day before I made a photograph of the truck and camper parked in the campsite. I just had to get another shot of it now or no one will ever believe me that it snowed that much last night. The entire campground was totally covered in white … deep white snow. Some campers only had 2 man pup-tents to sleep in, while some just had a tarp strung up and were sleeping on the ground. They were really totally unprepared for that kind of weather. You could not see the road at all, so trying to pack up and leave was not a very good option. The tires on my truck were rain tires, not snow tires, and I did not have 4 WD. No cell phone service either, but we did have plenty of food. I made coffee and breakfast for my granddaughter and Blaze, deciding to wait it out a bit.
A little while later I saw the park service truck with a snowplow come thru and cleaned off the roadway throughout the campground so people could get out. I had no idea how much or where it snowed last night. I didn't think that folding up the camper and hauling it down 4000 ft of winding mountain roads to the town where I lived was a very good viable option. So, in my hastily made plans, I decided to put the kid and dog into the truck with the motor running and the heat on. I put everything in the camper away and closed it and locked it up, living it right where it was parked. I told the park ranger that I would come back in the morning to get it out of that space. Actually, after snow quit, it was really quite a beautiful sight, as the snow is very wet and clings to the tree branches. It was still heavily overcast and I thought that maybe this snowstorm was not yet through with me, and I had better get on the road back home.
The snow hanging on the branches of the pine trees made for great B&W images of which I made a few on my way down to town. After getting back home I found out that it only rained there, and when I showed my wife and son the photos I made of the camper, they were a bit stunned. My son and I went back the next morning and dug out the camper and hauled it back home.
SO there you have it !, the lesson learned here is don’t trust what the weatherman tells ya on forecasting, as he’s is guessing just like the rest of us. The one thing I did learn while living in Colorado is: “ If ya don’t like the weather now … wait a couple of hours … it will change”.
J. Michael
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