Translations

Sunday, January 10, 2010

House Mountain Snow! (published 1-10-2010)

We have winter around here, and sometimes it falls on a weekend! Could those global warming fanatics be right? The Appalachian Irishman longs for the cold, snowy winters of his youth, when, getting out of school for days, friends and I would ride sleds, slide on frozen ponds, hike, and even camp in the snow!

We have had about a week of winter around here, with a generous estimate of a whole two inches of snow and below freezing highs. The usual havoc reigned: unnecessary school closings, raids on grocery stores, vehicles in ditches, accidents, radio road condition reports (from “brave” souls who drove in it), etc.

Yesterday, the Appalachian Irishman took his sixty-fifth hike, for three hours, on his beloved House Mountain. It was 25 degrees in the valley. How cold on the mountain? Who knows? The water in my canteen started to freeze. The snow started falling heavily on the ridge, with the wind blowing and temperature dropping. On the north bluff, the updraft blew the snow upward. On the trail down, I slipped, for the first time ever hiking up there, on an ice patch, landing on my butt and tapping the back of my head against a rock. I hiked out the last part in the dark, with no light. What fun! I wish we had more than one week of winter here. I need to go ice fishing!

At any rate, for your viewing pleasure, here are a few photos from yesterday. I wish someone would give me a job hiking, taking photos, and writing about my ventures! The first one, of course, is sheer self-promotion!








3 comments:

Tug said...

Love those pictures of House Mountain!

Anonymous said...

im thinking of climbing devils nose and camping at the top, which would be the best place to enter from since it is probably private property?

M. Fearghail said...

Well, Anonymous, if you provide your personal contact information, I could share some private information. Also, you might not want to camp, much less hike, in the warm weather, as Devil's Nose is snake ridden this time of year!