A view from the cabin deck.

Close Encounters in The Snowy Hills

Adminisk8or

02/13/2023

Well, it almost wouldn't be much of a week to talk about, were it not for today's events. But we'll get there.

The first fun thing that happened this week was I got food poisoning. Wait, did I say fun? I meant I was so sick at work, and that the drive home was so bad I nearly started hallucinating. That's one way for a Monday to rear its ugly head. But to counter that bad experience, this week my sister-in-law and her husband had their first baby, so that really exciting!

But easily the most notable thing this week was the adventure I had over the last couple of days. Yesterday, my wife, my brother-in-law and father-in-law all went up to a lodge a good little drive away from us, and stayed the night. It was a humble room, but we had fun, and our basic taco fixin's were not only sufficient, but delicious. Us three "kids" even went out snowshoeing that night, and the view of the snowbound woods and starry sky was something hardly to be described.

That was the beautiful part of the adventure. The wild ride came the next day. After a less-than-adequate sleep for everyone (the room was too hot and the beds uncomfy), we got some rented snowmobiles and started out on our way for a half-day run in the snow. The overall experience was honestly really fun, and we all had a great time! With that said, I also had some interesting mishaps. The first came rather quickly. Not 5 or so minutes into our trail, a small meadow opened up on the left. Being excited to really grind some powder, I started cruising through it, as I saw others had done the same. But then I got a little too confident and left their tracks for just a moment, and at 30-40 MPH, I suddenly caught glimpse of a small ditch of a stream bed. It was too late by then, and I ran right into it, taking it by the horns. Besides getting the wind knocked out of me and bruising my upper chest on the handlebars, surprisingly everything was fine, and we carried on our merry way.

Then came trial the second. We had made it some miles up the trail, and I was having fun occasionally taking some of the less-trodden corners and hillsides where other snowmobilers had also done likewise. One of these alternate routes started leading me on the other side of a small canyon area divided by a small stream. I was just about to cross back down and up over to the main trail, when I passed by a tree, and my snowmobile got sucked in and tipped over like a magnet. Thankfully, the rest of my family found me pretty quickly, my wife being the first, and we got it unstuck after some effort. Ah, but trial the third was just around the corner. We shortly reached the basin we had sought, and were having a good time skidding around and just having fun. My brother-in-law suggested I take a certain jump he found, and to his credit, it was not only a valid jump, but a fun looking one. The only problem was that I was now a little exhausted and cautious from my last two encounters, that when I carefully went over this jump, I played it too carefully, and veered off to the right into a deep bank of powder. That one took us a moment to undig, but we managed it.

At this point, you would assume I'd start playing it fairly carefully, right? Well, that's what I told myself to do- but after the basin, we followed another trail, and as we were going down a little mountain trail pass, the left side of the trail, on a certain spot, arched up over it by about 2-3 feet, and other snowmobilers had taken it just for a fun alternate route. Figuring the stakes weren't too high on this one, I decided to do likewise, and actually made it up onto the bank. The only problem was that my energy was fairly spent, and I began leaning to the right, back over the drop. I had about 1.5 seconds to decide my course of action, and it was to abandon ship. I would've succeeded just fine, but the handlebars somehow managed to catch my snow pants by the fly, and... let's just say I came very close to losing something valuable, if you catch my drift. The fall wasn't bad, and getting back up was easy enough, but that was the last straw for me. Shortly after that, we reached what would be our last meadow before turning around, and my brother-in-law and father-in-law both had fun going through it and going off hills, but my wife was exhausted, and I was so chickenhearted by now, the best courage I could work up was going off a fairly safe jump at a fairly slow speed.

The rest of the tale is fairly plain, but needless to say, we are all quite sore, now. My chest and back are sore from that first bump; my neck is sore from rubbing against a wool shirt collar I was wearing; My knees are sore; my feet are sore; my arms are surprisingly only a little sore, and my crotch area (which I am glad to have in tact) is sore.

And now I'm on call this week, so no doubt, more fun awaits. Let's hope it waits a day or two for me to recover before it beckons. Until next time, see ya!