Plan B — GreenStone Design

It has been a very low snow winter. Until yesterday the 28th of February.

It was snowing in the morning and did not stop all day. I got the kids to the schoolbus at the highway in morning. The first 2km from the highway was burned in the 2017 fires. The next 2 kms in to home are not thanks to a firebreak that was cut at the time. So the burned road is more bare and brighter right around it, and when it is a consistently low overcast day the light is flat and resembles early dusk. When you couple that with snow on the roads and everywhere else you just can’t tell where the sides of the road end and fall into ditches or down the slope. I nearly ditched the truck several times the last 2 days of driving.

At noon the snow was accumulating and picking up speed and I was beginning to wonder about being able to get out later to pick up the kids so I put on the chains and drove out the road to test it out and break trail a bit. I made it to the highway but was getting trickier. I drove back in 2km and parked it on the road where the light was at least a bit better in the trees and at the highpoint on the road we call Sapeye Summit. On a clear day we can see Sapeye Mt. from there.

I hiked home, and put together all our ski gear with pants, boots, gloves stuffed into a garbage bag and then into the calf sled which I then rigged up to tow skiing out to the highway. The bus did arrive, the kids were confused as to why they took the bus home as I was supposed to be there at the school later that day but I cancelled due to the snow. The kids suited up and we skied the 2.5km to the truck, I was breaking trail again and they skied mostly behind in the nice calf sled groomed trail though sometimes they skied ahead too.

We made it back to the truck, but it seemed to take way longer than usual. But we were able to drive home after that.

A bit later a friend drove in our road to our cabin because she heard we were snowed in so she wanted to break trail for us in her bigger truck. It helped this morning being able to drive out to the bus and the light was much better. It cleared last night with bright stars and the temperature dropped to -25ºC by this morning. But it was bright and sunny this morning. I have a neighbour coming in to plough our road today.