Snowshoe Sunday

After a shocking month of heavy snow, things have settled down around here. It's been sunny and balmy...and is making all of the skiers nervous! I've wanted to try snowshoeing and with my mind set on that, I've been scoping out likely places, for at least the past four years. We hiked last summer, in a lovely meadow. I decided that the meadow would be the best place to experiment, since we know our way around some, and wouldn't likely get lost...we rented snowshoes.

I was really charged up with the whole idea, so the Sunday brunch I planned was a bit more vivid than usual. We served bacon and cheddar stuffed croissant French toast with apple syrup, potatoes smashed and cooked on the stove with tablespoons of real butter, salt and pepper, bacon, sea salt roasted pearl onions, citrus, and a beautiful red pear clafouti with lots of vanilla and brandy! The kitchen blasted along all day and at the very stroke of 2 o'clock, Harrison and Carter and I darted for the car and raced up to the Mt. Rose summit.

The parking lot is now snowed in, so we had to park on the highway and scale a snow cliff...that is drippy and crusty from the warm days and freezing nights. We strapped in and set off, with chocolate milk boxes in our pockets. The going was strange at first, and we sometimes stepped on the sides of our own shoes. Though the shoes had crampons on the bottom, walking down a steep slope scared us silly at first. We walked far out of our way to find gentler access to the meadow floor. Down there though, the surface had been churned up by snowmobiles and frozen in ragged ridges. We picked and stumbled our way along on the rough surface and just started to look around us...and realize that we were in a sparkling white wonderland...under the bluest sky we'd ever seen. We got comfortable with our footing and started to explore.



The meadow was completely transformed by snow...it wasn't at all the familiar landscape we had known from the summer. We did recall that the trail was high up and that the meadow was enormous and swampy. We decided to climb to the area of the trail, and found that the snow there was still powder...soft, light, fluffy, powder. The snowshoes did keep us up on the surface! We could easily drive our poles down into soft snow, two or three feet down! Snow delineates the forest in such a stark way. During the spring and summer, everything is a blur of lush brown and green. But with snow on the ground, every tree is a Christmas tree! The forest is bright fragrant green, standing between crystal white snow and blue sky!

We hiked...and I mean this in the most strenuous way...up to the highest viewpoint. We stopped and drank our chocolate milk---Carter eloquently spoke to the great restorative power of chocolate milk---and we continued on to circle the meadow. There were great dangerous looking dips in the snow where we know there are streams, and the massive, magnificent bone-white skeletons of bristlecone pine. We covered a few miles before heading back to a golden sunset over Lake Tahoe! Altogether, we enjoyed the most exhiliarating afternoon...oh yeah, we are definitely going to buy our own snowshoes!