We’ve escaped.

We had an early pre-Thanksgiving dinner for family on Sunday and then the hubster and I loaded up the backpacks, threw the snowshoes in the car, and drove threw a winter storm up to the family cabin in the Sawtooth Wilderness Area.  (I’d post a link to a website with photos here but it’s a miracle we’ve got even patchy internet access.  I don’t want to push my luck.)

We literally drove up to the cabin, something unheard of this time of year, particularly during a snowstorm.  It’s on a dirt road that’s accessible during the summer but buried in winter and usually we park down on the highway when the snow hits and backpack from there.  But we’re both growing sadly fat and the idea of carrying fully loaded backpacks for two miles, uphill, made us both feel wheezy, desperate, and, perhaps, a little stupid.  We gambled and, this year at least, won.  We were able to rev the engine, spin the wheels, and fishtail all the way up to the door, unload everything, then slip and slide all the way back down (laughing insanely) to leave the car on the highway where it belongs.  Coming back up again on foot was easy after that.

And now the adventure begins.  This last snowstorm lasted for two days and next, within hours, we’re supposed to catch the leading edge of a front with a blast of arctic air behind it.  Temps, you ask?  Well, funny you should ask, I reply.  Tonight and tomorrow it’s supposed to get somewhere down around 25-35 degrees below zero and the high tomorrow will be -3.  It will be utterly fantastic (albeit very brief) star gazing conditions if the skies are clear.  You’ve never seen the Milky Way like how it looks on snowshoes at high altitude with frigid temps…like it’s close enough to pull down and wrap up in. It’s breathtaking and so totally worth frostbite.

(Kidding.)

Then it’s supposed to warm back up as another winter storm blows into the region with eight more inches or so of snow.

Now.  The big question I know all of you are just dying to ask is, After that kind of cold will the car actually start when you come back down on Saturday? Good question! Very astute.  This cold is so cold, it’s the kind where even jumper cables may not be enough.  These are electrical charge sucking temperatures. It’s Battery Killer cold.  The answer is of course, we don’t know.  Personally, I doubt it, but the hubster refuses to speculate because he knows I’ll freak out if he confirms my dark suspicions.

So…oh well.  I guess we’ll just find out on Saturday…something fun and surprising to look forward to all week.  In the meantime, we’ve got four solid days of spectacular, wild, isolated, snow covered, mountain-peak rimmed beauty to keep us occupied.  If internet access continues and I can do it, I’ll try and post some pictures.

The winter wildness of it all is really, really, something to behold.

Update:  I just remembered I have a picture of the mountains outside the front window that I used in a post a couple weeks ago.  I’ll re-post it here.  This is what the mountains would look like from where I’m sitting right now if I could actually see them through the storm:

copyright Dia Osborn 2010