Whiteout: Braving the Storm

Back in February a fellow adventurer shot me an invite to ride along with his crew and do photo work as they ran the trails in Big Bear, California while braving an incoming storm. The call came in slightly over 24 hours before the trucks were to hit the road at 0700 hours the day after.

"There's a big snow storm coming in this weekend..."

"Oh cool, should make for some good boarding..."

"Nah, we're heading up to trailblaze the fresh powder and lay some tracks. You down to hop on board as copilot/photographer?"

"I'm with it."

Didn't catch much sleep the night before as I stayed up packing and fabricating a poor man's camera housing to protect my unit from the elements that would be smashing me overhead that following morning. I refreshed the weather report every half hour that night watching for any updates on the flashing red box. The box which indicated severe weather conditions with an expected 2-3 feet of snow dump during the half day we were there. Conditions were steadily going from bad to worse, perfect!

We hit the road by 7:30am on plow day tuning in to Caltrans as they updated our road status from an R2 to an R3. After a couple hours of hiccups and detours, as our original and backup routes became inaccessible due to evolving conditions, we were finally off the pavement and crunching through fresh pow wow. The storm began to peak as we made our way up. Weather conditions fluctuated throughout the day ranging from marshmallow skies with patches of blue to moments when visibility dropped to nil as we sat there three rigs deep completely motionless miles from civilization as the pure white canvas drift by.

Sometimes life is more of a thrill living 10 feet at a time.