Never having lived through a snowy winter, there is much about dealing with the white stuff I don’t know. Last night was a great learning experience, for I learned ALL SORTS of things related to snow.
Having gone to the eastern shore each night of this current trip to Lake Tahoe, I decided last night to return to a spot I like on the west shore at Carnelian Bay. The family has joined me at the cabin now, so after getting everyone tucked in and cozy, I saddled up the wife’s car (I’d stranded the truck on ice earlier in the day) and headed south from Kings Beach. The sky was clear, the stars bright, and highway leading south smooth and dry. When I got to the spot, a small parking lot on the lake side of the main road, I turned in as I have done several times in the past, and learned the first thing of the evening:
1. The snow clearing efforts of the local authorities do not extend to this little parking lot. Within seconds the level of the snow grew so deep that the turbo sport wagon had bottomed out and I could hear the hardened snow (it was 18 degrees) scraping against the underside of the car as I inched forward, deeper and deeper into trouble. I tried to keep some momentum up but after about 30 feet was dead in the frozen water.
I had to push hard to open the car door, the snow was so deep. Once out, my feet sank low and I wished I’d worn footwear other than my hiking boots. There was nothing to do but put the chains on. Before doing so, however, I humped it over to a nice spot by some aspen trees to see if the Milky Way was yet visible. Not much, so I thought I might set up the camera for a long exposure while I was putting the chains on. I can get these Thule chains on in less than five minutes, so I figured an 8 minute exposure would grab some nice star trails and I could get some work done as I got out of the deep snow.
Now, those of you with more snow experience than I may well be grinning at this naïve assumption. It was in fact an hour and a half later than I finally got the car the 30 feet or so back to clear pavement. I had no idea what travails awaited me, however, and I decided it was not worth the time to set up the gear while I put the chains on.
I returned to the stranded car and let the mutt wander around while I got the first set of chains out of their case. Shortly later learned the second tidbit of the evening.
2. It’s VERY HARD to put chains around a tire that is buried in snow. I’d only every installed chains on tires resting on pavement, and then it’s a piece of cake. Seriously, these fancy Thule chains are so easy to put on it takes only a couple of minutes. But my futile effort moments ago to keep driving had spun the wheels and created a block of ice beneath each tire. The snow surrounded the ice and it took me five minutes just to get enough snow cleared away that I could manage the first step of mounting the chains, getting the cable around the back of the tire and grabbing each end to join them.
Once I had done so, there was simply no way I was going to connect the bottom section of the chains with that much snow and ice under the tire and car. As I hacked away, trying to clear the snow and ice away from the tire, I gradually descended deeper and deeper into the stuff myself. Before long I was soaked, my pants were wet from the ground up to the thigh and in the seat, my gloves were practically dripping with nearly frozen water, even my wool hat was wet since my head had spent so much time lying on the ground as I reached back behind the tire to scrape snow away.
About 20 minutes into the nightmare I decided that perhaps the chains would get me going if I just laid them out behind each tire to use as traction. If I could get some momentum, I might be able to back up along the tracks I’d made as I entered and get back to the driveway entrance. So I laid out each set of chains behind a tire and tucked the leading edge as close to the tire as possible. This worked, sort of, and led to the next learned item.
3. The above strategy will probably just move your car over the chain you are trying to install and render it trapped and completely worthless. By now it was past 10pm and getting a bit cold in my wet clothes. Charlie the German Shepherd had tired of roaming around and climbed back into the car. I pondered walking back to the cabin for some sort of tools, realizing that I’d not brought a leash and would have to walk him on my belt. It was only about 4 or 5 miles back to the cabin, 18 degrees, in wet clothes… No, I needed to find a solution here.
With one chain trapped under the driver’s side tire and the other freed by several minutes of energetic pulling and cursing, I realized that I had to either lower the earth or raise the car, so I got the jack out of its compartment as Charlie looked at me with one of those Sheperd expressions that communicates without words the question of which of you is the brighter individual. This led to learning something else.
4. Jacking up a car on ice is a bit dodgy. The Passat has a kind of scissor jack that is shaped like a Y. As you crank the handle the arms move away from each other IF the lower arm is placed firmly on the ground. On ice, it doesn’t work as nicely. It slips around when you get any pressure on it, forcing you to unwind it to try again, and also to wonder each time if it’s going to shoot outward and bust you in the shins.
With the feet of my sturdy tripod (fortunately not a $700 Gitzo carbon fiber job) I banged away at the ice beneath the foot and a half on snow. I was reminded of a movie they showed us in high school shop class about a character named Primitive Pete who used wrenches as hammers and screwdrivers as pry bars, always the wrong tool for the job. The tripod’s rubber feet reached the end of their usefulness as the hardest ice near the tarmac emerged and I had you resort to the metal jack itself to clear the last later of ice away. I tried hard not to break the jack during this procedure.
Eventually I got the passenger side of the car up high enough to clear out the snow and most of the cie and then install one chain set. Progress at last! It had only taken an hour to get the first set of chains on. And now for the other side. After more digging and scraping, finally I got the jack in place and lifted the driver’s side to install that chain. At last it was time to get going. I took a break to take this picture.
I replaced the jack, tidied up the back of the car and shut the mutt inside, fired up the Passat and away I went! About five feet.
5. Even with chains on, if the snow is really deep, you may not be going anywhere. There was so much snow under the car that the chains were having trouble getting enough traction to move the vehicle. The short distance I’d managed with the newly installed chains had pushed more snow in front of the rear tires and piled up a bunch in front of the car, and the drive wheels were just hopping around as the chains tried to grip.
I got back out and kicked the snow away from the front of the car as best I could, then dug with wet gloves as much snow as possible out from the side of the car, too, clearing the way for the rear wheels especially so the front set had to do a bit less work.
I got back in and managed a little momentum before the sharp u-turn I needed to make to get back going in the right direction. The front of the car hopped up and down over the deep snow as the car slowly made its way around the parking lot and back toward the lot entrance.
At last I’d moved the 30 feet or so back to the clear pavement and could take off the chains. Hmm, seems like I just put these things on. It was now an hour and a half since I’d entered this cursed arena. That would’ve been a long exposure had I set up the camera when I’d arrived.
I was freezing cold, wet, pretty much one whipped puppy, and I still hadn’t made a single photograph. All I wanted to do was get warm and dry. But it just so happened that the day before as I’d been scouting sunset locations on the east shore, I’d received a call from a customer in Camden, Maine who, not having a computer, was calling to ask if we’d done a 2011 MotoMatters calendar. Gary F.’s wife Chris cuts hair in a salon she’s operated for 25 years, and Gary is a kind of freelance lumberjack, as far as I can tell. He’d mentioned that he’d recently finished hauling some trees up a hill to his truck so he could bring them home and mill them into lumber, having a slight draw back at one point in the morning when a tree trunk had slipped and smashed his index finger against a large rock. He’d walked to a cold stream and packed some ice around the injured pointer, which was in the same shape as if he’d smashed it with a sledgehammer. After some 15 minutes of cold treatment, he’d been able to get back to work and finish the job three hours later. He’s one tough character!
Surely then, I shivered, I could recover from the past hour and a half if Gary could smash a finger and still haul trees up a hill with the other nine digits. When I got back to the cabin, I made sure everyone was cozy and sleeping, then got into some dry clothes and headed out again. It was only 11pm after all.
I’m glad I did, too, because in spite of the bitter cold I made a photograph I’ve not seen before. We’re familiar with the star trail image, where a long exposure allows the earth’s rotation to give the impression that the stars are moving in the sky. But last night the Milky Way was bright by the time I’d set up to shoot, and my last image of the night, before I gave into numb fingers and toes, shows star trails and a blur of the Milky Way moving across the sky. It took me a moment to figure out what that blur was when I’d looked at the image on my laptop.
We all know that there are many, many stars in the sky, but did you have any idea there were THIS many? They’re a little easier to see when they are trails instead of tiny dots. Here’s a close up of a section of the above image.
So it was a good finish to an evening that started off as a major snow learning experience. I’m glad I didn’t let a little snow get in my way.
