Who blew up the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man?

The ski area near our place in Colorado is known for good snow...but this was ridiculous! We're 3-4 miles down the road from Monarch Mountain, about 1000' down in elevation, and that little bit of difference means that in town we usually don't get the heaps of powder that they do.

But "usually" means that sometimes you do!

We were greeted by drifts so high when we arrived that we (mostly Henry) had to spend 20 minutes or so shoveling in order just to get into the front door. (Fortunately there was a shovel out on the porch and reachable! I will show before-and-after shots, plus action pix of Henry at work, next time).

Of course all this white stuff means good skiing (and I'll show some ski area scenes soon, too) and lots of fun for folks who don't have to drive in it. The renters in the Schoolhouse just before we arrived must have had fun digging the tunnel you see above from the parking area to their porch.

And some other residents of the area weren't stopped from nocturnal ramblings...on the left are some formidable tracks that led right up to the Schoolhouse back door!

While the back entrance to the Schoolhouse was almost clear and an animal shelter, from our second-floor window it looks almost completely buried!

Other pix to give you an idea of how much snow we were dealing with...

out storage shed and its new top hat; fortunately we didn't have to get into it

Henry providing scale for Schoolhouse parking area drifts

I took a walk down our very snowy main street when I was too pooped for two days of skiing in a row....here's the street, and our always-sketchy driveway...

We've never seen this street "canyonized" like this before! But street and drive were both navigable, and we were very glad to have an all-wheel drive rental vehicle (in spite of the extra expense, even Henry admitted it).

Anyway, walking was easier than driving, and at the end of the street I always love seeing our little creek. I've written about it before, and I'm glad I know where it is. Since it was almost completely hidden...

view from our deck

looking upstream from the bridge 

The lovely gurgling brook sound, which is always somewhat muffled in winter, was almost completely muted, too. But don't the puffy pillows of snow look pretty on the banks?

They looked pretty on our deck, too, although this much snow—which melts a bit in the sun, then freezes, over and over—is a matter for concern...

So Henry did have to do a lot shoveling, when he wasn't skiing. I'll celebrate his heroic work next time. A lot of it was done up on the rise from which I took this picture of our "compound." Somewhere underneath that blanket are our propane tanks!