Sleepless in the Sierras

No, this is not a sequel to "Sleepless in Seattle" but it aptly describes the weekend for Parker and I. The Boy Scouts went on their annual snow camp trip this past weekend up highway 88, about 36 miles past Jackson. I must admit, putting snow and camp in the same sentence seems ominous enough, but this year's adventure contained even more excitement than we imagined.

Of course, the massive rainstorm in Concord should have given us an idea of how things would go but when we met at the Church at 4:00, the sun was shining so we pushed ahead with the trip. On our way to Lodi, the adventures began as the truck in front of us lost its ladder as we were driving on highway 12. Luckily (or more accurately, as a result of the prayer of safety we said before leaving), I had just enough time to glance to my right and then swerve around the ladder. My heart rate finally got back to normal about the time we made it to Lodi, so a stop at In-n-Out was a must (shh...don't tell those in the other cars).

While it rained for the last hour or so of our drive, there was still no snow on the ground until about 10 miles from our destination. Then, the roads went from wet and rainy to what you see below in a matter of moments.

Fortunately, my Utah upbringing paid dividends and I knew as long as I kept our momentum going without any braking or sudden moves, we'd be OK. After a few miles of snow packed roads, I thought I spotted the designated spot, but nobody was there (even though we knew the others were ahead of us), so we kept going for a couple miles before turning around. We went back to what I figured was the right place and then tried to get the others on either cell phones or the portable radios we brought. Unfortunately, neither would work so we sat in the car until we noticed some other cars who stopped in the same spot (turns out they had also heard this was a nice place to camp since our scout leader's son is in their ward). When we tried to move again, the tires would only spin so I knew we were in trouble. We started to try to put the chains on when the other two cars in our party drove up.

While we were trying to decide if we were really crazy enough to camp in this massive snowstorm, we found out the chains didn't fit the tires. Fortunately, one of the other cars had larger chains and we were able to get those on. In the meantime, the snow plow came by and cleared out the area where we planned to stay, so we decided the trip was still on.

We had a little dinner (well, those who didn't stop at In-n-Out did anyway) and then a few kids dug out some snow caves while others put up some tents. With all the snow coming down, we were all pretty soaked by the time we went to sleep. Did I say went to sleep? Well, we closed our eyes intermittently, anyway.

Here's a beautiful picture of the snow coming down -- I can say beautiful now because I'm in my nice warm house, but that's not the word I was thinking of that night.

Here's how the tents and cars looked the next morning. One tent had collapsed and the other doesn't look so great either.

It finally stopped snowing about 9:30 the next morning and then the real fun began. We spent a couple hours making an igloo as you can see from the pictures below.

Here's Parker and I inside the igloo. It was actually big enough to fit all 12 boys inside at once.

Here's the leaders all posing next to our handiwork. I'm on the right and, yes, I'm leaning on the igloo because hardly any sleep and then two hours of work makes standing up seem difficult.

In the end, the campout was a success (i.e., nobody died) and now we have an adventure to remember. Incidentally, the trip home was completely uneventful -- for which I was very grateful. OK, I admit it, looking back it was kinda fun. Having said that, I still think I like my snow and camping in separate sentences.