December 2007 Archives

This is from the weekend before last, the day after our first winter storm. It's taken from the summit of the 6,146 foot Strawberry Peak off the Angeles Crest Highway. I went up there with the plan to snowshoe, but I left too early in the day, before plows or sunshine had knocked the ice off the highway. Driving by a nasty motorcycle accident and enduring a couple of slight slippages on my part was enough to convince me to stay at lower elevations and hike. I think right now, all those snowy peaks have got to be blanketed in much deeper powder, and with another two snowfalls scheduled this week, I am excited about the snowshoeing prospects for this weekend.

And I'm not the only one.... on the Angeles National Forest home page, there is a daily weather forecast from the national weather service, someone seems to have let out how they felt about the snow fall. Look at the last word in the forecast... all it needs is an exclamation point (!).

THE SNOW ADVISORY IS NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON PST TODAY.
PERIODS OF SNOW SHOWERS WILL CONTINUE TO FALL OVER THE MOUNTAINS
OF VENTURA AND LOS ANGELES COUNTIES...WITH SNOW LEVELS HOVERING
AROUND 6500 FEET THIS MORNING. STORM TOTAL SNOW AMOUNTS ARE
EXPECTED TO RANGE BETWEEN 3 TO 7 INCHES OVER THE MOUNTAIN AREAS
ABOVE 7000 FEET. MOST OF THE SNOW HAS ALREADY FALLEN...ALTHOUGH
CONTINUED SNOW SHOWER ACTIVITY IS EXPECTED THROUGH THE MORNING.
THE HIGHEST ADDITIONAL SNOW AMOUNTS EXPECTED THIS MORNING WILL
OCCUR IN THE HIGHEST ELEVATIONS.
A SNOW ADVISORY MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CAUSE TRAVEL
DIFFICULTY. BE PREPARED FOR SNOW COVERED ROADS AND LIMITED
VISIBILITY...AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.

SWEET

I'm all fired up from the latest Steve Lopez column, where he takes aim at San Marino for charging outsiders $4 a head on weekends to enter Lacy Park.

I'm particularly disgruntled about this example of civic intransigence because I frequently bike past Lacy Park on the weekends.... whereas on the weekdays, when it is free, I bike in Lacy Park. It is a circular park with two short circular bike/walking paths..... back in summer when there was enough light after work to get there I enjoyed relaxing by biking mindlessly in circles under the cool shade of the park's tall trees.

It is a particularly bitter pill to swallow to get shut out of there since I live about 2/10 of a mile from the San Marino border... also the other major parks I can bike to (Huntington Gardens, County Arboretum) come with a price tag that leaves unsuspecting visitors reeling from sticker shock.

Even if I lived in San Marino, I think I would be unhappy about the park status.... there is something not quite right about having to flash your driver's license at an admission gate to actually enter a green space.

Lopez throws fuel on the fire when he notes that the city has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funds to improve the park... so us non-San Marino residents are paying for a park that we can't visit on weekends. Awesome.

I also was surprised to hear the park cost $4 to enter... last summer it was only $3. To make sure Mr. Lopez is right about the price I went to check the price on the city web site.... however, there doesn't seem to be an admission price listed anywhere. In the manner of used-car salesman and late-night infomercials the city choose to go with the term "nominal fee" to describe the price of getting into the park. I dare anyone to find the term "$4" on the park website.

Though us lowlanders last saw precipitation on Saturday, Mt. Baldy has apparently continued to get snow dusting in the days since, including 2-4 inches Tuesday morning. That means the ski area is opening this weekend. The mountain looks like it has some great powder (the shot above is from the ski area's web cam, taken on Tuesday afternoon).

Mt. Baldy can be easily forgotten as a ski destination.... when I first came to Los Angeles, I heard that Mammoth Mountain was the best weekend skiing trip, and Big Bear was the best daily drive within the area. Even though I was at the Claremont Colleges, I didn't even know there was a legitimate ski area right above me. Probably something to do with the erratic snowfall.... when I was up there two years ago an equipment rental manager told me they have terrible problems getting people to come to work. They struggle to hire people who don't want to be forced to rely on infrequent snowfall and the possibility of severe warming and melting on any given day... even those that take the job end up not showing up to work when they don't feel like it. Which is why it took over an hour to get a snowboard rental.

It is a pretty well-respected ski area.... though it is small, there are some long, steep runs that apparently attract expert skiers and snowboarders from outside SoCal. I personally can't say whether they are that great, though, because it was my first time ever snowboarding, and I managed to give myself concussion after a nasty fall on the second-easiest trail on the mountain (I did make it through the bunny trail without medical duress).

The snow report from mtbaldy.com:
Still Snowing!!
Tue December 11, 2007 6:24 AM
We are open daily from 8:00am to 5:00pm for Snowplay, Tubing, and Scenic Rides up to the Top of the Notch Restaurant. We received about 10-12 inches of new snow last weekend and have very good snow conditions in our Tubing and Snowplay areas. We are making snow on the Ski runs and plan to open the Beginners Area on Wednesday and Thunder Mountain by Friday, sooner if it keeps on snowing like it is. Since early this morning, we have picked up 2-4 inches of new light snow and expect clearing skies and chilly temps this afternoon. The roads are open and chains are not required at this time, but they are slick in spots.

Last winter, after a quick winter trip to Vermont where I was won over by the promise of snowshoeing (it ended up being freakishly warm and extremely muddy, but the place I stayed at had some really cool snowshoeing magazines), I bought a pair of my own snowshoes. I did actually get to rent one pair and try it out before I made the purchase, and I was enthusiastic about padding around in the mountains in the middle of winter.

Of course, since I live down here in the lowlands, any time anyone has seen my snowshoes hanging up in my closet, or I have mentioned in passing, people think I am a total moron. I admit, it is a little strange to own a product you have to drive/hike up a mountain to have a passing chance at using. It is a far cry from the romantic notions I had of trekking through a woodsy trail through six-foot snow drifts..

Well, the one time I rented the shoes in Big Bear turned out to be the only snow accumulation we had the entire winter. I became a slave to several mountain web cams, some as far away as Sequoia National Park, and Bishop, CA (I was willing to travel far for snow) but there was nothing. I did manage to find some thin snow in San Jacinto State Park by trekking up to 9,000 feet, but it was patchy at best, and realistically, more easily navigated with boots than with snow shoes.

Still, I am holding up hope for this weekend's forecast:

PARTLY TO MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF RAIN AND SNOW
SHOWERS. SNOW LEVEL 4000 TO 5000 FEET. SNOW ACCUMULATION LESS THAN 3
INCHES. LOWS IN THE UPPER 20S TO MID 30S AT LOW ELEVATIONS TO 17 TO
25 IN HIGH VALLEYS AND PEAKS. NORTHWEST WINDS 20 TO 30 MPH WITH
LOCAL GUSTS TO AROUND 40 MPH

The forecast last night was for snow up in the peaks, but the mountains were too obscured to show much, and the web cams were pretty much whited out by clouds/rain/snow. I imagine there is some out there, but is it enough to keep me from scraping up the metal blades of my snow shoe?

The water is deep enough that people are kayaking in the streets. However, the storm has been much less fun for a lot of people, including the family of my girlfriend, who live in Kula, a mountain community about 3,000 feet up the Haleakala volcanoes.

Yesterday afternoon, due to heavy rain, her family was faced with what her mom described as a "huge wall of water" that looked something like the one above. A usually-dry riverbed on their property ran wild with water and flooded, destroying part of one of the rental homes her father built, and leaving their basement with about two feet of mud and debris in it. No pictures yet, unfortunately, because power has been out at their house since the storm began.

Some homes below their house were destroyed and the roads are covered with thick mud, and undriveable for the time being.

I lived up there briefly and I can tell you how easy it is to forget that in a neighborhood that is now nearly as crowded with homes as an average suburb, you are really up in a remote spot if road access is blocked and the power is out. There is only one road down to the central areas of the island. A small bridge near Robin's family's driveway was knocked out, and now their neighbors on the other side of it will have to take a roundabout, longer route to get down to the main road until it is fixed.

Kula is a pretty close-knit community... this morning when Robin and I looked over pictures and stories in the local papers, she knew just about every person who was quoted in the paper, and recognized the names of people who had uploaded pictures on to their web sites.

Every time a disaster like this happens somewhere in Hawaii, we both note there is a total lack of coverage in the national news, and if it happens on an outer island, the Honolulu papers are usually slow to react and cover it. The one time I remember seeing a Hawaii weather disaster in the national news was after a Kauai water dam burst last year and killed one person. The one death turns a flooding story from local news to national. In fact, last night, in my google searches for news and photos of Kula, I kept pulling up the year-and-a-half old dam story from Kauai.

On the plus side, nobody in the neighborhood seems to be hurt, and the many cats and dogs that inhabit the three-home property are all alright. The three cats in Robin's family, which normally spend their days hanging around outside, all came back shortly before the flood and asked to be let back into the house.

More on the flood here. More pics here.