Cross Country Snowmobile
It’s late afternoon and getting dark. I’m in Idaho looking to get around the Rocky Mountains to meet Ed on the other side on Route 2. There are big mountains between me and where I want to be, but instead of doing the practical thing, following Route 2 around the mountains, I decide to go over them. By this time, I’m on snow, mostly logging trails, packed down, so the terrain is relatively easy, but it was a steep climb for my engine. Out there is…nothing. But I do notice one house with smoke coming out of the chimney and an orange glow from a light. An old logger, I figure. I keep going as I don’t need shelter. I have enough warm clothes on me and big old boots on my feet that when I get tired, I just get off the snowmobile and fall asleep in the snow next to the snowmobile keeping the motor running for extra warmth. Earlier, I had radioed Ed to tell him what I was up to, but now I lost the signal.
I chew up one belt driving up the mountain, which I replace and keep going. But then I follow the trail right into a big snow drift. I shake the snowmobile and rev the engine trying to get free, but I just chew up another belt. I remember the house I passed and decide to go there for help. My CB was useless.
I walk back along the logging trail, keeping on the packed snow. After a couple of hours, I reach the house. The old man, an old logger as I originally surmised, hobbles out. He’s a rugged looking person, probably in his 80s.
I start to tell him who I am, but he put his hand up. “I know who you are. They’re looking for you. The CB is full of you. I’ll take you out,” he says. “We’ll get you going.”
One minute he’s hobbling, the next minute he’s on his John Deere snowmobile with me behind, a different man.
“Right, there’s your snowmobile,” he says. The old timer has belts and gives me one. “But I’m not going in with you.”
“I was counting on you to help,” I tell him.
He points to the treetops protruding from the drift. “How tall do you think those trees are?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Twenty feet?”
The old timer laughs. “Those are the tops of 60-foot pine trees. You’re in a fifty-foot snowdrift.”
Here’s the thing about snowdrifts: Snow comes in, freezes. More snow comes in, freezes on top of it. It wouldn’t take much to crack the ice and plummet 50 feet.
