Group 3 Woods Lake 2008

A heavy snow trip Feb 23-24 2008 Snow Camping Training Series, Group 3: Trip 2 Report - February
23-24, 2008

A very heavy snow trip that was cut short due to weather.

We wanted to go to a place we hadn't been to before (except Chuck of course whose been everywhere) and chose Woods Lake off Highway 89 at Carson Pass. Knowing that it would be a stormy weekend, the relative flat topography of the route suited our caution. We were a strong group and could have gone in farther than the 1.3 miles southwest from the Snowpark that ends at Woods Lake, but the wind was very strong and the snow was coming in hard and it didn't seem like the kind of situation to push.

We moved south from the open lake area to a wooded hollow with some protection from the wind, but not a lot, and instructed everyone to camp near each other. Tents, trenches and caves were finished before dark along with a tarped kitchen big enough to hold the whole crowd. We have two tarps that Velcro together making a 20 by 12 foot tarp.

With two or more feet of loose snow, stomping tent platforms took a bit of time, digging caves went quickly and excavating the kitchen needed several volunteers. We stomped the excavation at the level that was to be the table and seats, and Marshall's suggestion of sawing out the foot trenches made the last phase go quickly. Some of these blocks where used to raise the kitchen walls to their final height. With the wind blowing in the ends on occasion we cooked, drank, kept warm and chatted 'till late. Some until midnight. Our spirits contradicted the weather. It snowed all night and by morning we had a new couple of feet. My tent was now waist deep in its pit.

We left the kitchen tarps up overnight and bailed a literal ton of snow out of their bellied shape in the morning. Some minor tearing at one grommet was the total damage and easily repaired before our next trip.

We decided to leave as the weather looked like it would continue to snow hard for the rest of the day, our survival skills had been adequately honed, and we were unsure of the difficulty of traveling out. We decided on the shortest, straightest and flattest route, due north. To our surprise we found we were not just breaking trail through the two feet or more accumulated over the last twenty-four hours but the eighteen inches that fell a few days before. It took three hours to go the mile to the road
with very strong trail-breakers.

What did I learn? Be careful of your news source -mine didn't consider it a very big storm-, snow a few days before another snowfall can be deceptive