Snowmaggedon!!!

So I basically did the most awesome and the dumbest thing ever this weekend. Melissa and I ventured down to Welch to go skiing right in the middle of the biggest and dangerous snowstorm Minnesota has seen in almost 20 years. The storm ending up bringing just a little over 20” of snow to most of the Twin Cities area, besides the heavy snow the wind was blowing about 20 miles an hour so basically the entire drive from our house to Welch was done with about 10 feet of visibility. Awesome, it was a little scary. The roads were in fairly decent shape, mostly because the wind was blowing the snow off them, but you could see the drifts forming on the sides of the road. It took as only an hour to get from our house to the Welch parking lot. We got there and I was surprised to see we weren’t the only people that decided to take advantage of what turned out to be the biggest snowfall Minnesota has seen in 20 years. We found a great parking spot and got dressed and headed up the lifts. I have never seen it snow so hard, you could maybe see 3 chairs ahead. It was crazy. We got off the chair and started down, Wild Finale. The snow was deep and it was pretty soft which was pretty dang nice. Melissa and I both brought our powder skis. She was trying out her new Volkl KiKu’s and I had my Volkl Mantra’s. It was amazing to be skiing that kind of powder here in Minnesota. We found the best snow on Dan’s Dive and Bakkelyka they were a little protected from the wind so the snow was just piling up, we lapped those runs a few times and had fresh tracks every time it was snowing so hard. In fact I experienced snow blindness for the first time ever it was weird. We skied hard for about 2 hours and watched the weather get worse and worse, we decided to head out. I am glad we did. The drive home was so crazy. The drifts on 50 were about 2-3’ high and when I would hit them they would go over my car. Visibility was about 5-10’ the road was closed just outside of Mielsville so we had to take a detour through Hasting which turned out to be better, 61 was in good shape as was Hastings. The drive from Hastings down 55 to 42 turned out to be a breeze. So that was really nice. We got home and found 4’ drifts in our drive way, so we had to shovel a path so I could get my car in the garage. I have never seen so much snow in my life; I think it was because of the wind more than anything. The snowstorm in 91 brought way more snow but didn’t have the winds so the drifts weren’t as big. We got in the garage and started to laugh about how stupid it was to actually head out skiing in that weather. We were so glad that we did go though, it was epic! I was glad Melissa got to try here new skis in some real snow before heading west with them. She was a little nervous about skiing them because they are so fat and a little longer than her old powder skis.

The rest of the weekend seemed uneventful after Saturday’s adventure. We ended up running a couple errands and I wrote a paper for one of my classes, which I am happy to say will be done this week. It will be nice to take a break from school for a bit. My next 2 classes start up again in March so I have a couple months off. I am hoping to get a lot of skiing in. Life is good. 60 days till Big Sky.