We keep Learning

The back of the seat on this snowmachine is about 36" tall. All you can see is the top of it. Why, you may ask.

Myra and I were going to go to the post office yesterday. We had gotten about a 6" of fresh snow in the morning and that is no big deal. We decided to take the two narrow track machines because they are more comfortable to ride than the scandic (wide track). As you can see by the picture, it was still snowing pretty hard.
When we went out onto the gravel bar in front of our place a few things became very apparent very fast. First and foremost is we had absolutely NO depth perception to the ground (snow) and second is that it was snowing much harder than we thought and forward visibility was not good. The snow was covering the windshield and face mask faster than it could be wiped clear.

We are already out on the gravel bar and the snow is very deep around here now. If you get off of the packed trail the narrow machines sink like the Titanic. They do not go down immediately but your demise is emanate. The only way to keep from sinking is to go very fast and very powerful, and since we could not see that was not going to happen.
Now, we traveled about a hundred yards onto the gravel bar and we find out that our nice packed trail has been turned into a maze of zig-zag spun out "one off" tracks from weekend "Go Fast" riders. (Explaination: There was a poker run on the river this weekend and we had about 100 snowmachiners go by our place, up river then down.) They played in the powder everywhere and just destroyed our path. We did not know that until we were out there, in limited visibility, pulling the skwagon.
There was now way to see which trail to stay on so I just took my best guess. As you can see by the picture, I guessed wrong. I followed the path as far as I could and eventully it turned real sharp and off I went into the powder. As you can see, the snowmachine sunk butt deep to a tall Inuit Indian.
Myra had gotten onto a different path when it crossed over the one I was on and she got stuck about 30 yards away from me.
We got hers out then I went back to mine and snapped this picture. We then got mine out. We started going again, on our seperate paths. I was glancing over at Myra as we were riding basically side by side and the funniest thing happened. She was standing up while driving so she could almost see where she was going. She got about half off of the track she was following and see did a slow motion sideways roll. I watched the whole thing as she tipped over into the fluff and disappeared. I was so captivated by watching her, I drove off of my track again and got stuck. It was worth it because it was so funny to watch her!
We are now about three quarters to one mile from the cabin. Our goal had been to get to the main marked trail out on the river, then we should be alright. We had now gone this far and realized we still can't see any of the markers on the main trail. We decided that we had to turn around and go home. That was not going to happen in these conditions on these machines. I put on the snow shoes and walked home and got the wide track snowmachine and drove back out while Myra just stayed with our machines at the end of the gravel bar.
I used the wide track machine to make a new trail all the way back to our landing and packed a turn around circle for each of the narrow machines. We dug out and packed down what we had to on the narrow machines and got them up onto the new trail I had made. Now we were home free. We rode the wide track and one machine home, then rode double back out to get the other machine and rode them both home again.
Whew, that was a ton of learning experience for one morning. Thank God that happened a mile from home instead of 3,4 10 miles from home.
More respect for this environment, More scouting the situation and Maybe don't watch quite so close when Myra tips over and pay attention to what I am supposed to be doing.
This whole affair to go a mile out and a mile back took over three hours. I got severe leg cramps last night from all the walking in the waste deep powder to dig out the snowmachines.
Hope we learned something!

By the way, we got a total of 23" of fresh powder in the last 24 hours and it is still snowing. I know you all are getting a snow storm back East also. Enjoy!
Thanks for reading and being with us,
God Bless and be Careful out there,
Roger