January thaws
Every season of every year it seems that someone – or a group – comment they have never seen weather like we are having. These comments cover every combination of weather so hot or so cold. So wet or so dry. So much snow or so little snow. This year I am the one.
We have had several winters where we had little or no snow before Christmas. Same thing with a ton of snow during January. Likewise, a January thaw is not at all unusual. I don’t remember any winter where we have had the swings in weather we have had this year.
From Polebridge north everyone has had more than seventy inches of snow in January and it has settled to three feet or so as usual. What is unusual is not just one or two “January thaws” but three. When I talked with neighbor Lynn Ogle at 10 a.m. this morning he reported hard rain falling at Trail Creek and, again, the roads now had heavy ice with water running on top of it. Ideal conditions for sliding off the road.
Some folks compensate with studded tires, some chain up at one end of the vehicle and I know several who chain up all four wheels and drive in four-wheel drive. Personally, I just hunker down and stay wherever until the weather either makes the road mostly bare or we get enough colder weather and snow to restore our winter pavement. With my method I get by with all terrain tires, don’t install studded tires, and never have to lay on wet ice to install chains. I admit to being lazy and for winter driving it has served me well. It also helps to have a good book to read when I am “hunkering down.”
A couple of folks have expressed some displeasure at my comments about the Forest Service not addressing problems on river use and just continuing their current river plan which I feel will just make the problems worse in the future. Biggest danger in my mind is not really doing a good job of monitoring water quality.
Some years ago they were much more aggressive. They had cameras monitoring river use and what they called “limits of acceptable change.” These limits were to be applied to floaters, campers, sanitary problems like garbage and human waste. At one time, in the late seventies, they warned that a permit system might be necessary as soon as 1980.
As far as I can tell, there are no longer any cameras, water quality monitoring has never been updated (if it is still being done at all) and the river patrol may pick up some garbage and seldom, if ever, issue citations. I feel the educational materials at launch sites and river patrols talking to folks on the river do no harm, but are largely ineffective. If we are not careful we could, over time, harm the water quality and make bull trout and cutthroat trout decline even more. Guess we will have to learn to eat whitefish, lake trout and suckers and even wear nose plugs when we float. At least we will be able to pick bouquets of ox-eye daisies.
What do you think?
Larry Wilson’s North Fork Views appears weekly in the Hungry Horse News.