SNOWMAGEDDON 2017
Our 7:30 a.m. Sunday church leadership meeting was cut short by a text that came in from a local ranching family. The roof on a large machine shop had
collapsed under the weight of heavy snow, burying tractors, tools and equipment. They needed volunteers to help save their other buildings from similar ruin. With the proverbial “ox in the mire,” we excused ourselves from the remainder of the day’s meetings and rushed out to convene other services at the Kearl Ranch in nearby Round Valley, Utah.
In early January, the Bear River drainage in northern Utah and southeast Idaho was at 143 percent of the official average snowfall. We had spent the previous two days clearing roads, driveways and paths after a storm that dumped 2 feet in the low-lying areas of the valley, and many more feet up on the Bear River mountains. The highway through Logan Canyon, our major access to civilization, had been closed for a day, due to an avalanche just west of the Beaver Mountain ski resort, and would close again a few weeks later after another storm caused yet another snow-slide that covered State Road 89.
At the ranch, our numbers grew to 30 or more as the morning progressed. The rest of the day was spent clearing off wet, heavy snow that had accumulated on the roofs of barns, houses, outbuildings, sheds and even chicken coops. Once we had finished, we moved on to the Big Creek Ranch and then on to other places out across the valley.
We climbed up using nearby gates and fences as ladders, or even rode up four at a time in tractor loader-buckets to get up on the roofs to push the snow off. Approaching the first roof, I unwittingly thought climbing up on top would be the hardest part of the job, but I was wrong. Standing upright on the roof was the hardest part.
We each took turns showing off feats of just trying to stay on our feet – slipping, sliding, skidding and falling down, or falling off into the snowdrifts we’d been making. In desperation, sometimes it was just easier to stay down, roll over and flail arms and legs where you lay to push the snow off – a practical use for those snow angels we learned to make as kids.
During my lifetime, I’ve measured snow in inches and feet. I’ve seen snow for hours or even days. But this is the first time I remember having snowstorms lasting for weeks. By the time the May/June Spudman finds your mailboxes, most of that snow we pushed off the rooftops in January will have melted into that very precious natural resource – water.
This month’s Spudman feature, “Time for a Recharge” (Page 28), which is about the East Snake Plain Aquifer becoming a groundwater management area, was fresh on my mind while I was helping to save those buildings. Reflecting on the irony, I considered how this present danger from too much snow would months later be critical in filling reservoirs and canals to irrigate this year’s potatoes and other crops, while also providing the 2017 allotment of 240,000 acre-feet of recharge for the ESPA.
It’s been said that water connects us all. Though we’ve struggled with some challenges of being blessed with more snow than can be recalled in recent memory, the ranchers in Round Valley look forward to tall stands of wild hay, barley and alfalfa this summer. Most of this snowmelt will eventually flow into Big Creek and empty in at Bear Lake’s southern shore. Joining the Bear River waters originating from the Uinta mountains to the south, it will cross the lake, meandering north into Idaho.
On Bear Lake’s northern shore, the Bear River empties and exits at the same spot. It’s about 350 miles long and is the largest river in North America that does not reach an ocean. It continues flowing its westerly, northwest course through the Soda Point Reservoir, west of Soda Springs, Idaho.
Before emptying into the Great Salt Lake, the Bear River turns southwest, flowing through the Gem Valley, charging the flumes, canals, ponds and infrastructures for the Last Chance Canal Co., and the Bench Canal Co. in Grace, Idaho, where it will be lifted through pipelines, turbines, motors and well heads into pivots, linears, wheel lines and solid sets to water alfalfa, grain and, of course, seed potatoes. I’ll see these crops irrigated under pivots this coming summer.
I’m grateful for the promise of snow that melts, and modern irrigation technology to apply this water with. Working on pivots beats shoveling snow off of roof tops on Sundays, or any day of the week.
