When Snow Meets Building

Here is a fine example of what happens when now meets a building and isnt removed. Just up the road the ski resort got 13 feet of new snow over the last week.  The roof of this building, a few miles before that,  had about 5 feet of new snow and completely collapsed under its weight and that snow is now inside the building.

Making Your Own Trail Food

It’s snowing again here.  Probably won’t get plowed again.  I’ve been experimenting with dehydrating various vegetarian foods.  30 days on the JMT is just too long to pay the high cost of those prepackaged backpacking meals and quite frankly there isn’t much variation for those of us who don’t eat meat.

 Last weekend I played around with mini Matzo Balls made from a mix.  They work great.  I boiled them first and then dehydrated overnight.  Put them in a cup of soup and let them sit in the hot water about 2 minutes.  You couldn’t tell they were once dehydrated.

Today I dehydrated meatless meatballs and they worked equally great.  First I pan fried them (not sure if that is necessary but seemed like a good idea), then placed them overnight in the dehydrator.  To rehydrate, I merely let them sit in hot water much like I would on the trail. 

These could be rehydrated with either ramen noodles or a flat fettuccini type noodle we found at an Asian Market.  For $1.29 you can get a package of 15 rounds of noodles which when placed in water that has reached a boil will rehydrate in 3 minutes in a closed container.  I like these noodles better, the texture is nice and they don’t taste as starchy as ramen.  They are great in soup or in a spaghetti/fettuccini type recipe.

Next week, Lentil soup. 

John Muir Trail Conditions

I got approval for my one month vacation time from work and got my reservation for a permit from the park service can’t beat that for a milestone birthday! Now I can only hope the weather starts to stabilize and the snow begins to melt.  Not that I want ski season to end but I really don’t like the idea of hiking in the snow for 200+ miles. 

Photo taken last weekend from 8500 feet elevation a few miles in front of where the JMT passes Eddison and Florence Lakes. 

Taxes, What are They Good For?

A couple of weeks ago we were  “Snowed In Again “

This time we know why.  I can totally sympathize with the folks back east a few weeks back when they didn’t get their roads plowed.  They paid their taxes, made it a priority, or at least pretended to so that their homes wouldn’t get taken by the government.  They paid their taxes faithfully and didn’t get their roads plowed.  Stuck.  Money is tight, I got that. 

Well, we just discovered why our little community of about 100 homes has been neglected year after year by the county roads dept when it comes to plowing the snow.  My husband hunted down the plow driver as he went past our community of about 150 full time residents and on to the next one up the road of about 50 full timers but whose homes are about 1000 sq feet larger than those in our 100 year old neighborhood.  He honked at him and stopped him and asked what the deal was.  The deal IS we are “low priority”.  That’s actually what he said.  I wonder what it takes to become higher priority? At least 4 TV stations have their broadcast towers in our community and without those being accessible for repairs a whole city of a half a million could be shut down from watching Survivor, the Biggest Looser, Hell’s Kitchen and all those “fine shows”. Riots could ensue if people in the city were denied their “right” to be a couch potato.  Trees drop like flies around here when it snows. It wouldn’t take much to reduce those towers to scrap metal.  I guess we might rank a little higher on their list for plowing if that happened.  Till then I guess we have to pray no one has a heart attack.  The ambulance couldn’t get in.