Utah Places: Snail Hollow

There's no place like home.

I have business to get done, and other posts to work on. I'll resume my Utah travels as I have time. Thank you for travelling along.

Ever More!

Lots more snow in Snail Hollow over the Christmas holiday. Almost a foot fell in the last storm, but most of it blew away in gusty winds. It was very windy overnight.

We are stuck with big piles of snow all around the driveway. Running out of places to push it where it will be out of the way.

Then there is the path to the kennel.

The dog, Copper, is consigned to lockup after he was caught proudly dragging home the neighbor's dead chicken. We need to maintain the path to access his kennel now, to bring food and water. The snow is very deep. It is a problem that I am not quite ready to deal with, because I am too clumsy to slog through the deep snow without falling. And it is far too difficult for my old mother to handle. Oh well. We'll figure out something.

I missed my PT session Wednesday because we got stuck in Christmas traffic in Provo. The place is a madhouse -- I'm glad we don't go there too often. The clinic is closed today for the holiday. Will resume workouts next week.

Darkness

It gets very dark here when the electricity goes off. Everyone was searching in their kitchen drawers for candles and matches.

I can't stand up very well in the darkness. I keep a flashlight handy at all times. My frequent night trips to the bathroom are made a bit more of an adventure by the dark and the cold, not to mention the fact that water becomes a limited commodity when there is no electricity to power the jet pump in the deep well. So, we make do with what we have.

My bedroom is heated with electricity, so I moved into the house this morning, where there is a wood burning stove. We kept warm, and listened to Handel's Messiah while the batteries lasted on my notebook. The electric service was restored at about 10 this morning, after around twelve hours of blackness.

White Christmas!

Lots of new snow falling in this locale.

Mammoth-Cottonwood is the nearest official measuring station, near the top of Fairview Canyon. It reflects about how much snow is on the ground now at Snail Hollow, although I believe our drifted accumulation is a bit more.

I have had plenty of work clearing off driveways and walkways. The new ATV mounted plow has had a pretty good trial, and passed with flying colors.

I can manage most of the functions of operating the ATV pretty well. I have trouble with the transmission shifter at times, but can manhandle it with both hands, when needed. Sometimes the plow blade is difficult to swivel, but I have managed to minimize that operation, after encountering some bit of trouble with it. All in all, a very satisfying operation that went quite smoothly. I was even able to help extricate a stuck vehicle, after some bit of work.

Let it snow!

Fall Colors!

We have had a couple of wintry storms here over the last few days. Frosty mornings. Most of the leaves are gone already.

A project here, every spring, to plant a garden. Last year Dad put up a little plastic greenhouse to see if he could save his tomatoes. In Hideaway Valley, the season is just long enough to grow up huge bushy plants with loads of green fruit on them, then along comes a hard freeze overnight and spoils all.

Last fall, we tried to nurse the plants through early frosts with propane heaters. I am not sure how much the fuel costs, but we probably burned up $50 worth of propane trying to ripen $10 worth of tomatoes. And in the end, they all froze anyway.

This year the vines all froze last week in the first hard frost. I went into the greenhouse and picked off about half the green fruits and brought them in the house. About 10 gallons. I buried the rest of the fruit underneath the dead vines, thinking maybe it will insulate them and keep the tomatoes warm from ground heat.

We haven't had much luck trying to ripen the green fruit. It just doesn't have enough time on the vines here.

I think we picked about three red-ripe tomatoes this year -- but thousands of green ones.
 
"...True love is the greatest thing in the world-except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe." (Princess Bride)

Alpaca

I was hiking over the top of the ridge of an evening high above Snail Hollow, and came face to face with this weird animal, bizarre long necked and small headed, tall pointy ears, about as big as a hefty dog but with long slight legs and silky brown fur. We both kinda said "YIKES!" in our own language, and backed off a few startled steps. I hung around for a while, watching him, but he didn't like the looks of me at all, I guess -- wouldn't let me come closer than about ten feet.

He was obviously lost. Wearing a manufactured halter of nylon webbing, but no other distinguishing features. Thought I oughta try taking him outta there, because I figured the coyotes tend to claim such undefended critters pretty quick. I tried entreating with apples, hanks of grass, luring with soft banter and baby talk, sitting down, standing up, sneaking up, quick rushes, head fakes, and everything I could think of, but wily critter managed to keep out of grabbing distance. I sat there for a while in the dark, just keeping company, then gave up and went home.

I went back up next morning with my friend Michael Golden, and he just kind of scooped the animal up in his arms. We carried him off the mountain and put him in my mom's garden.

Mom promptly fell in love with the animal, and decided the animal is named "Dolly". (He turns out to be "she".)   Dolly loves mom's strawberry plants.

Anyway, here it is. What do you do with an alpaca?

Firefighting

We had a forest fire in our back yard yesterday.

I mean, it was a fire. And it was in the forest. That makes it a forest fire -- right?

Okay, it was really little, for a forest fire. But it was all ours. :-)

Dad and I were working in his garden about 3 p.m. when a huge clap of thunder nearly knocked us out of our boots. (Fortunately I was wearing Tevas.) We saw the flash of lightning on the mountain. After a moment of stunned silence we looked at each other and both said, "Wow, that one was CLOSE!"

Shortly thereafter, dad noticed a smoke plume tendrilling up from the trees on the mountainside north of us.

We called the local fire chief of our just-getting-started volunteer fire department, and notified him that a wildland fire was in progress within our jurisdiction. I hurried and got my boots on. Then my dad and brother-in-law and I loaded our firefighting gear and shovels and chainsaw into the SUV and went wheeling up the mountainside trying to spot the fire.

We found access to the area that was burning, from a rocky road high up on the mountainside, then hiked down through the pinyon pines and junipers searching for the fire. It smelled smoky all around us, but the fire was actually several hundred yards from the road, so we scrambled down the hill covering the area in a search pattern.

As we located the fire and arrived at the spot, there were flames smoldering in the light debris on the ground, and one single old juniper, trunk about 18" in diameter, was actively burning along the trunk and several major limbs. It was clear that lightning had struck the old tree near the top, some 15 feet up. A big stripe of bark was peeled away and blown to oblivion, and a deep scar marked the burning trail running down the trunk. One of the large limbs on the side of the tree had been nearly detached by the blow, and as it burned it was spreading burning twigs into the ground fuel. The ground fire involved a circle at the base of the tree about ten feet across.

We scattered the burning fuels on the ground with our shovels, and smothered the flames with dirt. But much of the fire involved the burning tree, higher than we could reach. So we fetched down the chainsaw and proceeded to fell the tree.

The saw had been pretty well used for last years firewood season, so the chain wasn't in very good shape. Juniper wood is very dense and hard, so we made a long job of it.

I discovered that the chainsaw exhaust port very thoughtfully directs the exhaust stream away from the operator. Which in our case, by coincidence, also happened to be in the general direction of a big tree trunk that was currently on fire. We'd smother the flames down and saw a bit, then the exhaust stream would fan up the flames again. Made it pretty interesting for a while.

While we were gnawing away at the tree, one of the neighbors showed up on his 4-wheeler. He had a better chain on his saw, so we turned it over to him, and finally got the tree tipped over. Naturally it hung up six different ways, so it still took a bit more work to finally put the trunk onto the ground, but we eventually prevailed.

In the mean time, our local fire department team had started up the big tanker truck and were lumbering up the hill. Two local firefighters brought backpack sprayers down to mop up the fuels that were still hot and smoking.

It looks to be a lively fire season shaping up in the area.

Snail Hollow can be located approximately at the following Lat/Long coordinates:

39&deg 46.88" -111&deg 26.70"

News from Snail Hollow

Snail Hollow is an unremarkable rural neighborhood located in north Sanpete County, just off US Highway 89 in central Utah, south of Thistle Junction and just over the hill from Indianola.