Category: Photos

From the valley…

…to the mountain top.

The freezing fog, it usually comes with another phenomonon – an inversion. Warm air up high overruns cold air in the valleys. Under high pressure it creates an inversion – between the warm upper air and the cold valley air lies the stratus.

In the valley, under the status, we have had cold temperatures accompanied by high humidity and so the freezing fog.

Karl’s and my mission today was to see the inversion from the other side. We headed for Blacktail Mountain, home of Blacktail Mountain Ski Area – an “upside-down” mountain in that the day lodge and parking are at the top of the mountain. The ski runs go down into a hanging valley. But the important thing for my purposes was that the lodge and parking area were above the fog deck…in the sunshine! And the temperature at 8:00 a.m. was already 40 compared to 25 at my house.

The road to Blacktail Mountain takes off from MT Highway 93 in Lakeside, MT. The road is 12 miles from Hwy 93 to the top of the mountain. It is 35 mph max and much of it is 15-25 mph hairpin curves. The road has it’s excitement in the winter and that 12 miles takes at least 40 minutes.

As we ascended into the stratus…

Going up I had occasional glimpses of the stratus deck from above as we cleared that, but the driving demanded my full attention. The road is barely 2 lanes, narrowed by the plowing, and sometimes the wish for a much higher guardrail, or any guardrail at all was more prominent in my mind than the view.

But as we cleared the fog layer and came into the sun and the cloudless blue sky at the summit…

These photos do not begin to convey what it really looked and felt like. The high mountain peaks poked through the fog layer looking like islands in an ocean of soft cottony seas.

It was over 50 degrees. The sun was so bright and strong that I was too warm immediately. There were other people there – all of us smiling and laughing and enjoying the sunshine. The ski area is only open Wed-Sunday so I was able to walk out on the summit on this day.

I got Karl out of the Jeep and we walked around the parking area. His tongue was soon hanging out…too hot for a black dog with a heavy coat!

We started back down.

I have always said that this gloom that we sometimes get in winter does not bother me as I’m always out a lot. But, that sun, it was wonderful. And the indescribable beauty from the mountain top made me feel like I had been on a wonderful vacation.

The transition down was beautiful as well as a little sad – From the mountain top to the valley.

The snow we have now has come when the temperature has been very cold so it is dry, light and airy. It clings to everything…

The snow piles up on tree branches…

But…eventually, the amount of snow, or snow and a bit of sun cause gravity to do its thing and a branch sheds its accumulation of snow. If it is a high branch, the avalanche of snow from the high branch brings snow from lower branches in its path. Karl and I have both been “caught” – Karl lays his ears back and runs and then looks at me as if to say “What, I did nothing?”. I hear the sound, feel the first rush of snow and hunker down in my coat with my cowboy hat for protection as the weight of the snow falls around me. This afternoon, as snow has been falling heavily, the trees have been thunderously shedding snow with increasing frequency. It falls all around the sunroom where I’m working and Karl is napping near me – startling us when it falls near or on the house.

Thunder of snow…tree avalanche.