Time to Switch Sports

Glimpsing First Snow

By Carson Bennett, 11-28-07

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I did what any normal outdoor-sport fanatic does when the season is not cooperating with his or her sport of choice; I switched sports. Actually, I delayed switching sports. My friends and I headed out to Red Rock Canyon near Vegas for a four day camping and sport climbing vacation. Since Taos bumped back their opening date by a month, and Wolf Creek only had two inches at the base, we simply extended our climbing season. No problem.

Except I missed the first snow.

While driving back from our warm and sunny weekend climbing in the desert, we pulled over to the side of the road west of Flagstaff and bivouacked under the Ponderosa Pines for the night. The temperature had dropped twenty five degrees since leaving Vegas, and would drop even further – to fourteen degrees – just before dawn when we woke up. My friend Eric’s eyes appeared at the tiny slit left open in the hood of his mummy bag and, muffled by inches of goose down, he asked, “Did it snow?”

I look forward to the first snow of the year with giddy excitement the same way a kid looks forward to presents under the tree on Christmas morning. When the thermometer drops below freezing I lose sleep anticipating snow. I fantasize about waking up at dawn, parting my blinds, and watching as the tree branches in my backyard catch the first flurries. I swear, I can feel it in the air when snow is on the way. But I didn’t feel anything other than cold that morning on the ground near Flagstaff. Frost covered everything, including our sleeping bags, but it hadn’t snowed.

Later that morning, after rousting Eric’s wife, Betty, from her nest in the backseat of the truck, we crossed the Arizona-New Mexico border into Gallup and my friend Randall nodded out the window. “Snow,” he said, without ceremony. Sure enough, on the north face of the hills lining I-40, a light dusting of snow sat preserved in the shadows. The first snow in New Mexico, and I missed it. By the time we arrived in Albuquerque the streets weren’t even wet, and a line of frost was barely visible on the crest of the Sandia Mountains.

I know it will snow again, of course. In fact, it’s supposed to snow this weekend. Taos got an inch or so last weekend and they should get at least four more starting Friday afternoon. Wolf Creek is expecting six inches, Durango four, and Santa Fe expects to add at least two more to the eight inches they received last weekend (and they should open soon).

Winter doesn’t officially begin for another three weeks, but the snow has begun to fall in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. I will soon have to hang up my rope, draws, and climbing shoes in favor of skis, boots, poles, pass. But I look forward to it. The season is changing. I may have missed the first snow, but more is on the way. I can smell it.

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