Snow Blindness

I’ve been in many dire situations. Some were accidentally of my own making. Others were outside of my control. Almost all of them involved horrific winter storms. One had some frostbite for my friends and extreme vomiting for me. Once, I found myself in the Pacific Ocean rescuing fellow Marines while their ship leaked flaming diesel. There was the time it was so cold that even fire fought to not exist—the cold won. I’ve almost been sucked into an unforgiving snowbank—my batgrapnel tethered me free. Some storms have been so thick that five feet away was still too far. Not to mention the time my team leader peed in the ocean. Yeah, I’ve been in some bad weather situations before. However, none before had put one of my children at risk.

It was going to be just another Father’s and Son’s outing with a local church group. I believe it was also a Boy Scout event, but I could be wrong. Regardless, there were a lot of people and plenty of snow. Fine. I’ve done that before. I knew how to prepare myself and my son. I have been on countless winter camps. As a result, I asked if he wanted to shelter up (tent or snow cave) or just set ourselves up in our van. He opted for the van. I was good with that—less cleanup in the morning.

One thing that I have not enjoyed about where I live is the assumption of everyone that anyone who has spent time in the area knows all the local spots. All the remote locations. Every side and dirt road. The names—and nicknames—of every campsite as well. So maddening. The places I have been have been of my own devising. I have looked at maps (yes, the paper kind) and sought out locations. I have spoken to peoples and scouted spots. I have traveled to areas I liked and explored. But, I have not been everywhere. Nor do I know all the names. I just know what I know.

The campsite for this overnighter was unknown to me. A group of us decided to caravan out to make life easier for those who did not know the way (me), as well as for those who thought they might know but weren’t certain. As our group traversed the terrain, I made mental notes of where we were and our heading—I wanted to be able to find the spot again. There was one spot where an SUV (from our party) had parked itself near a fork in the road. I used it as a marker at the fork. You’d think after my first experience of using cars as markers I would never do it again. Nope.

After finding a spot to park, my son and I got our gear ready for the night and hopped out of the van to mingle and eat some fireside cooking. Good stuff. It didn’t feel like long, before Zander and I were more than willing to snuggle up in our beds and get some rest. With some pocket heaters and investments in warm sleeping bag technologies (not to mention a few wool blankets), the two of us were off to sleepy-time land.

Morning came extra early as some of our warning systems (old guys with radios) had alerted the group to a bad storm approaching. Great… That’s all I need now. Everyone else had SUVs or Trucks or monster vehicles. They would be fine. I had a van. Just a simple passenger van. It didn’t have weight or monster tires or the capability of surviving the sizable storm that was headed our way. As the snow had already begun to build, I let my group leader know that I needed to get out before it got worse. It was already almost at bad. He understood and sent me on my way.

With Zander at my side, we began the slow drive out of the campsite, paying attention to markers I had noted on the way in. Then, I got to where the SUV at the fork in the road was supposed to have been. It wasn’t. I spotted someone and verified which path I needed to follow in order to make it into town. At the time, I was sure he heard and understood me. It wouldn’t take long before I discovered he was an idiot.

Sure, I asked for the path back to town. So, that’s on me. I get it. There are other towns. There are multiple roads that can lead to the same town. All roads lead to Rome… and other such nonsense. However, when I asked if “…this the road we came in on?” I figured that was a pretty straightforward question. One without confusion or room for misinterpretation. I was wrong. That dude sent us out and I quickly noticed that the dirt road disappeared under the new blanket of frozen white water flakes and did not look familiar. This was going to be bad.

No worries (yet). If you’ve ever driven a dirt road in the woods, it’s relatively simple to follow. Things like a lack of trees about a vehicle (and a half) wide is probably the trail. Also, certain slopes at the edges of that trail helped identify it—even if it was covered in snow. We would be fine. Then, that road split. Uh, oh… It hadn’t done that on the way in. not more than once, anyway. Great. Now what?

With my wipers on full-speed (and not making much of a difference) I picked a path and plowed ahead. The snow was piling up high enough that our van was blowing it all over the place—like a plowhead. The wind made the downfall come at almost a horizontal angle. Not too bad, I know, but with the up-blast from the van mixed with the downfall, there was almost too much to see through. And, it was not only getting higher quickly, it was getting wetter just as fast. Soon we would be in a spot that, if we got stuck, we would be in a bad, bad place.

Seeing as how I was starting to not be seeing, I asked my son to turn on my cellphone and check if we had a signal or not. Not only did we not have a signal, but the cold had zapped my battery to almost nothing. I had turned it off for the night, but the temperature didn’t care. One more thing. It was just one more thing.

I was starting to get afraid. Afraid not for me, afraid for my son. If the van got stuck, my wife and I could have found a way to get it out—somehow. I’ve been in bad places before. I would be fine. Zander… Zander was not equipped for this level of a storm. If we had to abandon the vehicle I could not leave him alone in it. I also could not take him out into that ever-increasingly worsening storm. I have been truly afraid only a handful of times in my life. This was one of them.

Figuring that if I could turn around, I might be able to get back to a point to find other drivers of the campground, and maybe follow them out. Good idea—in theory. I can navigate the outdoors pretty well. I have a decent sense of direction. That day, however, it was not helping. I couldn’t have found my way out of a coat closet with a map, a compass, and a sherpa. We were going to be stuck in a blizzard, in the woods. Knowing it was supposed to be just an overnight campout, I did not fill the tank up (we were low on funds). With the phone battery on low, and no signal strong enough to make long contact, I was becoming more unsure of how to get out of the mess we were in.

There was a point in the plowing of the snow that it had built up thick enough and high enough into the engine area that it began to interfere with how things worked. I know because I looked. I had to. The serpentine belt had slipped off due to all the water. The whole compartment was a giant block of almost ice. Even the vents into the cab had begun to blow in some small drifts.

Suddenly, inspiration hit me. I asked Zander to let me know when a signal showed up. As soon as it did, we stopped and I called my wife. She would be my beacon. My anchor. My guide. She always has been.

“Hey, quickly—because my phone is low on battery—step outside and tell me which cardinal direction the snow is blowing from.”

“What?”

“Step outside and tell which direction the snow is blowing in from. Zander and I are in trouble and I need to know which direction to drive in.”

Shortly after she hung up, my phone died. But, I now knew where to go. See, with all the trees being so tall and dense, I couldn’t see any landmark mountain ridges. Also, with total cloud cover, I had no idea where the sun was relative to anything. There was no way of telling if I had been driving North, South, East, or West. Now, however, at last, I knew.

I knew the approximate direction the campground was from town. And, I also knew the general topography of the area and that the campground was not South of our town. All I needed was which direction I needed to go. With all the snow and driving around I previously had no idea which direction I had been heading (no GPS in the van). The storm was blowing into town from the North and had been since it started (that last part was some extra intel my wife had added for my benefit—it was very helpful).

Within fifteen minutes I had navigated to the main dirt road that would take us to the paved road that would take us to the interstate that would get us into town—and home. Forty-five minutes later we were safe and sound at home, with an almost empty tank of gas and two very cold bodies (the engine could not melt off enough of that snowy block fast enough to blow enough warm air into the cab for most of that last stretch).

It is all now just a fond memory of another time of “Well, that almost really sucked.”