Snowbaording Adventure - Blizzard March 7-8 ,2008, Mad River Mountain
I would have posted this sooner but I ran in to some problems uploading pictures here. I just tried it again and it worked! Here's the big story:
When I heard we were getting so much snow I just had to go snowboarding. My half-sister snowbaords also, so I figured we would make an adventure out of it and go together. That meant I had to drive back to Dayton from Columbus to get her.
Saturday was the best day for us to go, and with the big blizzard blowing I needed to allow sufficient time to get to Dayton. I decided to leave Friday night. I waited for the gap between the blows and took off - only to hit the second round head on. There wasn't much of a gap in the storm.
I left Columbus about 9:30pm. Needless to say, it was dark. The roads were totally snow covered, the wind was blowing 30 mph, and it was snowing pretty good. I was by myself so I didn't get any pictures of this but it was the start of the adventure!
I got to Dayton around 11:30pm, in only about 2 hours - about a half an hour longer than it normally takes. When I pulled in the driveway there was several inches of snow so I fired up the tractor and cleared it all off - as well as pushed the snow my dad plowed off earlier in the evening further away from the driveway so we would have room to clear off the snow to come over night.
I got up around 7am to check out the snow. I thought we might go to the day session at Mad River Mountain (ok, it's not a mountain it is a hill - just with a few ski lifts to get back up hehe). I was still tired and I knew my half sister was not going to get out of bed that early so I figured we would go to the afternoon session - 4:00-9:30pm - and went back to bed.
I got back up around 10-11 and plowed the driveway agian. This time there was about 6" of snow on the driveway. This was a good sign - for snowboarding that is. The more snow the better!
After driving to Dayton the night before I knew I needed to allow extra time to get there. I thought 2 hours should give us enough time, so our target departure time was 2:00pm. We happened to time leaving with the last heavy dumping of snow.
I had my half sister take the pictures while I drove - I wanted this one WELL DOCUMENTED! It isn't often here in Ohio that we get snow like this, and it isn't often that the opportunity arises to take advantage of the snow and go snowboarding. That said - we had some serious battling of Mother Nature to do before we could have fun.
This is what we were looking at getting on I-675 North at Route 48, exit 4. Slow traffic and lots of snow! The cars off in the distance are on the on-ramp, the guard rail is on rt.48.
I-675 was moving, but slowly and it was 1 lane. In a few spots the snow was several inches deep on each side of the one lane. In these conditions you wonder why people still get on the road in a car. A 4 wheel drive truck really helps out in these conditions!
The visibility really wasn't THAT bad on 675. You could see for a good 1/2 mile. The snow on the road made it impossible to see the lines, so you had to navigate by the difference in elevation between the roadway and the ditches on each side. The visibility issue wasn't so good once we got on Rt. 4 and on to Rt. 68. Here is a shot not too long after we got on Rt. 4:
I would say that is less than 1/4 mile visibility, wouldn't you? If this was night time it would be a whole different ballgame though!
Rt. 68:
One of our landmarks along the trek is downtown Urbana. They have a neat statue sitting in the middle of Rt. 68. I am not quite sure what it is for, I have never looked at it other than passing it before. There is a round-a-bout there too. We know we are withen about 15 minutes of getting to Mad River Mountain once we hit this point. This time it was a little different.
As we passed through Urbana we saw these guys out on a snowmobile. It looks like a lot of fun! I haven't been on one for about 15 years - my granparents had a couple up in Baudette, MN, when I was a kid. I don't think this one had been running in quite some time - it was puffing out a lot of smoke.
We were looking for a place to get some food before we hit the slopes. Unfortunately all the fast food places were closed. I guess they close down for snow emergencies hehehe. Now we know! So, we stopped by a Shell gas station about 5-10 miles north of Urbana and settled on some junk food. We happened to have this guy come fill up his snow mobile when we were leaving. You DEFINATELY don't see this in Ohio much! You see it all the time up North (Minnesota, Wisconsin), but Ohio?
This is a little back road we take off of Rt. 68. It is about a mile north of the Shell station, County Road 5 I believe? Anywho, major white-out here.
We didn't get any other real exciting pictures before we got there. It snowed all the way there. We were driving in the tail end of the storm so there wasn't much left. When we got our lift tickets the snow stopped. Shortly after our arrival the clouds broke and the sun came out. This was around 5:30pm or so. It stayed clear the rest of the evening. We even caught the sun setting from the top of the hill. I didn't have the camera on me, so no pictures of that. I don't like to carry my camera on the slopes - if I fall it could break.
I came back out to the truck later in the evening, around 7:00 or so, and got a few pictures of the slopes. I did a 5 sequence shot at 2 different exposures. This one was at least 3-4 seconds of exposure.
The drive home was uneventful. It was too dark for the camera to get any decent pictures, the few we do have are extremely blurry (hey, we were moving down the road and the camera wanted a 1/8sec shutter speed - if I went to manual mode and set it to 1/60th to cure the blur there wouldn't be enough light). The roads were better but still snow covered. The plows had been out in force clearing the roads. Rt. 68 was the worst, but no issues there. The first part of I-675 was also not real clear, but as we drove south the conditions got much better. In fact, we were all the way down on pavement in spots.
So that's it for the Great Adventure! I hope you enjoyed the story and the pictures. This only does the adventure partial justice, however. To be there and experience what we did was a truly unique experience!
When I heard we were getting so much snow I just had to go snowboarding. My half-sister snowbaords also, so I figured we would make an adventure out of it and go together. That meant I had to drive back to Dayton from Columbus to get her.
Saturday was the best day for us to go, and with the big blizzard blowing I needed to allow sufficient time to get to Dayton. I decided to leave Friday night. I waited for the gap between the blows and took off - only to hit the second round head on. There wasn't much of a gap in the storm.
I left Columbus about 9:30pm. Needless to say, it was dark. The roads were totally snow covered, the wind was blowing 30 mph, and it was snowing pretty good. I was by myself so I didn't get any pictures of this but it was the start of the adventure!
I got to Dayton around 11:30pm, in only about 2 hours - about a half an hour longer than it normally takes. When I pulled in the driveway there was several inches of snow so I fired up the tractor and cleared it all off - as well as pushed the snow my dad plowed off earlier in the evening further away from the driveway so we would have room to clear off the snow to come over night.
I got up around 7am to check out the snow. I thought we might go to the day session at Mad River Mountain (ok, it's not a mountain it is a hill - just with a few ski lifts to get back up hehe). I was still tired and I knew my half sister was not going to get out of bed that early so I figured we would go to the afternoon session - 4:00-9:30pm - and went back to bed.
I got back up around 10-11 and plowed the driveway agian. This time there was about 6" of snow on the driveway. This was a good sign - for snowboarding that is. The more snow the better!
After driving to Dayton the night before I knew I needed to allow extra time to get there. I thought 2 hours should give us enough time, so our target departure time was 2:00pm. We happened to time leaving with the last heavy dumping of snow.
I had my half sister take the pictures while I drove - I wanted this one WELL DOCUMENTED! It isn't often here in Ohio that we get snow like this, and it isn't often that the opportunity arises to take advantage of the snow and go snowboarding. That said - we had some serious battling of Mother Nature to do before we could have fun.
This is what we were looking at getting on I-675 North at Route 48, exit 4. Slow traffic and lots of snow! The cars off in the distance are on the on-ramp, the guard rail is on rt.48.
I-675 was moving, but slowly and it was 1 lane. In a few spots the snow was several inches deep on each side of the one lane. In these conditions you wonder why people still get on the road in a car. A 4 wheel drive truck really helps out in these conditions!
The visibility really wasn't THAT bad on 675. You could see for a good 1/2 mile. The snow on the road made it impossible to see the lines, so you had to navigate by the difference in elevation between the roadway and the ditches on each side. The visibility issue wasn't so good once we got on Rt. 4 and on to Rt. 68. Here is a shot not too long after we got on Rt. 4:
I would say that is less than 1/4 mile visibility, wouldn't you? If this was night time it would be a whole different ballgame though!
Rt. 68:
One of our landmarks along the trek is downtown Urbana. They have a neat statue sitting in the middle of Rt. 68. I am not quite sure what it is for, I have never looked at it other than passing it before. There is a round-a-bout there too. We know we are withen about 15 minutes of getting to Mad River Mountain once we hit this point. This time it was a little different.
As we passed through Urbana we saw these guys out on a snowmobile. It looks like a lot of fun! I haven't been on one for about 15 years - my granparents had a couple up in Baudette, MN, when I was a kid. I don't think this one had been running in quite some time - it was puffing out a lot of smoke.
We were looking for a place to get some food before we hit the slopes. Unfortunately all the fast food places were closed. I guess they close down for snow emergencies hehehe. Now we know! So, we stopped by a Shell gas station about 5-10 miles north of Urbana and settled on some junk food. We happened to have this guy come fill up his snow mobile when we were leaving. You DEFINATELY don't see this in Ohio much! You see it all the time up North (Minnesota, Wisconsin), but Ohio?
This is a little back road we take off of Rt. 68. It is about a mile north of the Shell station, County Road 5 I believe? Anywho, major white-out here.
We didn't get any other real exciting pictures before we got there. It snowed all the way there. We were driving in the tail end of the storm so there wasn't much left. When we got our lift tickets the snow stopped. Shortly after our arrival the clouds broke and the sun came out. This was around 5:30pm or so. It stayed clear the rest of the evening. We even caught the sun setting from the top of the hill. I didn't have the camera on me, so no pictures of that. I don't like to carry my camera on the slopes - if I fall it could break.
I came back out to the truck later in the evening, around 7:00 or so, and got a few pictures of the slopes. I did a 5 sequence shot at 2 different exposures. This one was at least 3-4 seconds of exposure.
The drive home was uneventful. It was too dark for the camera to get any decent pictures, the few we do have are extremely blurry (hey, we were moving down the road and the camera wanted a 1/8sec shutter speed - if I went to manual mode and set it to 1/60th to cure the blur there wouldn't be enough light). The roads were better but still snow covered. The plows had been out in force clearing the roads. Rt. 68 was the worst, but no issues there. The first part of I-675 was also not real clear, but as we drove south the conditions got much better. In fact, we were all the way down on pavement in spots.
So that's it for the Great Adventure! I hope you enjoyed the story and the pictures. This only does the adventure partial justice, however. To be there and experience what we did was a truly unique experience!
posted by Steve at
9:49 PM
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