Snowmageddon escape to town

Saturday, day 7 without power, we decided to brave the trip to town -- not sure of what we would find along our roadway or how well the 4Runner could handle the snowy conditions. Our first (and only) real test came on our driveway. The car was in 4wheel-high. About 50 feet from the garage, the rear end did a serious squiggle. After a brief pause to recover our nerve, we proceeded to the wicked 90 degree turn toward the road. That was easier than the first scary spot. No slipping or sliding. Slowly we proceeded down the hill. Once we reached Willy's place, the road was well-traveled and not as scary. There were still all kinds of limbs and sticks in the roadway. Seems the other drivers (all men) would rather just run over them than get out of the car and move them out of the way. Then we encountered a small cedar tree across the road, about 4" diameter. We'd rather not drive over it. Nancy got out to toss it out of the way, but it still had limbs so buried in snow that she could not move it. About that time an approaching truck pulled to the side of the road and a very young driver, one of Willie's grandsons, hopped out. He made short work of flipping the tree into the ditch, and again we were on our way.
Starting down our road. Down to slushy gravel in most places.	Approaching the bottom of our hill, rootball of a very large tree
Finally we made it to the highway-- were blown away by the devastation.
The stop sign at the bottom of our hill. Notice the power line angling across our road.	Timber debris lay all along the highway. This is between just hundred feet or so from our road.
A power line still buried in tree debris at the trailer park	Maypole North Umpqua style - power lines severed on both sides of the pole.
It was mind-boggling how many huge trees had fallen.	This power pole had just snapped off.
First stop in Glide, which had had power since Monday, where we took the most wonderful showers of our lives at a friend's house. Flowing hot water! Clean bodies and hair! What luxuries! Then we headed on into Roseburg. Much of the snow had melted down there, but the evidence of how much they had gotten was still amazing.
Parking lots everywhere had huge piles of snow. The wall in front of the library was especially impressive.	Snow on surrounding hillsides and on cars at the dealerships.
Mt. Scott in the evening on our return trip home. Quite an eerie cloud nestled below the mountain.	On our way home, we saw PP&L trucks. Hurray!!!
Back at home, we had replenished food and gasoline, plus we knew we could get out easily iif we needed more. The weather forecast was for sunny skies. And the solar panels were making electricity. We coudl handle many more days without power.
Traveling the well-worn path to the solar building to check on things.	The snow has mostly melted from the solar panels, but the junction box seems to have taken a serious shove.
The snow has fallen off the barn roof and we've shoveled a clear route for the tractor.	HOORAY! A PP&L truck is in OUR driveway. What a beautiful sight!
The PPL scout told us they were doing prep work along the highway -- replacing poles and cross-arms -- but at the same time other crews were working on the side road problems. They were up at Frank and Jeanne's road, headed east. They'd be on our hill next. When the prep was done and new wire was strung along the highway, it would go fast. He estimated a couple days. We didn't dare believe it. Monday we headed back to town. There were appointments to keep. We still didn't have power. PP&L was working on the 7 miles between us and Idleyld Park. They were going to pull wire -- 6 miles of wire! Susan Creek Trailer Park was the waiting point for the pilot car. Several log trucks had already beaten us there. No, those logs were not from along the highway, but from a normal logging job. We were piloted all the way to Swiftwater, 6 miles.
The generator keeping our phones working. It's chained to the phone box. Everyone wants a generator!	First bucket truck we saw, at the trailer park.
Another bucket truck	And another
And another	Replacement pole waiting to be installed
And another	And another
These linemen had finished rewiring our hill and were taking a well-deserved break. We hollered thanks at every PPL truck we passed!
Every tree that fell left its mark on power lines, landscape, or guard rails. ODOT will be replacing guard rails for a very long time. We went back a week or so later to photograph guard rails. Be sure to notice the banner picture - that was taken on Saturday when the logs hadn't been removed yet.
Worse break we saw. Ding! Ding! Dang!!!! How much force does it take to break the rail clean off like that?
Ding! Ding!	Ding! Ding!
5 hits in a 25' section of rail. Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!	Ding!
Ding!	Ding! Ding!
Monday night about 8:40 pm Dianne was talking on the phone when it went dead. Darn it! What now? We were discussing the situation when Dianne happened to notice the oven -- its clock was showing the time! "The power is on!" God Bless the Linemen!!!! We turned on lights. We flipped the panelbox switches back to normal. We flushed! In short, we celebrated. Life only got better from this point on. No more melting snow to flush. No more cranking on the generator. No more cooking supper outside in the dark while the temp was in the low 30s. We can take baths! We can wash our hair. We can wash dishes in more than a pint of water. We can flush!
The 2019 Snowmageddon is over!
For those of us with short legs, it is exhausting to romp in 14" of snow. Patches of sunshine were made to snooze in.
And now, the clean-up. For starters, once the laundry room lights were on, we were astonished at the amount of forest debris littering the floor. We couldn't see it by lantern-light. It was great to be able to vacuum. The outside clean-up will take much longer. In the week after the power was restored, a crew came by checking all the lines and poles. One of them mentioned that the pole along our driveway needs replacing: the top few feet is split. And the cross-arm on a pole toward Cheryl and Jerry's needs replacing too. We checked it out, and he was right. But we didn't talk to everyone on the crew. After the snow was mostly gone, we did our own walk-about. Here is what we discovered.
This is one of the largest trees on the property: an incense cedar over 6' in diameter at breast height. The red circle indicates the broken-off limb that nailed one of our power poles.	A portion of the limb after the repair guys cut it up. Easy 10" in diameter. That thing fell from way up, driven by a heavy snow load.
What was left of the cross arm
Evidence of creative linemen. To keep the pole upright, they pounded into the enlarged hole 2 chunks of cedar and an insulator. Well, when there's a foot of snow and dozens of repairs waiting, you do what you have to. Guess that pole needs some work too.
While on that walkabout we discovered something else. A tangle of huge downed trees that were CUT. Not the results of heavy snow, but felled by the cleanup and repair crews. We never got down here during Snowmageddon, and we wish now that we had. Clearly there was some problem that required getting those trees down. Each one dropped on top of the other. Two big cedars on top of a really big fir, with a nice-sized madrone beside that, and a few more smaller cedars here and there. This is going to take a while to clean up -- with hired labor! We'd feel better about the project if cedar were decent firewood, but it's not. We can't just ignore this, because the tops landed smack in the bottom loop of our tractor road to access this bottom part of the property.
The trees are so tall you can not get the stump and the top in the same photo. Nancy is standing on a stump.	The tops. See Nancy way back there. She is still standing on that same stump.
Everybody around here has their own Snowmageddon stories, and every time we get together with friends, stories are exchanged. "When did your power come on?" is usually the first question. So far, we win! Snowmageddon 2019 is one for the history books!