The earth turns on its axis every 24 hours give or take a nano second here and there. In each of our own spots, the sun thus rises and sets once every 24. Here, in my spot, this event has been hidden from sight – for nearly 10 days – not counting the fact that we did indeed have some day light and a lot of dark night.
This morning…a very welcome visible sunrise.
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.
When the temperature is below freezing and there is fog, then we have freezing fog. We have it now. We are forecast to have it until late next week. Here is what it looks like…
No mountain tops, a haze of cold fog that freezes as ice crystals on some of the trees. I am not sure why some trees and not others, but I’m guessing that just like fog swirls around things, this freezing fog swirls also, hitting some trees and not others.
It hits the roads also and it hit my road. I was going to take Karl to the park by the lake and see what things looked like there, but after seeing my road I changed my mind and we walked here at home. And since the lake keeps things warmer around it, there might have been nothing to see…
Freezing fog or not, we walk and we play…
The soccer ball is close to being skinned. This particular ball was acquired in Ohio in Spring of 2006. Maybe we’ll spring for a new one THIS Spring!
The day needed a bit of adventure and some color. I set off in my brightest jacket and scarf, on snowshoes, with Karl, camera and tripod, intending to get a photo of Karl and I with the mountains in the background…
When I trained Karl, I taught hand signals as well as voice commands. Those last 2 photos – crouched down and arms to the side is the “Come” signal for Karl. Usually he comes running…
The tripod was apparently off-putting. He has figured out that it means he has to do something and do it for a long time, while I run back and forth like a crazy person. He opted out of participating this day.
So, it is me with the mountains in the background.
Karl waited patiently out of the fray. As soon as I put the tripod away, he trotted over to the photo venue all waggy-tail. I don’t know where he gets the “I’m just going to do what I want to do and that’s it” behavior…
There are days when the sky here looks as if it were painted with water colors – soft, smudged clouds against a pale blue sky. Yesterday was that kind of day.
A special hello to Ms. Moser’s class in Louisiana! The class has been looking in on From the Front Porch as they study things like freezing point and melting point, and what life is like in the northern part of the United States where Karl, Bob and I live, compared to the southern part of the United States where they live. Thank you to the class for the wonderful photo saying hello to Karl, Bob and I!