Meemo in the Mountains: More Weather Woes!


Our road at the bridge!

Our road at the bridge 9 hours later!

Click on the pictures to make them bigger and hit the back button to return to the blog.

The old saying "when it rains, it pours", has never been truer, literally, than this past week! Right after we returned from Danny's big wet, muddy mess we had another fairly exciting and definitely wet mess here!

On Friday night we headed over to Steamboat Springs of an alumni dinner for CSU. It looked pretty cloudy as we left and there were heavy black clouds hanging on the mountain. I even mentioned to Bob that it might be raining over in Steamboat. Well, it began raining hard about the time we got to Muddy Pass and started up Rabbit Ears Pass. By the time we got to town the rain was so hard it was running down the streets and it was so dark we had to have headlights. We lucked out and found a parking place right in front of the restaurant but some people said they had to wade through ankle deep water to get to the door!

This was a river running right below our house the night before!

A couple hours later it was time to head home. The sun was shining on the mountain and there were blue skies over head ( at 8:30 PM). I was wishing I had brought my camera because there were little patches of clouds caught in the treetops as we started up the pass. Very cool sight.

By the time we were on our "home road" about an hour later it was plenty dark and we could see big puddles and little washouts going down into the draw. Bob commented that it must have rained at home, too, and John would need to get the water stopped on the road before it washed out any further. We pressed on and I began wondering if the river by our house might be high enough to go over the road. We got to the bridge and the water was roaring under it, but just on the other side we encountered about 10 inches of water rushing over the road and making a big waterfall on the other side before it went back into the river. Too dark for pictures even if I had my camera! We drove in water over the road for about 75 feet. We got home and I had to take a flashlight outside to see how high the river had come up toward the house! The "kick the can" area of the yard was a little island with water running all around it! The water came up to the bottom of the hill where the house stands!

Taken from the sandpile, this was running much higher the night before.

Headed back to the main stream!

The next morning I got up early and ran out to get pictures although the water was down a bit. You could still see where it had been and it was still out on the road but not much of a waterfall and only maybe 50 feet of water across the road. This was probably 12 hours after it had rained here!

I am standing where the water came to when we came home.

This was a big waterfall. It's still washing down there pretty good 12 hours later.

Then yesterday afternoon we were headed back to Steamboat Springs for another CSU activity. The water was off the road and Holy Cow! The road was washed out with only a big pile of rocks left!

What we came upon that afternoon!

There's the dirt and gravel from the road. Went down with the waterfall!

A big hole we had to drive around to get across the bridge.

Still no camera so we picked our way around the worst part and made it. When we got down to Uncle Albert's old house we noticed the the current owner had come up sometime that day. He was out on the hill behind the house and we waved to him. He kind of pointed at the road in front of us and WOW! The whole side of the hill had washed out and slid down onto the road!

The big washout at Uncle Albert house.

We had driven through there the night before and I guess he said Harvat's hired man told him it had slid down not more than 5 or 10 minutes after we had gone by! ( for those familiar with this place it came down right where the springs are--also I think our phone line since we don't have a phone again). Big trees and rocks and dirt all came down the hill! What a mess. He was lucky it missed the house!

Richard comes to the rescue!

Richard Wamsley was just coming down the hill with his Cat as we got there. We decided to go around through the meadow and Richard said he'd have it all cleaned up off the road by the time we came home and he did!