The road up to Bunny flat opened this afternoon

A friend of mine's girlfriend said she heard the big snow plows driving down the mountain earlier this afternoon so they decided to load up their mountaineering skis to see if the road had opened up to Bunny. Sure enough it had. It was like a dream in some ways because I haven't seen this much snow starting at such  low altitude in years before this. When we got to Bunny Flat you could not see the mountain or the Flat area or up on the mountain because standing next to my truck was at least 20 feet of snow. Even trying to get up on top of the snow was dangerous and I realized though I could safely get on top that unless I was going to ski over to Lower Sand Flat Road it wouldn't be safe for me to come down the one place where it was about 15 feet vertical I would have to climb down from the top of the snow at the very end of the road. The Forest Service rest room likely had the most snow I have seen on it maybe since the 1990s from my point of view as well. My friends climbed the 15 feet of snow at the end of the road or more and called to say going up Bunny was maybe the best snow they had ever seen there.

So, realizing that unless I skied down to Sand Flats which I didn't feel strong enough to do today I realized getting up on top of the snow wasn't a good idea until more people had beaten it down more which might make it safer. My two friends were the absolute first people to ski Bunny since the snows of the last few days. It's supposed to snow Saturday up here too. Basically I wasn't willing to fall  10 or 15 feet onto hard snow pushed up along the base like ice on a lake by the snow plows.

I was able to drive down to Lower Sand Flats road and to get up on top of the snow (which was about a 15 foot drift of snow there. But, this was safer to do because of the conditions of the snow there. So, when I climbed up to the top and the snow  it  gave way I only fell back 2 or 3 feet and just kept going up until I was standing on my skis on top of the 15 feet of snow there. The average depth at Lower Sand Flats road was according to the snow gauge there about 8 feet of snow with a drift you have to climb to get onto lower sand flats road of about 15 feet in height.

I was able to get pictures of the virgin snow at Lower Sand Flat road before anyone had skied the new snow at all and saw bunny tracks and a squirrel looking for food and a crow cawing nearby. It was pretty magical just standing there on top of 15 feet of snow looking at all the snow still hanging in the trees from the snow storm the last couple of days.

Those moments alone at Lower Sand Flats road by themselves made the whole week here so far in Mt. Shasta worthwhile. I felt a peace in those moments that was really really amazing!


So, imagine 5 to 10 feet more than this! This is what we saw today on March 7th 2019