Perhaps - in a sense - I've been just a bit premature in my assessments. It seems that the recent blogospherical allusions I’ve made toward the first faint shifts of stirring spring only hold true across the gentle expanse of the Willamette Valley’s low-lying bottomlands. You see, over every hillside and slope from the jumbled basalt foothills of the Cascades in the east to the weathered and rumpled rise of the Coast Range in the west, snow lies heavy upon an ocean of boughs and continues to build. On the high periphery of this good land, of the front-yards green and dead-grass pastures brown, of the wide alluvial flats, there sweeps a pale arc, an uneven, broken-up crown of countless enshrouded ridges and folds extending in every degree, a chill mantle over wild crags strangely softened, rendered vague and homogenous beneath shifting layers of white. I suppose when I mentioned the promise of spring, I was speaking too locally, being temporally myopic, not looking beyond the immediate experience on - and conditions of - my front porch. If I'd paid more attention, I'd have noticed that my home is currently an exception, just a mild late-winter oasis in the midst of an unrelenting freeze.
I'm not surprised that I got ahead of myself. This is not new territory. For me, there is often a unique kind of schizophrenia which accompanies seasonal transitions, an irrational internal review of what is going on around me; a few days back, this condition manifested itself as the arguing voices of two of the Good Earth's spirits urging me in opposite directions.
They both sounded like Rain Man:
“Look at the garden, it is such a mess” one voice, that of the coming warm days seemed to say. “You need to get out there and start making sense of things, put the beds in order, think about what you need to grow this year…”
The other voice, possessed by the spirit of the cold season, offered a challenge, disagreed. “This is the time to be in the mountains. You love the starkness of winter, don't give up on it already, don't let yourself yearn for easy days in the sun. Forget about yard work, there is plenty of time for that. Get in the car and head up to the pass to Hoodoo. Strap on your snowshoes. Head into distance. Dig a cave. Feel the rawness of the frozen wilderness…”
And a few days back, that second voice, the bone-chilling, teeth-chattering advocate for continued winter won me over.
Being prone to dramatizations, I couldn't just say to my gang "you guys ready to play in the snow..." I had to couch things in the framework of a grand vision. Thus, I invited my friends on what I called Operation Crystal Palace.
My plan was to redefine our approach to the art of digging snow caves. In my mind, it was time for a paradigm shift in our work. Though we'd done well in the past, we needed to excavate deeper, carve wider and higher, craft a chamber big enough to sleep all of us, to sit comfortably in, to weather the fiercest storms that could ever howl across the vast open saddle between Three Fingered Jack and the scree piles ringing Mt. Washington. I challenged my cronies to help me build a palatial cavern beneath the Cascadian drifts.
In the end, two thirds of the invitees, to put things in the familiarly coarse colloquial terminology of Silverton, ended up shitting out.
Hansel claimed that, as he’d spent the better part of the previous week shoveling snow from his driveway and the walkway in front of his office, he’d lost any romantic notions of driving an hour from home just to dig in a place which had even more snow. It seemed plausible. He is forgiven for his lack of enthusiasm, although I still suspect that the Super Bowl played a role.
Kimo was ostensibly signed on for a few days prior to the weekend, but called in his cancellation on Friday afternoon. He has chosen to return to college in his mid-thirties. Apparently, homework takes precedence over high adventure in his world of bookwormery. His rationale for not joining the expedition was sensible, but didn’t seem laudable.
Of those who should’ve come along, only Esqueleto remained steadfast in his commitment to the grand scheme. He arrived late, as usual. But he arrived.
I must say that I can’t clearly remember a time when there was more snow in the mountains than there was yesterday. We drove for miles through what was – essentially – a tunnel of plowed gravel-stained icy layers, heaped high along the roadside and planed flat by the spinning blades of monstrous diesel fired snow blowers. Passing beneath the gnarly face of Hogg Rock, I could see massive cornices curling out into the whirling void from the crumbling fringe of the flat-topped tuya. Just three days prior, an avalanche had swept down that same rocky face, blocking the highway for two days, bringing east-west passage to a complete halt. Secretly, I kept my fingers crossed, hoping that this would not be the moment when the Supreme Being would decide to smite me.
Such is the current workload of the highway crews, that no one was available to maintain the Ray Benson sno-park. We pulled off the main road to find access blocked. No way forward into what is usually a busy and bustling lot for winter adventurers of every sort. That pretty much summed up the state of things.
Parking along the edge of the access road, Esqueleto and I buckled into our aluminum snowshoes and plunged out in search of a likely site to dig. Not wishing to carry our hodgepodge of shovels, snow removal sleds, and other assorted implements any farther than was necessary through what was a very cold, intensely strong west wind, we kicked steps up over the embankment at the first likely looking spot. As we cleared the top, we saw a perfect open clearing before us. Walking no more than twenty paces east, we set down our packs and went to work.
The key to the dramatic success of Operation Crystal Palace – in contrast to prior expeditions – was the use of oversized grain shovels. Where we’d struggled previously to set a good pace, yesterday’s selection of flat-scooped, D-handled tools cleared what seemed like cubic yards every minute. Labor divisions were made promptly. Esqueleto was the tunneler. I was in charge of snow removal and disposal. Effortlessly, we dug a shaft four feet around and six-plus feet deep, deep enough to ensure that once we’d cut an access tunnel to the location of our main chamber, we’d have ample room to dig vertically, to create a high arched ceiling.
Having established the maximum depth of our vertical shaft, Esqueleto and I determined that a down-sloping access tube of approximately three feet in diameter should be dug to the point at which the compaction of the snow became resistant to our efforts. After extending this tube at a gentle gradient for some seven feet, we encountered this resistance at roughly the level where pine needles began to appear. At this point, our progress came more slowly, and was harder won.
Once the access tube was complete, our two main challenges appeared.
Esqueleto’s main obstacle was making room to use his shovel effectively. At the end of the access pipe, he needed to begin digging vertically, to carve out a sort of wind-lock, a step from the tube into what would become the main cave. To do this required all kinds of awkward, acrobatic contortions. Useful angles for leveraging his shovel were hard to find. He was often forced to lie on his back, pulling chunks of compressed snow down on top of his own face. The debris he loosened then had to be shoved beneath him, kicked to within reach of my ability to clear it from the tube.
My struggle was to continually scoop as far as possible into the access tube, remove shovelfuls of accumulated waste, drag the shovel back up the tube, and fling everything over my head into the trees. It was a highly uncomfortable, repetitive motion. The nearest work I can liken it to is the task of throwing one hay-bale after another onto the back of a farm truck, with every throw needing to be higher and harder.
We went on like this for quite a while – it was a slow process.
When Esqueleto’s body finally disappeared upward, when all I could see were his leather boots, I knew the hard part was over for him. As he expanded the space above his head, he was able to dig more efficiently, removing great hunks of snow at a time. At an ever quickening pace, they tumbled into the access tunnel like pale white cheese curds – sounds odd but that is exactly what they resembled.
From this point on, his work was focus on crafting a roomy, aesthetically pleasing cavern. My work was figuring out how the heck to keep the access tube open, to keep ahead of the seemingly endless volume of carvings and accumulated waste which threatened to seal my companion in. If Esqueleto only knew the sacrifices my lower back made to ensure his uninterrupted oxygen supply.
And finally, there was silence. Snow ceased its incessant floorward tumble. A shovel slid down the access tube. The voice of my friend called out from the darkness “Dude, come on in…”
Crawling down through the entrance tunnel, I blocked off the light behind me. Inching forward, everything was black for a moment until a soft sapphire blue light suffused luminously before me, the subtle glow of sunlight filtering through a ceiling of deep snow. Esqueleto sat upright on the flat floor of a six foot by six foot chamber. As I climbed up to join him on the platform, exposing the open tube once more, dazzling white light blazed in, illuminating our unqualified success.
Hands stiffening and trunk sore, I laid back to rest. Even with both of us sprawled out comfortably, making no effort to save space, there was ample room for two more bodies. As the minutes extended into a half-hour or more, the air inside of the cave warmed. Gloves could be removed. The world beneath the howling snowstorm above was serene and quiet. At that moment, I regretted only that I’d not brought along a foam pad and a sleeping bag – if I had, I would’ve spent the night.
After making some small refinements to the cave’s interior and discussing the decorative bric-a-brac we should’ve brought along, we packed up our things and left the cave behind. Turning before we descended to the snowbound road, we paused to make note of useful landmarks, of natural signposts which could lead us back, which could enable us to find our frozen refuge in the weeks to come. “First silver snag east of the road as it forks. Look left at the black plastic depth gauge.” I said to my companion. “Don’t forget…”
And so we had our success, and have reconnected with the spirit of winter in a manner which will beg return to the white heights. Out there, in the forest to the east of Hayrick Butte, we have a refuge and a gathering place. In but a little while, Hansel will be goaded into a new expedition. At some point, Kimo will be convinced to set down his textbooks. We’ll return to the Crystal Palace with everything we need to camp out in style. I can see us there now - fully equipped with a miniature velvet wall hanging of Elvis Presley, with some of those dangling flower-child beads to screen the access tube, with a box of Nag Champa incense to mask the sharp carbonic scent of the snowy chamber walls, with an LED lantern, and with sleeping bags. Thus decked out and occupied, even more than in its current unadorned simplicity, it will be a snow cave to remember, one to tell the grandchildren about.
We’ll return soon, before the beginning of the thaw. And that last winter hurrah will be a memorable time in the wild, a celebration of idleness in the midst of our work. We’ll rest like kings in a transitory domain, regal inhabitants of a meltaway realm…
The great woolen rug – a gift from the improbably eccentric Firouz Ahangarani, my former employer, personal mentor, and long-time confidante – with all of its masterful indigo and burgundy intricacies looked particularly lovely this morning in the pale blue light of the local news. Recalling the morning, a few months back, when a strangely enthusiastic weatherman recounted the tragic blowdown of the world’s tallest Sitka Spruce near the western terminus of Highway 26, I flashed on an idyllic scene, experienced an imagined image of this massive textile’s genius weaver, the creator of my most treasured carpet, a man known to posterity as Haj Agha Reza Seirafian, at work in his dusty Isfahan atelier, surrounded by nearly infinite spools of thread and colored yarn, in the presence of his seven sons, each a master in his own right. 
