Family Tour: a snowy mountain pass & a mudslide

While my parents were visiting last week we took one day of their visit to do some touring around to show them some of the area that they hadn't yet seen. We left in the morning and headed up to the pass, which had just opened a couple weeks ago (a much later than normal opening date due to all the snow we had this winter). Here are some of the sights at the top. Of course, afterwards I realized that between my mom taking photo's mainly of Little M and my husband taking pics mostly of her too, the day was more a granddaughter photo shoot than a mountain sightseeing trip... but... :) So I stuck some cute ones of Little M in for you to see too!

The teeth on this snow blower were serious sharp

The snowbank on the edge of the road was pretty impressive, especially for this time of year

Little M enjoyed walking around in the snow for the first time (she wasn't walking yet in the winter)

She absolutely loved squashing it under her feet!

After we drove up to the top and turned around we started back down, and stopped at one last lookout to take a group picture and have some lunch. We got to watch a little avalanche come down in pieces above the road, which was pretty neat!

Afterwards, we did a loop drive of my favorite biking loop in the upper valley, and ended up at the mudslide that happened last week. My husband was there shortly after it happened, and it affected one of the lakes that is partly a reservoir for an irrigation ditch that I have worked on a bit through my work, so we thought it would be fun to go up and check it out with the fam. The creek runs down a narrow valley, and what they think happened is it got dammed up in the valley, which allowed a lot of water to pile up and then when it released it just tore down, taking lots of wood and mud with it. It must have been pretty crazy when it happened!

The mudslide wiped out most of an alfalfa field after wiping the road out

The mud line goes way up the hill side

There were lots of trees & boulders along with the mud

big logs got pushed way up the hillside by the force of the mud & water

The stream used to be little and surrounded by lots of vegetation, now the valley is wide open

Once we finished our hike we drove back down and into town to pick some things up to continue our fix-up tasks. I'll keep posting about them over the next couple of days :) There are some we didn't quite finish, so I'm trying to finish them before too long. Expect some hummingbird photos, a how to make your own stair risers post, and maybe even a bit about rewiring the outlet for our new dryer. Have a great weekend everyone!