Utah Snow Quotes

Under what circumstances does such outrage thrive? The territory of Utah, glorious as it may be, spiked by granite peaks and red jasper rocks, cut by echoing canyons and ravines, spread upon a wide basin of gamma grass and wandering streams, this land of blowing snow and sand, of iron, copper, and the great salten sea.

The river’s isolation and secrecy, however, were only part of what made it superlative. There was also its vertical drop. The Colorado’s watershed encompasses a series of high-desert plateaus that stretch across the most austere and hostile quarter of the West, an area encompassing one-twelfth the landmass of the continental United States, whose breadth and average height are surpassed only by the highlands of Tibet. Each winter, storms lumbering across the Great Basin build up a thick snowpack along the crest of the mountains that line the perimeter of this plateau—an immense, sickle-shaped curve of peaks whose summits exceed fourteen thousand feet. As the snowmelt cascades off those summits during the spring and spills toward the Sea of Cortés, the water drops more than two and a half miles. That amounts to eight vertical feet per horizontal mile, an angle that is thirty-two times steeper than that of the Mississippi. The grade is unequaled by any major waterway in the contiguous United States and very few long stretches of river beyond the Himalayas. (The Nile, in contrast, falls only six thousand feet in its entire four-thousand-mile trek to the Mediterranean.) Also unlike the Nile, whose discharge is generated primarily by rain, the engine that drives almost all of this activity is snow. This means that the bulk of the Colorado’s discharge tends to come down in one headlong rush. Throughout the autumn and the winter, the river might trickle through the canyonlands of southern Utah at a mere three thousand cubic feet per second. With the melt-out in late May and early June, however, the river’s flow can undergo spectacular bursts of change. In the space of a week, the level can easily surge to 30,000 cfs, and a few days after that it can once again rocket up, surpassing 100,000 cfs. Few rivers on earth can match such manic swings from benign trickle to insane torrent. But the story doesn’t end there, because these savage transitions are exacerbated by yet another unusual phenomenon, one that is a direct outgrowth of the region’s unusual climate and terrain. On

The bizarre killing of the calf and the potentially deadly nighttime encounter with phantom creatures that were shot but left no blood and few tracks did not appear to fulfill the criteria of anything that could be reported at a scientific meeting. Nor could this kind of incident be written up for a peer-reviewed science journal. In fact, beyond the videotaped track in the snow, there was no physical evidence that this incident had ever happened. And at a subsequent Science Advisory Board meeting, the board made it abundantly clear that these events, in the absence of physical evidence, did not constitute verification of anything. Little did we know that these unexpected events would become part of an increasingly frustrating pattern of transient, difficult-to-interpret, but frightening events and phenomena that would never again be repeated in our presence.

One beautiful winter morning when Utah’s deep powder snow was perfect for experienced skiers, he and Elder W. Craig Zwick headed to a nearby resort for a day on the slopes. As they hopped on the four-person chairlift for their umpteenth ride up the mountain, a young man skied up and got on with them. They remarked how wonderful it was that Monday morning to be out in the fresh Utah snow, and the young man responded, “Yes, but my life is in a shambles.” Elder Zwick remembered, “I felt like saying, ‘This is your lucky day,’ and about then the man realized he was on the chairlift with President Nelson and gasped. “In about four minutes,” Elder Zwick related, “President Nelson taught that young man the importance of the Book of Mormon and promised that if he would read it every day, his problems wouldn’t go away but they would be alleviated. That is how clearly he taught” (Church News/KSL Interview, January 5, 2018).

We ignored the temptation to scan the snow-covered perimeter of the pasture for something unworldly that still lurked out there and instead, with a tightness in our guts, went to work. We videotaped the crime scene and scanned the animal and the surrounding ground for magnetic and electric traces, for radio/ microwave residue, and, for the hell of it, for nuclear radiation.

Taking a deep breath, he tucked his shoulders forward and loosened his posture. In an instant he was transformed from an ageless, elegant elf to a slouching human snowboarder. “Humans see only what they expect to see,” he said. “Come on, Pippin. You can pretend to be my dog.” I barked in excitement as Aliiana removed my saddle. I trotted along beside Nelathen as we approached a convenience store on the outskirts of town. “Remember not to talk,” he said as we entered the store through automatic sliding glass doors. I woofed obediently. “Hey,” a poorly-groomed human teenager said from the counter. “Heyyy,” Nelathen drawled, perfectly imitating a Utah human accent. Nelathen wandered around the store, grabbing several bags of organic trail mix, some fresh fruit, and a loaf of whole-grain, organic cranberry bread. “Not as good as elven bread, but it’s passable,” he said in a low voice. He also picked up a bag of Uncle Rover’s Super Yummy Bacon Strips for Dogs. “You deserve a treat,” he said, smiling down at me. I wagged my little nubbin of a tail enthusiastically. Nelathen laid our purchases on the counter, and added a Montana road map. “Cool dog,” the teenager behind the counter remarked as he scanned the items. I remembered that I was supposed to be posing as a regular dog, but I couldn’t help but bark at the compliment. “We’re on our way to the park,” Nelathen said. “Anything we should know about?” The scruffy teenager shrugged. “Snow pack’s good for boarding. They said it sounded like someone was dynamiting east of Lake McDonald Lodge last week, but they couldn’t find anyone. Maybe seismic activity, they said.” “Hmm.” Nelathen paid for our items with human cash. “Thanks.” “Okay, dude. Have fun.

It was late January in Draper, Utah, and as picturesque as the snow on the mountains was, it did not mix well with our modern lifestyle.

the sight of the flat Utah plains giving way to the snow-capped Rocky Mountains was simply breathtaking.

Brigham Young himself had sent my great-great-grandfather, William Jordan Flake, and others down from Utah to colonize the area. Legend has it that after experiencing Arizona’s rugged and unforgiving terrain, some colonizers returned to Utah and told Brigham Young that there was nothing worth settling down there. But Brigham Young had instructed William Jordan to sell everything that he owned—including all of his land holdings in rich Utah bottomland. His exact words were, “Leave nothing to come back to.” And so he did, and he eventually would purchase the valley where Snowflake is today. Shortly thereafter he met up with Erastus Snow, the Mormon apostle who was overseeing the church’s colonization efforts, and they combined their names to give my town its name. My great-great-grandfather was a rancher, and he passed some of the land down to his son, James Madison Flake, and James Madison passed some of it down to my grandfather Virgil Maeser, who passed it down to four of his sons, the eldest of whom is my father, Dean Flake. And that land—the F-Bar Ranch—

Snow is a changing, fragile substance, which accumulates in layers: a deep puffy storm, followed by an inch of rain. Wind crust followed by cold light flakes. Avalanches are a combination of three factors: a sliding surface, a slope steep enough to slide, and a trigger. Here in Utah—and in other high, dry parts of the Rockies—more often than not, there’s a deep unbonded layer in that snowpack that could always slide, given a trigger. It seems to happen the same way almost every season. The first thin snowfall covers the mountains in a crystalized layer of sugar and anticipation. Then it stops, like climatic clockwork, for a few weeks. That layer of unbonded snow is exposed to the air, which sucks out moisture, creating slippery, faceted snow crystals called depth hoar. It forms a perfect sliding surface. When the snow starts in earnest, that surface, which avalanche forecasters call a persistent weak layer, is at the very bottom, slick and unbonded, ready to slide. That’s one of the constant hazards of skiing, you always know it’s down there. Just how big it could break is a question of what comes in on top of it.

Michael Robinson is a Utah real estate investor. He graduated from Brigham Young University, and he has a degree in business and psychology with an emphasis in organizational behavior. Michael is athletic and enjoys running. He has completed X-Terra triathlons and regularly snow skis. He has used his real estate expertise and business acumen to serve the needs of homeless populations in third world countries, providing basic housing needs and resources.

It looked unusual: a single large print in the snow with two sharp claws protruding from the rear of the mark going a couple of inches deeper. It almost looked like a bird of prey, maybe a raptor print, but huge and, from the depth of the print, from a very heavy creature. I began videotaping,