Monday, February 17, 2014

Snow Rollers

My first exposure to snow rollers was years ago, when I regularly snowshoed the river. I saw the phenomenon and was quite impressed. 


This morning we received a few inches of new snowfall followed by clearing and a fair amount of wind. The temps were warming and topped out around 35° so the snow was really packing under my snowshoes today. But the woodland trails were a blast and I enjoyed being out. Snow rollers were forming from the drop of a crotch in a tree!


There was extra effort to run today because of the snow and drifting. I plowed through most of my ancillary trails and will need to consider running in the mornings to avoid warm temps the rest of the week.





Cut it short at 5 miles because of the deeper snow. More often than not, I felt like I was running on tennis balls because of packing snow in the bindings. The county had made a loop around the main trail with their groomer so those segments were more runnable. The warmup provided by the need to shovel my drive and sidewalk left me a bit sore on today's total efforts.

2 comments:

  1. Awesome!! I never knew what those were called and have never heard anyone mention them before. I've seen some big ones at the bottom of the bluffs along the Cedar River here in Osage.

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  2. Yeah, Joe...weather has to be just right for these to form. Seen here in Iowa but
    more common in Ohio and Pennsylvania I understand.

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