[check back for pictures in the next day or two!]
This past week has been pretty intense here in Southern California. For five days straight we’ve been having rain and wind akin to small monsoons. It was pretty weird…every day a new storm would roll through, with pouring rain and heavy winds. This kind of weather is very unusual for Southern California, and a 5 day stretch of it is almost unheard of. Lots of records were broken, including a barometric pressure reading that was originally set in the late 1800′s.
Even though it was pretty depressing after the first few days, we did get some cool thunderstorms – something I thought I wouldn’t see much of since San Diego rarely gets them. I love thunderstorms and can’t get enough of them!
Another benefit of these storms was the fact that they dumped a LOT of snow in the local mountains! This means some goooood snowboarding!
Yesterday Val and I went up to Mt. Baldy which is just a bit northeast of LA. It’s 8600′ at the peak I think. You have to put chains on your tires if you don’t have 4 wheel drive. The mountain roads got kind of treacherous as you get higher, and at one point I had to turn around because even with chains I wasn’t getting any traction on the road. My tires were spinning and I wasn’t going anywhere.
Mt. Baldy is a quaint mountain – I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s pretty natural – it’s not like they cleared out a bunch of trees and rocks to make wide open trails – instead they left a lot of natural obstacles. The chairlifts are kind of old too, and known to stop for periods of time. I’m not sure why the lifts stop, but it’s kind of weird.
It got pretty snowy and windy by the time we eventually made our way to the summit, and getting down was pretty much an exercise in blind snowboarding. There was so much powder though! It makes such a huge difference – you really feel like you’re floating through the snow instead of scratching over it.
On the way home we saw the most AMAZING sunset I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t believe it. I took pictures but it just doesn’t do it justice at all. The sky opened up in multiple layers of orange, purple, and blue. It was intense. Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful sunset.
Looks like we’re going to hit Mt. High tomorrow for round two, trying to take advantage of all the new snow while we can! Since we had so much rain recently we have to wait a bit to surf since all that rainwater causes massive amounts of polluted runoff to drain into the ocean. This can be pretty dangerous to swim in, and the risk of getting some sort of infection is sadly kind of high. It’s an unfortunate fact of life here in California.