Until this week, this had been an easy winter. I hadn’t touched my snow shovel, but the basin snowpack was above average. Fortune must be smiling when Monarch gets ample snow and Salida doesn’t get enough to matter.
Indeed, when I moved here from Kremmling in 1978, locals praised “our mild winters.” A week after Thanksgiving that year, the “mildness” involved 25 inches of snow and 29 below zero temperatures. Our water pipes froze, and with two small children at home, life was challenging for a few days.
Even so, Kremmling was colder, with week upon week of 40-below nights and daily highs that never reached freezing. There, I learned that you can dress for 20 below. At 40 below, your bones will get cold no matter how much you wear.
Kremmling wasn’t even the coldest spot in Grand County, which is home to Fraser, then claiming to be “the Icebox of the Nation.” (Following a long wrangle, International Falls, Minn., now owns that title.) But old-timers swore that nearby Tabernash was even colder.
It never had an official weather station to confirm their claims, but Tabernash had been a helper station in the days of steam locomotives. They told me that giant articulated mallets, among the most powerful locomotives ever made, would freeze to the rails, and the ice had to be broken with sledgehammers to get the helpers moving.
Of course, when you listen to old-timers, the winters were always harder back in the day. However, Colorado’s coldest recorded temperature is relatively recent: 61 below zero in Maybell (west of Craig in Moffat County) on Feb. 1, 1985. Before that, the record was 60 below in Taylor Park, north of Gunnison, on Feb. 1, 1951.
In some ways, though, the old-timers might be right, in that no matter how cold it gets, Colorado winters seem easier to handle now. For instance, modern cars have fuel injection rather than carburetors, and they almost always start.
For a traditional mountain morning, try starting an old pickup with a manual choke during a subzero sunrise. And when it barely cranks and won’t catch, untangle some frozen jumper cables, assuming you can find a neighbor who got his beater running.
For another modern improvement, I must first explain that on a winter day eight years ago, the federal Department of Homeland Security advised us to be ready to seal our windows with plastic and duct tape, just in case.
Martha and I were then publishing a little regional monthly magazine. Magazines are supposed to have catch-lines, like “The authoritative guide to conspicuous consumption.” We never could decide on a permanent catch-line, so we changed it every month. That month it was “The monthly magazine for people who already have plastic and duct tape over their windows.”
That is how you “winterized” in the mountains.
But last year, Martha learned a trick from a colleague at work. Instead of covering the outside of the window with plastic, apply bubble-wrap to the inside. No stapling or taping is involved. Just cut pieces to fit, spray the window panes with water (a plant mister works well), and apply. Generally it stays up all winter, and if the bubble-wrap slips, another jolt with the mister holds it back in place. You can use the same pieces for years.
Bubble-wrap, thanks to its trapped dead-air space, is a good insulator. Our house is much more comfortable, even if the view out the windows is rather blurry. Now, if only modern technology could bring in firewood and walk the dog, I’d feel even better about these days when Colorado reminds us of the true meaning of winter.
Ed Quillen (ekquillen@) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
