A little windy...

When the weatherman tells you that there's a high wind warning in effect with expected gusts of 85 mph at high elevations do you:

a. Stay home
b. Go outside for a short amount of time, but stick to the low elevations
c. Grab your snowshoes and head to the highest elevation in city limits

If you answered c, then you make the same poor decisions we do.

Weatherman be damned, we headed out to flattop yesterday to do some snowshoeing and take advantage of the new snow we got this week.  Sadly, I think the wind blew it all off the mountain.

About five minutes into the walk, we discovered that Ripley's ears make great weathervanes.

We got to the open portion of the trail, right at powerline pass, and quickly realized we wouldn't be able to go much further, because the wind was knocking us off our feet.

I almost fell down trying to take these pictures, and I had crampons on my feet and I've got what feels like 50 lbs of added winter weight on my body.

Ripley decided the best solution was to run away!

On the way back to the car, we decided to climb up a little hill to the viewpoint and see what the city looked like in the storm.  Again, obviously the best decision when the wind is trying to blow you away is to go UPHILL to a more dangerous location.  They don't teach common sense in law school. 

Ripley was a trooper, but eventually gave up.  He was not happy about the wind.

From the top the view wasn't that exciting.  It's really hard to photograph wind.  It's like trying to draw "sarcasm" when you're playing Pictionary.

Despite the storm we had a pretty good weekend.  Ripley got his first bath in MONTHS and is totally exhausted from the wind and the long walk we took him on today.  We're supposed to close on the new house in less than two weeks and haven't packed a thing (though, to be fair, we barely unpacked the stuff we had moved up from Oregon, so we don't have a ton to do).  We're still dealing with some ups and downs of trying to finalize all the repairs and inspections and whatnot, so there's a chance the closing might be moved.  We'd appreciate it if everyone kept their fingers crossed for us.  We really need to get out of our rental!!