NNG - La Veta Snow

While La Veta Pass may not get the snow that Chama, Cumbres, Durango and rest of the western slope has been getting, we are having our fun too.

This morning the Antonito crew had the fun of digging through a foot of snow looking for switches. Up on the hill it has been snowing pretty much all weekend and all of Monday. Our ballast regulator does pretty well pushing back new snow, but today it couldn't cope with 1 foot of new snow on the rails. They got up the west side of the hill about 2 miles above Sierra and gave up.

With little chance of getting through with a freight train, I left Alamosa at 815pm with 2 GE's and punched a hole through the snow so that hopefully tomorrow the regulator can get up there and widen the snow cut to keep the snow out of the brake shoes.

It was clear sailing as far as Sierra with only intermittent snow. We started up the hill and the blizzard commenced. It was white out conditions most of the way to La Veta. The snow was a good foot over the rail most of the way. A mile below Fir at MP 208.5 a 6-7 foot drift covered the the right hand rail, with only a couple of feet on the left rail. The drift covered the front of 8542.

We got to La Veta at just before 1100pm, swapped ends and headed back into the whiteout. In many places you could not tell we were even through there just an hour ago. The big drift at 208.5 had not filled in again thankfully.

We got back into Alamosa at 215am in nearly whiteout conditions. The snow reflecting off all the city lights lit the yard up with an odd orange twilight glow.

The pic below was taken with my point and shoot digital set for asa 400, wide open shutter at 1/8 sec - HAND HELD.

Not as cool as JBW's shot of 487 in Chama back in 1961, but you take what you can get.