Читать книгу Shaped by Snow. Defending the Future of Winter онлайн

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We had started our hike from a friend’s home in an area called Grizzly Gulch, located at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon. It was a gorgeous summer morning in the mountains, temperatures in the mid-eighties, no storms in the forecast. My grandparents joined us until we reached the ridge that separates Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. My parents and I continued down to a series of lakes, where we stopped to eat lunch.

My father got a call from Baqui while we ate, warning us that he and my grandma had just been caught in a hail storm. It had moved in from the west, and lasted about two minutes. If I were just visiting the Wasatch I may have thought he was joking. But having grown up in its shadow, I knew how unpredictable the weather patterns could be. Summer afternoons are wildly deceiving, when thunderstorms can build and break on the crowns of the Wasatch while the valley below remains sunny.

Uncertain if we should chance hiking up to the exposed ridgeline or remain by the cover of the trees, we finished our lunch quickly, listening to the high trillllll of a spotted towhee. There was still no sign of any storm. The nearby peak cast its reflection into the calm lake at our feet, a prism frozen in glass. According to my grandparents, there was a hail storm just on the other side of its ridgeline.