Climbing After Dark

It was late on a Friday night, my friends and I sit in a crowded dorm room thinking there has to be something better than this. We looked out the window into the blizzard outside. It didn’t look like anything was alive out there. We saw no signs of life, no cars driving by or people walking down the sidewalk. Certainly strange because this was Houghton Michigan, a town that celebrates the snow and is very active during the winter nights. However this night was different, little did we know that this was the storm that would drop 2 feet of snow in several hours and leave Michigan Tech cancelled for two days.

So like all great ideas that my friends and I have, we decided that we were gonna venture out into the storm and do some ice climbing. We gathered up all of our gear and headed down the narrow hallways. Passing all sorts of people who made the smarter choice to stay inside, where it was warm and safe. We ran into several problems along the way, the first of which was opening the door. The door between us and our half a mile hike to the lot 21 was barricaded with snow. All  of us pushed hard on the door and were able to open it about 8 inches, just enough for us and our gear squeak out the door. Outside presented us even more challenges, the wind was brutal and the snow drifts deep. We strapped on our snow shoes just so we could cross the parking lot. Heading up the hill was tough, it felt like for every two steps forward we went five steps back. Somehow we made it to the dreaded lot 21 which was the furthest lot away. On the top of a hill that had no protection from the elements. The snow drifts in that parking lot were so bad that the snow packed between the rows of cars creating several massive drifts. This is when I asked the question nobody wanted to ask “Evan do you remember where you parked?” 

After a good half an hour we found Evans Subaru. Sticking out from the snow was his black ski box mounted to the top of his car. If it wasn’t for the black ski box, we would have never found his car. After another 30 minutes of digging, we dislodged the Subaru from its snowy grave.  Now all that lay between us and some of the best ice climbing of the season were several five foot tall snow banks. We accelerated towards the first snow bank, only to find out that….Too be continued…..

 

This picture was taken a day after the snow storm. Cars remained buried for several days.