One would be getting almost all of Octobers average snowfall coming down while we were here. Then have eagle feather rime ice cover everything on the summit. Then have a storm cover those formations with pop corn rime, and turn it into massive shapes, like you see in historic polar photographs. Fog doesn’t do justice to spectacular rime formations, so have a red sunrise light it for 15 minutes, while rain is coming down. To the east a spectacular sunrise and to the west the sky ebony black with a double rainbow over the tower. The only thing preventing it from being a “10,” the lack of celestial music.

 

 

Then throw in a night with an aurora lighting the northern sky, while more stars than you have ever seen are the background for the Milky Way, the backbone of the sky. Take a morning when freezing rain is coming down and the glaze ice is accumulating at the rate of 4 inches per hours on the metal and instruments on top of the tower. The chunks battered off by the observers, big enough and heavy enough for a mason to build a wall with. Add a day that was crystal clear up here, with 130 mile visibility, but overcast everywhere below. You see the clouds flowing over the hidden southern peaks, then dropping down into the Dry River, before rising up as they hit the ridges to the southeast and explode in turbulence that rises higher than any other cloud in the sky.

 

Having these experiences with a group of like-minded people, with as much enthusiasm for what is found up here as you have is another big plus. When you look at the number of days, in the monthly weather summary, that there is fog on the summit, it paints a bleak picture. It’s those moments when it is not foggy that takes your breath away, and is the reason why we come here. Yea, I think we had a good week.