Finding Drifter

It all started with a family road trip out to see our beloved Wild Alberta mountain horses on march 2nd. We had just enjoyed 2 weeks of warm weather, no snow, and sunshine. so when we planned our trip on sunday night, we were not to worried about the 9% chance of snow, it was just +12. If anything, it might just be a few snow flakes…right?… Wrong!!! We were so very wrong.

We set up our camp on sunday night. Followed by making the kids supper on the fire, roasted marshmellows and a cozy warm fire, then the kids were off to bed.Later this evening we were greeted with warm weather, no wind and a clear sky full of stars. wild horses in the distance, It was beautiful. what a great start to a beautiful week camping! However what we would find monday morning, nobody expected. the 9% chance of snow turned into 8 inches over night. While I know most of you are thinking “it’s Alberta! what did you expect!”…right? well the thing is.. with Alberta we also tend to ignore weather reports because its Alberta, it tells you it will snow and it rains, it tells you there’s no wind today but then your trampoline blows over..we all know how it works, so we took a chance on the 9% chance being untrue… well it definitely was untrue. it was 100% chance of snow! Now in most cases no big deal. However where we decided to camp was on a mountain top. no way down but straight. and at the bottom of the mountain is a river… so we could either take our chances on driving down and sliding, or staying put. we chose the latter option, leaving us stuck for 4 days. One thing you do learn out in the back country with no cell service, is how to rely on yourself, how to pack accordingly, and you know there is never such thing as packing too much, you would rather pack and not need it than not pack and need it. so we were well prepared for this with lots of food, and lots of warmth. Now we planned to be out here anyways.. so it didn’t really affected our plans too much. other than we could not move camp! we could however, still drive our awesome 4x4, so that’s what we did, by tuesday the snowing had stopped, and we began our journey looking for wild horses. all was going well, our vehicle was handling the roads fairly well considering we were plowing the roads ourselves.. however my daughter lost her book and we needed to pull over to get it for her, no big deal we pulled over, got her book, and got back in. however when we put it in drive…we did not go straight….we went completely sideways! down the ditch we went! no big dea or vehicle could handle it! got back onto the road and continued on our way laughing at the silliness that had just taken place,we had made it through most of the day, it was now late afternoon we turned around and started back tracking our way back to our camp. Now this is where everything went sideways. the day was warm, sun was out, and while we were traveling in, the roads were frozen and easy to drive, however by the time we started our journey back, we were noticing some minor issues… the snow was now wet, sticky, and slippery!!! We had one big mountain left to climb before we were on the home stretch back to camp.. could we make it? we thought so! so up the mountain we went.. no problem! until about the halfway mark. we suddenly no longer had 4x4… but this vehicle doesn’t come with a 2 wheel drive option…”now what?” we thought. we could not go sliding all the way back down, so we slowly turned back around heading back down the mountain away from our camp. Now this is where we had to decide. start walking back to camp? keep trying? set up camp here for the night? we have food water and shelter…hmm.. well we decided to give it one last chance. Before we did i asked my husband to stoop for a second to pray. and we all prayed and asked for the power and strength to get back to our campsite. “Ready?” i asked my husband. “ready.” he responded. and so we went. our 4x4 suddenly kicked back in and up the mountain we went ! praise God for this one, because it really wasn’t that far, however in order to walk back it would have been a 4-5 hour walk, to get the truck and winch and come back. now on this journey we seen many incredible bands, Frankie blue, Bert, and Drifter, now i cannot share these huge stories with every youtube video or facebook post, but i thought you might like to hear what went into getting the photos and videos we did on this day. Now we know not to trust our 4x4 and to always have chains! and to take into consideration that cold dry snow in the morning will infact be wet slipper snow by evening! thanks for following and i hope you enjoyed.