Guess I should have paid closer attention to the weather forecast last weekend. It would’ve been worth actually looking at it I suppose. I recall something about a chance of rain but I interpreted it as to say a chance of scattered showers, or something to that effect. As it turned out it was a rather unexpected weather event. I keep the Weather Channel app on my iPhone and refer to it a lot. I keep various locations on it so I can check the weather for my favorite haunts. I’ve got the weather for Tok, Alaska, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Moab, Utah and Ridgway, Colorado to name a few. Problem is that sometimes I forget to change it back to Montrose which may have happened when I headed up to the Black Canyon on Friday to camp and paint for the weekend.

My wife who joined me, along with her brother and his wife who came down from Grand Junction, warned me the weather didn’t look all that promising. I blew it off and we enjoyed a nice start to the evening around the campfire. “See, isn’t this great? It’ll be fine” I said. We were cozied up around a blazing campfire, not paying much attention to the heavy mist in the air. Before we were done grilling our steaks, however, the fine drizzle we were standing in ramped up enough to force us inside our trailers. Imagine the surprise the next morning when we awoke to an inch or so of snow.

No worries, I thought. It’ll make for some nice subject matter for my paintings. The Black Canyon with a skiff of snow? Yeah. This’ll work. Soon however, the clouds lowered and it started to precipitate on us again. We abandoned the morning camp fire and stood around in the trailers wondering if it’d let up or not. Looked pretty socked in from our vantage point. Of course we had no cell service so checking the weather app was out of the question. I could’ve driven down to the visitors center to see what they had to say but I had to meet a customer from Telluride back at the shop at 11:00 so I said I’d get a weather forecast and report back.

At the shop I checked the weather on my phone, “Partly cloudy for the afternoon with a 20% chance of precipitation”. That sounded OK. The steady rain in Montrose began to let up and I thought all would be good. However, by the time I headed east to the canyon turnoff, merely 8 miles away, snow began to fall. The farther east I went the heavier the snow was falling and when I turned to go up to the canyon I actually had to put it into four wheel drive to get up to the campground. To make a long story short, we awoke to 10 inches of snow but skies eventually cleared Sunday morning. It was absolutely beautiful. Those of the group who had jobs they had to report to the next day on Monday spent the morning discussing whether they could call and say they were snowed in. That sounded absolutely ridiculous for nearly the middle of May. They thought they could show photos as proof but they finally gave up and by noon, the warm sun shine was rapidly melting the snow accumulation.

Needless to say, I didn’t get any painting done but I sure got some great copy that’ll make for some great paintings. Later when I got home I realized my phone was giving me the weather report for Whitehorse, Yukon Territory all along. I’m guessing the Canadians had a rather pleasant day up that way.

Here are some photos of the weekend:

This was Saturday morning. The low clouds/fog really created some mood. The deer in the area are very tame which makes for some great viewing but it’s not good for them to get so accustomed to humans.

This was Sunday morning. It didn’t look good but cleared up in a couple of hours and gave us this:

 I’m finishing up another painting of a fly fisherman on the Crystal River that I’ll post in the next day or two.Thanks for stopping by.