I woke up to see snow on the mountains early in the morning. So like everybody else in town, we decided to go up and see the snow.
On the way up Gibraltar we saw lots of people coming up to see the snow. Lots of people were shoveling snow into their pickups to take home. We used to do that back in High School. It's one of those "only in Santa Barbara" things. We also saw a lot of people with snowballs stacked on their car antennas.
Tony and I drove up to do the Rocky Pine Ridge hike and parked near Gibraltar and East Camino Cielo Road. This is that little ranch up there.
Looking up toward the trail.
Snow on mountain mahogany.
Proof that this snow is in Santa Barbara. See, the sign says Santa Barbara.
Looking back at the road.
The flowers were fooled by the early spring into blooming. Now they are frozen.
Tony in the snow. He feels like he's back home in Buffalo.
Hiking in snow isn't as easy as when there isn't snow. Things feel more slippery.
It seemed as though we were the first ones here today, but we could hear voices in the distance. These are my tracks.
Seems a bit misty like a foggy day.
I thought this rock looked like it had a face in it. A snowy buffalo face?
Here's that narrow spot. Somebody had already been here.
It just got more and more white.
Once we got this far we could hear thunder. A lot of the trees up here are chopped off at the tops by lightning. As much fun as we were having we decided to go back.
It really started coming down quickly!
It just kept snowing harder. I have never seen snow fall this hard in my life. I'm a life-long Santa Barbaran.
Tony says the snow was worthy of any he'd seen in Buffalo.
Tony was pretty certain there would be broken trees before the snow was finished today.
Tony's hat was getting pretty snowy. I had snow down my back from the brush overhead.
Tony, standing in the trail. This is what the trail is like most of the time up here. As hard as this trail is to follow normally it is even harder in the snow. Everything looks different.
On the way back we came upon a very happy pug.
Not much else to say about the trail.
On the drive back, by about a quarter mile down Gibraltar from where West Fork emerges the snow was no longer sticking to the ground. But it was still falling well below the beginning of Gibraltar Road. In all my life I have never seen it snow in the city. It was quite amazing. It's now 4pm the same day and the snow has all melted, the sun is shining, and it's like the whole thing never happened. Only in Santa Barbara.
