The First Snow

The last time I saw snow (save for a little bit on the ground in west Texas) was the winter of 2012. It was the winter before I moved to Thailand, and at the time I would have had no idea that I wouldn't see snow again for more than a decade.

Every time I've visited home since, it's either been springtime (when I was working at the school my term holiday fell during the month of April), the summer, or on particularly warm and snowless Texas winters.

I was very excited that we found ourselves driving past a pristine winter wonderland as we left Cannonville on our way towards beautiful, beautiful Zion. It's just a light dusting by Utah standards, but when you grew up in Texas and currently live in the tropics, any small amount of snow is a wonderous sight to see.

We stopped at a pull-off to take a picture. It was in the upper 20s°F, the coldest it had been so far, and small, delicate snowflakes were still falling from the foggy white sky.

We drove through an arch which spanned the road and descended down the mountain towards Zion National Park. It was our final day of hiking and Zion was to be the final of Utah's Mighty Five. It was one of the two parks in the state, alongside Arches, that I had most been looking forward to.

However, things weren't going to go as smoothly as we had hoped... more on that later.