Wind storm knocks down many trees

At the 747 trailhead

Lots of trail blocked this way

It took me nearly 20 minutes to navigate my way around this blow down

 I did the 6-mile 747 Loop in the Little Belts Saturday and was stunned to see the amount of trees that were downed by last week's wind storms.

Along the Porphyry ridge line and just below on the west side the uprooted and broken off trees made the first third of Trail 747 nearly impassible.

There were also many trees lying across the Forest Service Road behind Porphyry, the road that leads back to the O'Brien Creek Trail.

I heard that there were trees across the road leading up to the Deadman Creek Road, and also across the Silver Crest trails.  I can't imagine what the O'Brien Creek run looks like.  I can't imagine what it would be like to Mizpah, Ranch Creek or Nugget Creek.

The Forest Service is going to be mighty busy clearing roads and trails of the debris left by winds that were as high as 90 miles per hour and which knocked out power at Showdown Ski Area for two days.

Aside from that, the snow was pretty good, a couple of inches of new powder covered the trails on this bluebird day.