John and Bethenie: Snow Day!!

For anybody not around us here in Italy, I would just like you all to know that we are having one heck of a snow day around here!! Well not technically right here in Naples, but about 45 min north of here is where it starts and goes for a while north.

If you followed our blog a couple years ago, you will remember me posting about a small ski resort about 2 hours from where we live. Well around Jan 20 or so they started getting some decent snow up there and John and I talked about heading up there for the day. We were going to go last Friday, but some stuff came up at work and John wasn't able to get the day off.

We continued watching the weather, since we are so far south if they don't get snow right before you go up there is usually isn't very good ski conditions, to see if it was going to keep snowing some or let up. Well to our surprise we had a pretty big storm come through and hit Italy this week. We knew that they were supposed to be getting SOME snow, we just didn't know how much it was going to be. It was supposed to start snowing on Tuesday (Jan 31st) and keep going until today (Saturday the 4th). Even though it was almost a week of snow that usually means it is going to snow a little bit each day and maybe at the end have around a foot or so of snow. Well we were WAY off on this one.

Throughout the week I kept up with the resort on their facebook page and realized they were getting a lot more snow that we were expecting them to get, so John went ahead and asked if he could have Friday (yesterday) off. They told him yes so we planned on heading up that day. From what the weather reports were telling us the worst snow day was supposed to hit the mountain on Thursday, so we thought Friday would be the perfect day to head up.

Wednesday night I was on facebook and the resort posted a picture saying they had already gotten 40cm (around 16 inches) of snow and it was still snowing. Then on Thursday a guy that John works with headed up there for the day and said it snowed on them all day and they ended up getting I think around 10 more inches that day. So Friday morning was upon us. Thursday night John and I got all the ski stuff pulled out and ready to go, so we could leave nice and early Friday morning.

We got up that morning and were going to pick up a guy on base that was going to go up with us. When we left it was raining pretty good, which it had been doing all night, but we decided to go for it. We got about 20 km (yes our Garmin in is set for km so that is what i know and i dont know what the conversion is haha) down the road, not too far, and the Polizia were making everyone exit the A1, the main freeway from Naples up to Rome and on to Milan. We were really confused why everyone was having to exit the highway but continued on our way. About 5 more km down the road the rain turned to slush then into snow and we hadn't started climbing at all yet. This is when we all got a little nervous and wondered if we were going to make it.

When we got to the base of the mountains to start climbing the snow was coming down pretty thick and hard and there was a semi jack knifed in front of us and that is when we began to think we were in trouble. Well a snow plow came and helped the semi get out of the way then took off without ever putting is plow down to clear the road. There were semi's and bigger trucks pulled over on the side of the road and we just went by them and kept going, but we didn't make it far before we were starting up a pretty steep climb and the road hadn't been touched. There was a good 3-5 inches of snow on the road with no tracks and the snow was still coming down. Let me remind you that John's pick-up is from Hawaii, so it isn't 4 wheel drive and you can't put chains on it because they will hit something to do with the brakes. So at that point we called it a day and turned around and came back home.

I will say this, John and I have gone up to Roccaraso a few times each winter, and the guy that was with us goes up about every week (he has been here 3 winter also) and none of us had ever seen snow that low on the mountains before, much less that MUCH snow.

When we got home and looked back towards the mountains the ones closet too us have snow on them which we have never seen either. Then I was on facebook and it was even snowing in the center of Rome!!

This was where we were behind the truck that jack knifed. We only made it a little further than this when we turned around.

SO MUCH SNOW!!! Same area ~ I didn't get many pictures at all but hopefully we will make it back up there and be able to go skiing before it all melts.