Wyoming Boondocking - Day 14: A warmer day on the Mesa

 Hopefully, the last of the sub-freezing nights are behind me for now.  I woke to sunny and clear skies and the temperature rose pretty fast into the 30's and then peaked at 42°F (5.5°C).  Given the last two days of cold temperatures, it felt positively balmy!

While I waited for things to warm up into the high 30s, I cleared the snow from the top of the URRV's slideout, in front of the wheels on all sides, expanded the path I'd cleared earlier for Fiona and made sure her battery was fully charged.

It was just before noon I think when I was ready and I cranked up Fiona, she started easily, seemingly enjoying the sunshine's warmth on her as I felt it on me.

I put her into 2WD and away we went, charging into untouched rows of 6-8 inches of snow, working to eventually clear a path for the sun to melt and hopefully soon dry out a path out for the URRV.

Fiona and I made it back to the forest road and proceeded mostly smoothly towards the gate to check out the road conditions.

Before I got to the gate though, I spotted and stopped next to a cowboy who was walking back to his truck near a ways past the telecom antenna building was located.  We chatted for a bit, he was checking on some cows and I asked him what he thought road conditions would be like in the next few days.

He unfortunately is new to the area apparently and not familiar with Winter conditions but confirmed what the weather forecast I'd seen had said.  He kept on going back to his truck, I rode on ahead to the gate and had it opened for him as he approached.

Securing the gate behind him, I rode back towards the telecom antenna building to pose Fiona in the snow:

We then rode further on for a bit until I had the URRV and campsite in view:

Here's a couple more shots of Fiona, the last being a pano shot to show the wide range of mountain peaks visible from this Mesa.

The tracks you see were created solely by Fiona at this point.

I rode back to the URRV, trying to ride over untouched rows of snow to further help clear the snow to facilitate its eventual melting.

After lunch, I rode all the way back to where trucks had already cleared some of the path and rode right back to the URRV to do some clearing operations.  Fun stuff.

It is expected to be warmer tomorrow, with highs in the low to mid-50s.  The snow around me is already displaying the "dimpled" look of melting snow.

Now feeling a bit better about my decision to stay, got the whole Mesa basically to myself....only saw two trucks the whole day, and the only hikers I've seen was three of them, yesterday.  The second truck I saw was from the URRV and he'd using the tracks laid down by Fiona, soon as the tracks turned towards camp they stopped and returned back the way they came.

I might venture past the gate tomorrow, and see how the roads are off the Mesa and along FR 19.