Rocky Mountains twigs

Early this winter, the snow cover was sparse and twigs showed up like never before. I know, these guys have a right to exist, but this year, they were just unbelievable, aggressive and in your face the all time. The creatures I'm talking about are either of the aspen family of trees (young shoots) or some kind of elderberry bush. Regardless of their origin or last name, these guys, depending on the diameter of their stem, can either be a harmless nuisance or plain vicious. Often they bend under the ski edge, sometimes they snap; many times though they'll slap you in the face if you attempt to plow through them and when they're big enough, they'll stop you on your tracks.

In Europe, where ski instructors are self-employed, it's not unusual to have an entire ski school volunteering one full weekend in the Fall to cut these perpetrators clean (in the Alps it's the much thicker and invading speckled alder, popularly called véroce in France.) We're not there yet in America; resorts would rather leave that job to their paying customers, but who knows? One can only hope! In recent day, I've noticed that their ranks have thinned out a lot and I assume they've begun hibernating when they saw all that new snow coming over. But I'm confident that unless ski areas do something about these “snow snakes” they'll be back in force next season!