Winter makes a slight clawback as snow begins to envelop the lower reaches of the Animas River Canyon. The day began in Durango with a slight drizzle and a chilly morning... far from the snow promised just the night before. A let down I figured, I had come up here for another last hurrah of winter, just a week before I was in this canyon to retrieve a lost drone, which nearly every railroad employee here knowing this canyon essentially said "it might as well be on the moon..." (sidebar, the drone was recovered).
Where last week was a resulted in a near sunburn as I stripped down to a sleeveless shirt since I forgot a hiking shirt, this trip had me keeping the layers on as the trek deeper into the canyon began finding more snow falling. And as on cue, enough light changed quickly, snow began trailing off to herald the arrival of the southbound Winter Cascade Train. Just enough snow falling drowned out the whistle of the locomotive to annunciate its arrival at Tacoma... The white plume of steam was the only true indicator of its arrival. Even the 493's now distinctive exhaust (a byproduct of it's oil conversion) was muffled to our ears.
