Letter Re: From a USFS In-Holding in Colorado’s High Country–Snowed-In!

Mr. Rawles:
I just wanted to send you a thank you note for your novel “Patriots”, your “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course and for SurvivalBlog.com. We’ve been having a winter weather adventure, which I’ve chronicled in this thread at The Claire Files. If I hadn’t found SurvivalBlog.com some time back in late 2005, it might have been a very different story than the mainly humorous tale I was able to relate. Catching up on some of your entries that I missed over time, I found one that was particularly pertinent to our situation. On February 14, you did a post titled “State and Federal Lands – Poor Choices for short term retreat locales”. The first item of concern that you stated was access, with the following specific quote: “There is also no guarantee that once you get in to public lands that you can get out. Many roads inside forest lands are not maintained in winter. Depending on the latitude and elevation, this could mean getting truly “snowed in” for the winter.”
Our retreat is on private land at 8500′ elevation, but is totally surrounded by National Forest. Our only access is via non-maintained forest service roads. These roads are never maintained, not just a case of no winter maintenance. And snowed in we did get. Fortunately our larder was deep.
So I just wanted to let you know that I’ve gratefully renewed my annual subscription to the Ten Cent Challenge. As I said, without SurvivalBlog.com, the story might have had a very different outcome. Thanks, – Karen, aka Coloradohermit