For the backstory: I started working for Simplot back in April; and in September or something every year they do a United Way fundraiser where the company matches what the employees put in. Last year we raised over $450,000. As part of the fundraiser, for people who donated through a payroll deduction got entered to win one of three prizes. 2nd and 3rd place were awarded two plane tickets and a rental car voucher, and 1st place was given 3 nights at one of the Simplot cabins in McCall, and a day was spent snowmobiling with the CEO of Simplot and his wife, and one of JR's grandson's Mike Simplot, all expenses paid, plus lunch and dinner were provided, and part of the day was spent at Burgdorf Hot Springs. Guess who won first place? That's right, I did! I didn't really win, it was more of a chance drawing. Anyways, we had been looking forward to it all winter long, and we finally got to go on February 28th! I was able to take 5 other people with me, so Colleen, our friends Adam and Kelli; and Ben and Christy came with me. I was hesitant on inviting Colleen, but the fact that we're married won out and I had to take her. We had so much fun! We all headed up Thursday afternoon and spent the day in McCall hanging out. I wasn't too impressed with McCall. It was my first time there, and for all I had heard about it, I pictured it to be similar to Jackson. It wasn't. I'll leave it at that. We all met for dinner Thursday night and then headed to the cabin to get settled in. Friday morning we woke up and got ready and headed to the parking lot to meet our hosts for the day and pick up snowmobiles. After listening to a short safety demonstration, our hosts told us that it wasn't going to be a good day unless someone got stuck. We all laughed, although had we known then what getting stuck really meant, we might not have laughed. We hopped on our machines (which were meant for advanced powder riders, by the way), and headed toward the hot springs, which is about a 25 mile journey on a nice, groomed road. A few miles in, the CEO and his wife decided we had come to a good enough spot to go off road and get into the trees a bit. Myself and our friend Christy followed them, only to realize a few minutes later that no one else had followed us (it turns out someone was trying to convince Colleen to follow us). The CEO turned around to see what was going on, and told me to lead the way. About 50 feet later, I hit my first tree. I got unstuck from that one okay, but then about 15 feet after that I hot my second tree. That one was fun to dig out, pictured here:
That's me in the red backpack, getting ready to dig under the snowmobile and saw about a 5 foot section of a tree off so we could get the machine unstuck. Around the same time, Kelli had somehow got her snowmobile turned on its side, so other people were helping her with that.
This was right after I had got unstuck and everyone else caught up with us. A few miles later, while making our way back to the main road, I was following the CEO and his wife when all of a sudden, the CEO disappeared.
We were just about done digging his machine out when this picture was taken. He had fallen about 4 feet into where a creek was running beneath the snow. Luckily he kept himself out of the water (there was still about 4 feet of snow between him and the water), but it was quite the project to get him out.
As seen in this picture here. It was too steep to ride the machine back up, so we had to pull it out.
We finally made it back to the main road and headed to Burgdorf, pictured here. A sleepy little place in the middle of practically nowhere, they have a few cabins you can rent for the night, and natural hot springs that run into a large pool they made. There's no electric lines ran, they have a couple of solar panels and a generator for electricity. They have a little food shop where they make burgers and such, so we all had lunch and listened to some good stories about dramatic snowmobiling injuries; then some of us went swimming in the pools. It was nice and relaxing, but looking back not something you would really want to do when you have to get back on a snowmobile and ride 25 miles back to the parking lot. It was still a lot of fun though.
The above picture was taken as we were headed back to the snowmobiles after swimming. There's Adam, Ben, Christy, Colleen, and myself.
On our way back to the parking lot we stopped at a place where we could go really fast and hit some little jumps and stuff. This is where I hit my third and final tree. This one was bigger than the first two, but I was able to get myself unstuck without too much trouble.
Colleen enjoyed herself. At least she didn't complain at all, anyways. Good wife. After we got back to the parking lot we went back to the cabin and got changed and ready for dinner. For dinner, we at at JR and his wife Esther's cabin where they lived in McCall, which is a property still held by the family. It was cool to sit at the exact same table (nothing's been changed since the 80's) that many family holidays were had at and many memories were created for our Host, Mike Simplot, and his wife, Lisa. It was really cool to listen to old Simplot family stories as well as show our own from our own families. It was a really nice dinner and great conversation with some really down to earth people. Our night ended and we headed back to the cabin and we all passed out from exhaustion.
On Saturday we all woke up and had a big breakfast then went cross-country skiing for a few hours. It was a blast. There's not much to tell here that pictures don't explain, and since this has been a long post already, I'll leave it to your imaginations.
This is the view of McCall from the cabin where we stayed. We had such a fun weekend. Hope everyone is doing well!
