Is Mullan Monopolizing Snow? Snowmobiling Or Snowblowing, It’s Snow Fun For Town’s Residents

A week ago, one might have speculated that this hillside mining town wouldn’t surface until spring.

But with 20 inches of new snow falling between dawn and dusk Friday alone, Fourth of July now seems optimistic.

Snow continued to fall on the mountain community Saturday.

Four-foot cornices curl out over roofs. Automobiles once ready at the curb are large, white hummocks with no more get-up-and-go than the Ice Age they seem to represent. Most homes are eave-deep in snow.

Garages don’t store, they imprison because of the extra walls of white just beyond the doors. Satellite dishes serve up giant saucers of snow.

Still, a tavern sign downtown joins Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer in welcoming snowmobilers here. Perhaps it should welcome snowblowers.

On the south side of town, 90-year-old Buster Cunningham prodded his undersized snowblower to hollow out the cave that his driveway has become. As snow sputtered from the sky Saturday, he was merely making room for the inevitable avalanche from his roof.

“When I bought this 11 years ago, I didn’t figure we would get something like this,” Cunningham said, smiling even though the machine had blown almost as much snow on him as it had blown off his driveway. He’s been advised not to be out shoveling or snowblowing because of his health, but “I can’t see that it hurts,” he said.

Don’t mistake that for passion. “I’ve always been tired of it - I was raised in the South,” Cunningham said. His children live around here. So he perseveres.

Betty Wolfe keeps a spry shoveling hand moving on the north end of Mullan and wonders when her roof will dump its load all over her recently completed handiwork. “Yesterday (Friday) I shoveled out four times,” she said.

So “when the snow comes off of the roof, I’m going to walk over it.”

Wolfe’s husband had a stroke about two months ago so she is in charge of keeping the path to the road clear. She also must keep carving away one of the rounded drifts in order to keep a line of sight out of her front window.

“We’ve been here since ‘39,” Wolfe said, pointing to the drifts. “I think this is the most snow we’ve ever had.”

This, coffee shop wisdom says, is what drives out-of-staters to go back home. This winter, it’s doing much more.

Arlene Lunen has lived between Mullan and Wallace for 25 years. She’s moving to Nevada as soon as her son graduates from school in the spring.

“I’m taking so many pictures so when I get down there, if I ever want to move back, I’ll remember why I never want to move back,” Lunen said. “We had too much winter by the time winter started.”

Hers was not a fail-safe search for fair weather. Lunen attempted to take a break in Reno with her husband at New Year’s. The day they arrived the flooding began in that neck of Nevada.

No matter, memories of snow will keep her there, even come high water. “The other day, I’d shovel and when I was done, I’d have to shovel my way back to the house,” Lunen said. “And the problem now is, where to store it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo