If You Have Cabin Fever, Check This Out. It Could Be Worse

If winter is too much for you, consider the people who were trapped
for a few days by up to seven feet of snow in a California mountain
lodge. Photo by Joel Keeler via AP. 

It's going to snow again this week in Vermont.  I noticed the winter storm watch that was in effect this morning has been upgraded to a winter storm warning. 

Another 5 to 15 inches of snow and sleet is forecast Tuesday and Wednesday. Which doesn't necessarily thrill me.

Today, Sunday, the snow around my St. Albans, Vermont yard had become thin enough an hard-packed enough so that I could do a few things outdoors, like cut back a bit of brush.

Any further outdoor projects by the middle of the week will be put on hold by more snow, it seems.

By February, I've usually come down with a bit of cabin fever. I'm tired of not easily walking anywhere I want. When the snow is deeper, I'm hemmed into to walking on shoveled paths and driveways and such.

I'm also really over the fact that I always seem to have to walk gingerly, for fear of falling on the ice. When the snow and ice finally disappear, if feels like I've gotten out of prison.

I shouldn't complain, though. Especially compared to what people go through in some mountain areas where several feet of snow can fall in a single storm.

A great example came last week at the Montecito Sequoia Lodge in Kings Canyon National Park in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, as CBS News reports.

There was already plenty of snow on the ground, and a storm last week dumped another seven feet of snow on the resort. It was so much that 120 guests there were stranded for several days.

Luckily, the place had heat, power and plenty of food, so nobody suffered physically. But the cabin fever must have been extreme.

Finally, on Thursday, during a brief break between that storm and another one that blew in the next day, crews carved a path up the road to the resort. The crews had to fight their way through eight miles of deep snow, not to mention a couple dozen fallen trees.

In th end, the road out wasn't wide or totally clear, but enough for everybody to drive out.

As you can see in the video below, the snowbanks on either side of the road were huge. But the "prisoners" in the Sierra were free to head downhill, where there was little or no snow

Here's the video: