1996- 97 was the winter from hell here in Central Washington, I had 7 feet of snow on the level then it rained, my kids swing set was completely under snow in our field, we had snow on the ground until mid April then it flooded, 100's of building collapsed and the county changed there building requirements after that year. The deer population was hit hard especially the Mule deer in the Methow, I have a buddie in Twisp were the deer died even with full bellies of alfalfa, they just couldn't digest the food and were stressed. The worst part here right now is the predators can easily run down deer and other small critters on the hard frozen snow pack.
96-97 was a bugger also, unlike 68-69 in the Methow where the temperature plummeted from about 20 above to 50 below in a matter of hours there was only a foot - two foot of snow in most places unless you got farther north up the Chewuch which is where a lot of deer got trapped in draws, hunkered down and just plain froze. That winter of 96-97 wasn't nearly as cold but man oh man the snow piled up! That is the year the Game fella we knew over there sent us down to an orchard off the Burma Road with bags of feed, 90% of the Methow herd had all migrated south, most darn near all the way to the Columbia, I swear there wasn't a deer left north of Twisp
,there were areas north of Winthrop that had upwards of 8 feet of snow. I,m pretty sure that was the year the high country was getting freak snow storms in August. I had a packer friend over there that took some fisherman into some lakes up towards Spanish Camp up in the Pasayten that following summer, thats when they found the "Mule Deers Graveyard", the place old deer went to die he used to call it. They took a route into a huge box canyon that held a couple small lakes, there was one way in and the same way out. They got back in there and found litterely hundreds of carcasses and bones, bucks, does, fawns and yearlings all piled up under trees and in chutes. What they figured was, it was a staging area, deer were congregating because of the early storms and so much snow got dumped up there they became trapped and eventually starved as the snow just kept coming, I seen the pictures they took and it was really spooky looking. Like the winter kill I found up the Chewuch after the 68-69 winter, it really made the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.
