Oh, Snow! Engagement Session

I love doing engagement sessions. It's the best way to get to know my couple before their wedding day. And for this engagement session we were traveling together from Salem to Mt. Hood and had the car ride up to chat. The conversations were easy and light hearted and then it was time to turn off Highway 26 to do a little driving through an unplowed road to the perfect spot that they had in mind for their engagement photos. 

As we were plowing through the snow, we started to loose momentum and then came to a stop about 100 yards from the highway. We weren't stressed, because there was a wench attached to the hitch and plenty of trees to anchor to and then pull ourselves out, plus there was a shovel to help with moving snow away from the tires.

Getting stuck in the snow was always a possibility and there's measures to take to be prepared. But unfortunately it's the snow and it's unpredictable. The idea was to get unstuck and then complete the engagement session; we even had a good two hours of daylight from when we first got stuck.

When my they were shoveling snow way from the back tires, I took a couple moments to photograph the beautiful three diamond engagement ring out in the elements.

To make a long story short ... the darkness settled among the fir trees and we were still stuck, mostly high centered in snow that looked like fluffy masked potatoes, but was actually heavy and wet. The wench battery died and the truck that came to pull us out got stuck as well. Then around 11 pm some good samaritans came out from Vancouver and pulled both vehicles out with the assistance of a kinetic rope. I had left my house at 2:00 pm for an expected 5-6 hour adventure of snow engagement photos and actually returned home at 4:00 am. Everyone was safe, tired, a bit cold, and quite tired from all the work involved with getting stuck in the snow.

Will I ever let any of my couples drive me up to the snow again for engagement sessions? Yes, I would. Am I worried about getting stuck in the snow (again)? Well, that's always a possibility and I'm not too worried about it, as long as we're not miles away from the highway without any cellular reception (my phone was the only one with reception for this snow adventure).

So, would you like to go up to the snow and have me take photos of you?