North Bay snow brings joy, wonder and one harrowing tale on Sonoma Mountain

Brandon Kelly went from sightseer to rescuer to rescued Thursday night — all in the span of about an hour.

In many parts of the North Bay, Friday dawned with tales of confusion, joy and wonder as people peeked out of their windows to see a rare dusting of late-February snow. But there were hardships, too, and perhaps a little heart-pounding danger as many roads became impassible because of downed trees and accumulating powder.

Kelly, 43, who grew up in Penngrove and now lives in Rohnert Park, drove up Sonoma Mountain Road around 7 p.m. Thursday and made it close to the top. He went home for a snack, then found himself drawn back to the thrill of a Sonoma County mini-blizzard. So back up the hill he went.

This time he got a little more than he bargained for.

Kelly figured it was about 9:30 when he began to climb Sonoma Mountain Road again. He was alone. Conditions were harsh, but he had faith in the four-wheel drive and V-8 engine of his Ford Raptor. At one point, Kelly passed a rancher who told him a young man had crashed his truck into a fence further up the road, with his girlfriend as passenger. Kelly thought maybe he could help — until the Raptor began spinning its tires on the snow-covered pavement.

Kelly cut his losses and began his descent home. But after a couple minutes, he stopped to talk to motorists heading in the opposite direction in an SUV. It was the parents of the kid who had crashed.

“I still wanted go back down the mountain,” Kelly said. “It was snowing, getting worse every minute. But at the last second, I asked them, ‘You guys need help?’ They said yes. I figured I would probably have a better chance in the Raptor.”

So he found a pullout a little farther down the twisting road, turned around and traced the parents’ path. He had driven little more than 100 yards when he saw their truck. The wife was standing on the shoulder. The husband was walking up the hill. They, too, had been stopped by the conditions.

The parents hopped in the Raptor, and they set off. Once again, Kelly soon lost traction. They would all proceed on foot.

“At that point, the plan was to grab (the younger couple) and head back down in my Raptor,” Kelly said. “We walk maybe 100 yards to the crashed truck. I tell them, ‘We gotta go.’ I honestly didn’t want to risk losing traction and crashing into a fence.”

Down they trudged, through the snow to Kelly’s truck. The young man who had crashed was wearing flip-flops. Before they got to the Raptor, he began to worry he was getting frostbite. Right about then, they encountered a Tesla struggling in the ice. It was a family of four, with two babies in the back seat.

“I’m assuming they lived up top,” Kelly said. “There was no way they were getting up there. But the kid was getting frostbite, and we’re in a huge hurry to get down. I was praying. But we had to go.”

Already, though, it was too late. Kelly tried to reverse his truck before his five passengers crammed in, but it slid perilously. He caught the entire episode on Facebook Live. This is the only part, he said, where the video goes dark. The tension was too high.

“I had to ditch my Raptor in a ditch,” Kelly said.

They continued their march to the parents’ SUV. Kelly thought there was no way they’d get down. But the father put it in first gear, and they made it out. At the bottom, the son called 911 and requested someone check on the family with the babies. The drama had ended.

“Essentially, the father saved me from being up there all night,” Kelly said. “He drove me to my house. It was a lovefest.”

It all happened so fast, and under such harrowing conditions, that the participants didn’t exchange phone numbers. Kelly can’t even remember their names.

While few locals found themselves in that sort of pickle, the snow and wind did cause a lot of disruption. In Calistoga, at the north end of Napa Valley, residents got a little too close to the elements when power to most of the town went out for about five hours Friday morning. The overnight low was about 33 degrees.

“It was so cold this morning, I had four blankets covering me up in my recliner rocking chair, and two little throw blankets on my boxer. She’s 11 years old,” said Roxanne Bell, 75. “And I had the stove turned on. And it was cold! I didn’t see my breath in the air, but it was close to it.”

Bell lives in the Chateau Calistoga mobile home park, made up largely of seniors. She has a forced-air system heated by natural gas, but the loss of electricity prevented it from switching on. So when she woke up at 8 a.m. to a dark home, she made herself a cup of coffee on her gas stovetop and snuggled up with Ducky the boxer. She knows exactly what time the power came back on. It was 11:54 a.m.

“I can see out my windows to the Palisades, and they’re white,” she said a few hours later. “I’m so grateful to have the blankets, and the PG&E being worked on. And thank goodness my phone had power. I could talk to neighbors, and we could comfort each other.”

For other North Bay residents, this conceivably once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was a source of childlike giddiness.

Jesse U’Ren saw a lot of that at Hood Mountain Regional Park, where he works as a ranger assistant. Public Works plows Los Alamos Road up to the entrance of the park, but not beyond. The entrance was closed, so people parked at the side of the road there and walked in to throw a few snowballs Friday.

“A lot of people brought their kids up,” U’Ren said. “Whatever implements they could find to enjoy it, they brought. Older kids cut sleds from cardboard. It was quite slushy, so they weren’t going too far off road. But they’d be walking down a trail a bit to take pictures.”

Nothing makes a park ranger happier than visitors enjoying nature’s wonder. But the scene had deeper meaning for U’Ren, who has a front-row view of changes, seasonal and otherwise, at Hood Mountain. That includes the aftermath of the Glass Fire, which ripped through the park in 2020.

“It was sort of jarring, almost,” U’Ren said of Friday’s snowscape. “Those hills recently were completely burned. Completely devastated. To see it now in a state of ideal winter-ness — it’s nice to see it not destroyed.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.