The Marines have a saying “The Few and The Proud”; the HOAFF has “The Few and The

Frozen”. About a dozen brave, fearless members of the club actually made it all the way to Sand

Spring Resort for the second attempt at a Winter Outing and Annual Banquet. Those who made

it down earlier on Friday actually had some good fishing. The Trout were “midging” and anglers

did well on Griffith’s gnats and small midge pupa patterns. Friday night the rain started in

earnest and turned to ice; about 3:30 in the morning the power went out at Sand Spring

and by about 6am not only were the rooms getting cold, we realized we had only ‘one flush

left’ since the resort is on a well and electric pump. At that point some very brave men began

to disappear and head for home. At 8am,Nancy Hall called me and said their restaurant was

without power, so there went the Annual Banquet! She called about an hour later to say

that the Applebee’s in Lebanon had raw sewage coming up through the drains since the storm

sewers had clogged with ice.

The only thing in the entire area of the Spring we could find with power were the restrooms

on the South Side of the stream in front of the Nature Center: they flushed, they were warm

and lighted! A few of us decided to stay and do a little fishing and leave around noon or, when

the ice started to fall again as predicted. John Bell shot some photos of the area accompanying

this article. The ice storm produced a strange and wildly fantastic beauty. The stream had

risen quite a bit during the deluge of the night and fishing was only so so. Gary Bader had to

duck out of the way of a falling limb while wading. The strangely beautiful silence was

broken by the crashing of trees all around us!

Exactly at Noon the sleet started again and the few brave men left put their ‘tails between

their legs’ and headed for home! Thus ended the Winter Outing that never was!