The Baltimore couple who became engaged Saturday in a knee-deep snowdrift certainly made the most of this weekend's winter storm. So did the Hampden resident who trekked across town laden with gear as training for a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro. The huge snowfall might have brought the region to a standstill, but it also brought people together - from the Charles Villagers who gathered for an annual winter party to the Roland Park residents who together confronted a teetering tree. The storm even gave a couple of Utah transplants newfound appreciation for the area's weather potential. "This," one remarked, "is a lot of snow."

Romantic interlude

Andrew Kinnear took his dog out to play in Saturday's snow and came home engaged.

His flight to Las Vegas was canceled - he had thought of proposing in front of the fountain at the Bellagio - and a friend egged him on to pop the question on the steps of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Locust Point.

So with his boxer Clinton and friends standing in knee-deep drifts on East Fort Avenue, Kinnear brushed off the church steps, got down on one knee and took out a ring.

"It was very exciting and unexpected," said Reagan Rinderknecht, who works in behavioral medicine at Johns Hopkins Kennedy Krieger Institute.

She said yes.

"We popped the corks and drank on the street," said Brenda McHale, a friend and neighbor of the new couple and the wife of state Del. Brian K. McHale, who also joined in the outdoor festivities.

Kinnear, who turns 29 next week and sells Toyotas at CarMax in Laurel, had all but given up on proposing this weekend.

He had bought tickets to Las Vegas, hoping to leave Saturday. He hadn't really made plans - "I was going to wing it," he said - but one idea was to propose in front of the hotel on the Strip.

When all that fell through, Kinnear didn't know what to do. He headed out to Latrobe Park with his boxer, joined by the McHales and their boxer Roxy and Matt Horstmann and Mary Enoch and their German short-haired pointer Sally.

He thought of taking Rinderknecht to Fort McHenry, but that was closed. Brenda McHale and Enoch suggested the church steps. Kinnear got his girlfriend, who came bundled up to play in the snow, not hear a proposal, and Matt and Mary got the champagne.

The friends hovered out of earshot, and Kinnear said he began with a church-step confession.

"He couldn't have picked a more perfect place," Rinderknecht said. "There was snow, and there were friends."

--Peter Hermann

A tree falls in Roland Park with the help of neighbors

Eugenie Jenkins awoke Saturday to a sickening discovery that, in hindsight, explained why her dog had been cowering and "totally freaked out" the night before. Part of a large tree in her Roland Park yard had fallen during the snow storm.

And with the wind blowing hard, the two surviving trunks looked ready to topple any second.

Good thing Jenkins' next-door neighbor is an amateur woodsman with experience felling trees in Maine. And good thing that neighbor had a chain saw handy Saturday.

Jim Melia is his name, and when he saw the situation he knew Jenkins was right to worry. The two tree sections, roughly 50 feet high, were leaning precariously toward Wickford Road, threatening several cars. Before long, other neighbors appeared to lend a hand.

But Melia couldn't just fire up the chain saw and yell, "Timber!" Not if he wanted to guide the tree away from car-lined Wickford and across desolate University Parkway instead. To do so, he needed ropes to pull on the tottering tree.

This is where the neighbors really joined forces. Melia supplied one rope. So did neighbor George Chang. A third rope came from yet another neighbor.

"We tied them all together to create enough tension to get this to go where we wanted it to go," Melia said. "Really nice job," Chang said. "It fell right where it was supposed to fall."

By early afternoon, Melia was cutting up sections of the tree to clear the sidewalk and University Parkway. Jenkins, Chang and a few others dragged branches off to the side of the road.

The only damage appeared to be a street sign that was bent during the initial fall overnight. "That was nature, not us," Melia hastened to point out. "In case the new mayor asks."

--Scott Calvert

Not letting snow keep them from annual get-together

For more than a decade Guilford Avenue residents Jan and Francis "Gil" French have thrown a Saturday afternoon winter party that has been a centerpiece of the Charles Village social season. Undiscouraged by weather predictions, Jan French cooked all week.

Jan, a former Barclay Elementary School kindergarten teacher, made her crab meltaways, lasagna and hot beef. Gil, who taught for many years at City College, made a pot of potato leek soup.

Then came the storm. Early Saturday, Gil French, 79, shoveled two sets of steps and a path to the door. Throughout the day, neighbors lent a hand, reshoveling the path so guests could reach the home, which sits on a terrace above the street.

Some 40 guests normally arrive at the party. A few guests called in early regrets but most neighbors said they would be hoofing it.

"There'll be lots of leftovers," said Jan French. "But there will still be 20 people here. It's a time to get people together and there certainly will be enough food."

--Jacques Kelly

Impressive snowfall more than lives up to the hype

Jean Paul had a plan for Saturday, despite all the forecasts: she'd wake up, shovel out, take the kids to the movies.

It's not that she's naive, just the opposite, in fact. As a native of Arizona, who spent four years of college in Provo, Utah, Paul has seen some snow fall. Her family moved to Towson in 2003 after a short layover in Buffalo, N.Y., and like many out-of-towners, they found the locals a bit lacking in weather-related fortitude.

"For the past seven years, Maryland's forecasters and just Marylanders in general have been infamous for hyping any sort of weather," said Paul, 33. "And it never pans out."

But the movie theater was closed Saturday, and the Pauls awoke to a house full of blinking clocks from an overnight power outage. The pine tree out back, listing under the weight of the snow, was hanging perilously close to the phone and power lines.

As her husband, Eric, knocked down the impending avalanche hanging off the roof over the back door, Paul stood in her kitchen waiting for the kids' gloves and hats to dry. She had to admit, this time the storm panned out, even by the standards of someone from the Mountain timezone.

"This is a lot of snow," Paul said. "It's probably more than I ever had in four years in Utah. This is a lot of snow."

--Robert Little

A hush descends along snowy Stony Run

An orange-breasted bird -- a robin? -- sat on the snowburdened branch, its plumage vivid against the bright white canvas. The bird looked out of place, confused and unhappy, as if wondering: What happened to the world? What am I doing here? What are you doing here?

Fair question. The trail that runs along Stony Run, one of the most remote spots in North Baltimore in the best of weather, seemed a no-man's land Saturday.

At midday, the snow drifted thigh-deep. Explorers had been through earlier, but not for a good while. The steadily falling snowflakes had softened their tracks. Where were the intrepid hikers now? The dog walkers? The snowshoers? Not here.

The high-step slog grew exhausting. Quadriceps burned, and gasping lungs demanded periodic rests. Then all would go quiet except for the whoosh of the wind and an occasional caw-caw from an unseen crow. The scent of log fires floated enticingly from nearby houses.

Stony Run itself gurgled along, swollen some by the flakes it had absorbed upstream. A layer of ice had formed in spots, now dusted in white. Here and there, tree branches lay broken by the wet, heavy snow. Some bowed to the ground, blocking what passed for the path.

Only when the trail rejoined civilization at Wilmslow Road did the solitude end, interrupted by the now-familiar racket of whirring snowblowers and scraping shovels.

--Scott Calvert

Before Kilimanjaro, the challenge of city streets

Mike Stone was probably one of the more prepared people who ventured outdoors on Saturday.

Stone, who plans to hike Mount Kilimanjaro in two weeks, had filled his pack with about 30 pounds to 40 pounds worth of food, water and equipment.

The Hampden resident was supposed to be hiking about 15 miles in Pennsylvania Saturday as part of his training. But when you can't make it to the Appalachian Trail, Baltimore will just have to do.

Stone was wearing his pack and gaiters as he walked up Calvert Street with trekking poles on a round-trip from Hampden to Federal Hill with Laura Steinhardt. "I do have a portfolio management textbook in there just for weight," he said.

Stone had enough supplies to shelter in place if necessary, including a tarp, food and a gallon and a half of water, he said.

Stone was expecting a wider range of temperatures during his trip in Tanzania than what he experienced during his Baltimore walk, with warm weather at lower elevations but below zero at night at higher elevations. But he's hoping for less snow. "Usually I don't think there's a whole lot of precipitation," he said.

--Liz Kay

Getting to the store and finding it open: priceless

People usually flock to the supermarket before the snow storm -- not during.

Yet Kyle Mathews, 28, a Web designer, and his Columbia roommate Jim Carter, 30, a plumber, were meandering the aisles at the Owen Brown Giant at 10 a.m., Saturday.

Why?

"Because there are no lines," Mathews quipped, though he sounded serious. In his arms were two packages of bacon and a dozen eggs. Carter had a sack of potatoes, the makings of a big brunch.

The two share a townhouse near the Mall in Columbia, but with no groceries available there, they decided to go get some in their white Toyota FJ Cruiser, an all terrain vehicle. Besides, there was the challenge of it all.

"Could we get out and would Giant be open?" is what Mathews said they were thinking. "Why not? It's just snow," he added. They were among four customers in the huge store at the time.

Including shoveling snow away from the Toyota, the entire four-mile trip took only 35 minutes, they said, though they did have one advantage. Carter is 6 feet 9 inches tall and weighs 315 pounds. Mathews is 6 feet 5 inches and 220 pounds.

They made much better time than store manager Monica Murphy did from the Columbia Hilton, where she stayed Friday night with her husband. Murphy had two employees stay at the store overnight to be sure it would open at 6 a.m., but her trip in took well over an hour just to traverse the last half mile, she said, even with her husband driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Atired Nancy Wilson, 39, of Clarksville said she tried to nap in an office chair, but couldn't.

"I hope I never have to do it again," she said.

--Larry Carson