SNOW! 3.5 inches of fluffy, beautiful snow!

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 Open.

17º at 7am, and that is the high for the day. 3.5 inches of snow since yesterday morning.

Today’s quote from  our friend May, 81, “Where is everyone? The ski is fabulous!”

I am liking February already. I like snow and cold (or colder) temperatures. I am done with too warm, rain and ice.

Ian is grooming this morning on the snow machine. He is putting 2 tracks on the Turkey, Woodcock, and Snow Goose. He is grooming and putting one track on the Grouse, Goshawk and Lower Blue Jay. And he is packing the Middle and Upper Blue Jay. Check in at “the shop” about the Middle and Upper, just to hear what he had to say after getting them packed.

Today is half way thru the winter season. Do you have half your wood pile left? We do. But not by much in the barn. We do have extra wood out and about, but I think we have enough wood in the back of the barn to get us to the end of April.

 

 

Dirty Snow

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We’ll call it “off-white”

We’ve definitely got some nasty snow out there. A couple weeks worth of wind and rain have knocked down lots of leaves, bark and pine cones. It looks slightly better after the groomer mixes it a bit. New snow would improve things considerably!

 

Sometimes pre-winter trail work doesn’t last through the winter. In one of our major rain events, this culvert got plugged with leaves, so the water found another way down: through the snow on the trail. With Jonathan and Helena’s help, we pulled the culvert out, cleared the leaves, reset the culvert and shoveled the trail back in with snow.

 

With 5″ of snow I’ll be grooming Middle and Upper Bluejay! With a foot of snow it will be back to where we want it, but 5″ will have it open again.

 

A New Groomer!

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The side X side is here. A Polaris Ranger 900 with tracks.

Chuck and Ian have been wanting this for a while. Chuck tells me I can drive it instead of my beloved 4 wheeler and it won’t hurt my hip. I love my 4 wheeler, I hope he isn’t right.

We also have a new groomer coming. This new piece of equipment is what you pull behind the Polaris. A  Yellowstone Track Systems groomer called a ginzu.

Here is what I know:

  • It is 108″ wide, and has 2 track setters.
  • It had to be driven across the country, from West Yellowstone, MT in a big truck.
  • It was delivered today to White River Junction. And a nice man named Harry is going to drive it here on Friday.
  • Harry is going to supply some of the wiring and electrical parts to make the groomer work remotely from inside the warm cab.
  • There are some parts we will have to go find.
  • Chuck ordered a tow bar that the UPS man dropped off yesterday.
  • It did not come with a hook to pull the groomer, because we don’t know exactly what we need.
  • Seems to me we have a lot still to do to get this up and running.
  • I am guessing it will happen fast with the snow that is in the forecast.

And it’s Snowing!

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WE ARE OPEN 🙂

23º at  7:45am. Forecast high 33º. And snowing. A 1/2 inch of new snow. The NOAA snow prediction for us for today is 1 -3″ inches. Of course we are pulling for the 3″.

The skiing will be really nice. Keep it in perspective. If you skied at the end of Dec. first of Jan. in all the fabulous powder snow. This isn’t that. But the new snow will slow the skiing right down. Still not enough snow for a track, but this is a start. Yesterday, Wednesday we had 30 Stratton Mountain kids and 2 coaches, 6 touring skiers, 30 little club skiers, and 20 Burr and Burton skiers. They all had a really good time and a great ski.

I am a little slow writing today. We were watching our friend Ben ski at the World Junior Ski Race in Goms, Switzerland. The Skiathlon, a classic race followed by a skate race. And our 17 year old friend Ben was 18th overall.

The picture above is C and the Flash, from last year. I missed my opportunity to take a great picture yesterday.

I have spelling update. The peanut gallery told me the new grooming machine is a ginzu, not ginzo.

 

 

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