Feb 01 2018

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.

 

Feb 01 2018

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.

Feb 01 2018

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.

 

 

Jan 31 2018

Snowflakes in the forecast

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Open

5º at 7am. Forecast high 23º.

There are snowflakes in the forecast. Doesn’t take much too make me happy! We are wishing for snow. Chuck’s mom always said, “If wishes were fishes” (I googled the rest) we’d all have a fry we’d eat and we’d eat until we would die. Or, the other version, a little more optimistic,  If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets.

But really today is the same. Ian is driving around scraping the top loose, again. Same two people, second day skiers, skied again on Tuesday. They did another 6 miles, and left smiling. Is the skiing powder, blue sky perfect, no. But it is skiing and it is pretty ok.

New groomer update on Friday. Delivery of the “ginzu” has been changed to Thursday, because Wednesday afternoon is the 80 Bill Koch ski program day, and 30 Burr and Burton skiers. Ian guessed they would all show up at once, he wants to be able to pay attention to only the “ginzu” when it arrives. Click on the link and scroll down, there is a picture of what it will look like.

 

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