Friday Night Lights

Friday night's shift started slow, but finished on higher notes.

The storm came in with much higher snow levels than we'd like. On my way into work, the torrential rain made driving tricky...so much rain became standing water because the crown of the roads couldn't drain the rain as fast as it fell. Had it been snow, it would have been 6+ inches/hour!

Snow levels lowered to pass level at 11:30PM after raining all day. It was way ugly...

Swing shift was grateful to finish their shifts, and advised we "take our time getting out there" we happily agreed...time to let the mountain "drain"...

We'd tallied around six inches of snow by 4AM. More hours of drain time were needed, but you can't make time...

In 30 years on my mountain, I've never seen more puddles, sinks and water running over the piste...we attacked it head-on...digging ditches...

Every "water feature" needed help draining. Blade a trench to help the water drain from the piste. Wherever possible we enlisted the lift operators to "do the finish work" to speed the drainage.

The bunny hill complex was our biggest problem...

Now I've seen plenty of rain on My Mountain over the years, but this is the first time I've seen so much rain on top of such a slim "base". The bunny hill has several "flats" that all became ponds or lakes.The pack is so thin, you can't "trench" it to help it drain, lest you tear up the erosion-control stuff...water bars and berms mostly. So we wait...I'm guessing the bunny complex didn't open at all Saturday.

Once we'd drained as much as time would allow, we pasted everything back together, and packed up.

Five modern groomers working as a pack is an awesome thing to behold, easily leaving 60-70 feet of corduroy in it's wake. The pack re-rolled half the open trails in a jiffy. The top of the mountain opened an hour late...but it opened with fresh corduroy from top to bottom.

After the soggy start, the groomers were treated to a half an hour on hero snow...the first of the season. Tonight's gonna ROCK!