Things have been fairly mundane around here. I've just been going to work every day, eating bland store-bought sandwiches, and running my propane heater. However, tonight at work I had an interesting experience.
We've had some snow the last few days so there is some digging to be done around the buildings and ski lifts to get everything exposed. I have been working in the base area the last two nights trying to make things look good. It's a lot of work because it's neglected by everyone else until I have to come in and do a huge makeover on it. Anyhow, I had opened up a pretty big project for myself when I got a radio call from ski patrol asking for some assistance.
I was a bit annoyed because I had too much work on my plate to be doing favors for everyone. I reluctantly abandoned what I was working on and went to help.
Ski patrol had been doing some avalanche blasting above the ski area access road. They brought down a pretty huge slide with their explosives, much bigger than they anticipated. It completely erased the road. A guy was there with a front-end loader but wasn't having much luck. So I drove down there with my cat and got involved.
The road is sketchy enough, but I was a full 25 feet above the road in my machine, trying to dig snow out of the side of the mountain. I tried to push it off the side, but tipping over the edge meant certain doom... it's probably a 1500 foot chasm to the forest below. I've dug out roads before, but certainly nothing like this. Luckily it was dark, and therefore less scary because you can't see the scope of things.
Finally the loader operator and I got a narrow lane dug through the snow. Driving down through it in our truck after work, the vertical walls are probably 20 feet high in spots. I took some pictures while he was finishing up, but nothing really came out. I recycled and doctored an old photo to illustrate.
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