I just got home from work, and sat down to my usual dish of vegetables and rice with some Cholula and soy sauce. Trying to lay off the meat pies and do some jogging. I'm planning to suffer through this ski-bike-run race coming up. It's taking place in two weeks along with a big weekend of events, among which is ski-joring (!). I can't wait to see how that is going to work. Maybe there will be fast sheep pulling skiers. I will be entering the contest for sure, anyhow.
Work can be interesting at times. The other day we had a TV crew come up to film the mountain staff doing their activities. They got some video of our snowcats. After they were finished filming us they filmed the ski patrollers, who naturally had to blow some stuff up with avalanche bombs because... well, just because. There wasn't any avalanche danger that day but you couldn't just film the macho ski patrollers doing paperwork. They managed to put on quite a show.
The film crew was stationed down in the parking lot and weren't really able to travel up the mountain where most of the avalanche blasting normally takes place. So the patrollers decided to blow up a mound of snow in the parking lot for the cameras. Instead of the regular 4-5lb charge, they used something huge, maybe a 20lb charge. It was a massive kaboom that shook my clothes 1/2 mile away. After the dust settled they realized that the blast had blown out all the windows in a small hut nearby, and several large expensive windows in the base lodge. The management wasn't terribly happy about the situation.
Tonight at work was a standard windy night. By windy, I mean windy. The cab of my machine was shaking violently. In order to get out of the machine, I had to shove my shoulder hard against the door, propping my feet against the floor and pushing with my legs. Then I have to shield my eyes from the blowing ice and walk pretty close to the ground in case I get blown down. When a gust comes, I just have to crouch and not move.
This is really pretty standard many evenings:
Top of this graph is 120kph. Red is average, blue is the gusts. Notice that in the last hour, it started to get ridiculous. I think the company went through a few different wind gauge models and configurations before they got one that doesn't simply disintegrate.
I had my car up there because I went skiing today. On the way down, I tried to take a couple of pictures. For this one, I actually got on my belly and crawled out to the edge of the road. I set my camera on the edge and held it down with the heel of my hand with quite a bit of force. Dust was blowing into my eyes and I had it in my teeth. Probably took some life off of the lens. I was hoping it would be a better shot but I'll have to come back and try again when it's not windy. That's not a cloud, by the way. It's wind-driven snow blowing up that valley and over the back of the mountain.
Tomorrow I have the day off, and I'm going to investigate this birds' nest that seems to be in the tin gutter directly above my bed. At first it was just some flapping and thumping and I thought it was kind of cute. It's gotten considerably louder though. I think they are having chicks because there is an additional squawking voice about every day. It's a cacophony now, and the thumping is continuous. I don't want to be heartless, but it's pretty hard to sleep with avian flight training going on above my head. I will check out the situation and see if I can think of any non-invasive solutions.
A glider swooped around over the ski area today. I guess they get some real record flight times around here (and some thrills, I imagine). Wonder how much it would cost to go for a ride.
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