One of the coolest things about having a blog on our website is that it gives us the chance to answer the questions that have no simple answers. Or at least try to answer them. So when I hear people asking why we do (or don’t) do something, I like to use this forum to explain the more complicated things that happen on our mountain. Yesterday on “opening day” we did not groom Main Street. Not because we like to watch people flail and ‘auger in’ to deep snow…but because we couldn’t…at least…not until today. I hope this post helps explain why…

The top of Main Street tends to get a lot of wind compared to the rest of our mountain. When our first batch of snow fell in late November, most of it scoured off the top of Main Street. Photos of this are seen in our previous blog entry from November 30th. We were able to ‘track pack’ most of our other slopes during that really cold snap we had in early December, but the snow wasn’t deep enough on Main Street to do that. Our track packing and brush cutting efforts are shown and explained here.

Early this week, when we got 21″ of fresh snow in two days, we were able to re-track and groom the slopes that had already been ‘track packed’. Track packed slopes that were steeper required us to use our winch cat, pictured below.

You can just barely make out the cable that attaches this cat to a tree or other anchor uphill.

The winch motor is used to pull the cat up toward the anchor, via the cable.

We can’t climb any steep slope with a grooming cat without the winch until it’s been packed a couple times. Since the other main slopes HAD been tracked packed and Main Street hadn’t, we thought our visitors would rather have ALL of those slopes groomed that to have just Main Street done and nothing else.Luckily, it only took one day before that situation changed. These photos were taken early this morning on Main Street. We were finally able to use the winch cat on Main Street because the skiers and snowboarders who rode down Main Street yesterday ‘ski packed’ that slope. That helps the snow stay in place and not slide off the hill once we do put a grooming cat on the slope.

This is not all that uncommon for Main Street, in fact, the Brundage crew can’t remember the last time we WERE able to groom Main Street before opening day.

As you can see from these photos, Main Street is now groomed and our visitors were able to enjoy a nice snow surface.

There’s still some brush on the upper reaches of Main Street, again, because we were not able to track pack it, and therefore not able to use our nifty flail mower on it. What’s a flail mower?

Once you get down toward the middle of Main Street, the brush virtually disappears.

The snow was pretty darn enjoyable, too, I must say.

If you weren’t here opening day, you wouldn’t have noticed a thing – Main Street is groomed well groomed and waiting for a visit from you. And for those who WERE here yesterday and left wondering ‘why?’….I hope this blog entry answers your questions. Until next time…

– April