Telling it like it is

We easily had another foot of snow down here on the benches last night. I just spent an hour with shovels and snowblowers clearing a path so we could get cars out of the drive. That's about as much snow in a single drop as we've seen since we've been living here. Good news is the resorts had upwards of 2 feet. Bad news - all the canyons are closed because of avalanches. More good news : all the arsing around with the snow cleats was worthwhile - the snow is avalanching off the roof just as it has done for the previous 5 years.

Part 1 : Do not use snow cleats if you have insulation issues in your attic. I thought I'd be efficient and clever this year, so I fitted three rows of snow cleats to the roof overlooking the drive. The idea was to prevent the snow from avalanching off into the drive. Being a metal roof, it does that. So following the first big snowfall, we went out and marvelled at how the snow was nicely staying on the roof. And then last night we marvelled at the sheer size of the ice dam that had formed because of the snow cleats. So last night I spent two hours up a ladder hacking the ice dam off the roof and taking out the first row of cleats. Today, because of the warm weather, I went up the ladder again and removed the second two rows of cleats. I'd rather live with having to clear the driveway of snow five times a day than having water running through the roof and ice destroying the shingles. Oh - and Merry Christmas.

First chance for me to ski this season, and I did 9230 vertical feet. It was bloody exhausting. Two more of the base lifts have been swapped for high speed detachable quads so my R&R time on the lifts has been substantially reduced. Either way it was a lot of fun although a lot of the high gates like Powderhorn were still not open. Onwards and upwards :-)