My winter gig

[Tacodriver]

Norquay was a pretty small hill and mostly man made snow but most of the runs are fairly steep, so the traction was fairly good until you chewed the snow up to much and then it turned to sugar :naughty then the fun started, trying make the last pass down a run with the cat sliding and not wanting to leave track marks or ridges.
The most fun I had there would have been pushing out the man made snow building runs. We would get the snowmakers to blow snow at the top of a pitch and push down hill to cover the run. Nothing quite like a heavy winch cat pushing downhill @ full throttle, with a wall of snow curling as high as the cab in front of you
The PB winch functioned a lot smoother then the BR winches. Not trying wrap cable on the drum under tension makes a big difference. The only thing that I didn't like about the PB winch is on off angle pulls it unweights the outside track more. Which is only a problem if your anchor point is not ideal.
After working with snowcats your perception of what is steep and scary might change, and the best way to get out of a slide is accelerate downhill.

 

[CascadeScaper]

I was sliding around last night, it was interesting. Hit the sticks and ride it out, that's what I did. Dodge a fenceline at the bottom as well, just barely missed it as I sucked my dumbo ear back in. Since it's warm now because the weather can't make up it's mind if it's spring or winter, the snow is now pretty heavy. It would slab up pretty good and take off in front of you. 2 cats in front of me tossed me a windrow coming down an average slope, but it was all beach ball sized snowballs. I had to eat the pass because the windrow needed to stay in the middle of the run. There I was trying to smash the snowballs with the blade as I went by, trying not to leave snowballs rolling off the finish side of my tiller and keeping the track marks out. I rolled bite out of the tiller trying to process the windrow, but I didn't want to go too much or I'd get track marks. We should've pushed everything before we tilled it instead of trying to do it all in 1 pass, but oh well. I did push 1 pitch before we tilled and it made a big difference, much cleaner. Most slopes were fine to do in 1 pass but there were couple that were tougher to do than others given the snow conditions.

See we got all this snow, now the snow level is supposed to go to 12,000 feet for the next week. Base elevation of the hill is at 4,000 and it climbes to just under 6,000 feet. Thie next week is going to be terrible. Just don't understand 40+ degree weather in January at 4,000 feet, I just don't get it especially when 3 weeks ago we were getting -5 which isn't terribly typical and Seattle was seeing lows in the teens. Strange, strange year for weather.

 

[Tacodriver]

Good luck with the warm weather nothing like dealing with mashed taters all night long.

 

[Bootguy]

Jeffksf, They call that snow "farming". They blow snow for a month straight and let it leach the water out. Then they farm or push it down the hill in slots. it takes another month to farm and shape the super pipe. I have a couple of good friends who run the groomers, it's quite a process.

 

[CascadeScaper]

Well the season is practically over, it went by entirely too fast. Had lots of fun and picked up the grooming thing pretty well. After 6 weeks, I was told to take the lead on the runs I normally groom, so I took it as an opportunity to prove myself. I was also sent to go do runs that typically the senior guys on the crew normally do, feel somewhat accomplished with the gig as a whole.

We've been seing some unseasonably warm weather the last few days. Last week we got absolutely hammered with snow, we had 12 feet of snow fall in March alone and that kept up until last Thursday. The last 3 days have been in the mid 50's at the base area. I was snow farming last night to get my bottom ramps levelled back up after all of them sank 6 inches during the day.

Tally for the year shows that I didn't once put my cat into the trees. There were quite a few slick nights in the last month with all that new snow that I wondered what would happen if I did cut loose on a couple different long, steep pitches we groom. At first, sliding is scary because you can get going pretty quick. Then you learn a couple tricks to seat yourself back down on the snow and maintain course. It's tricky, I still don't have it all the way figured out, but hopefully next year I can get it mastered.

Haven't learned winching yet, maybe next year. Had the chance to groom in our terrain park a few times although I wasn't doing any building. It's a whole new world in there and it'll push you to run your cat to the best of its abilities. I ran our Pisten Bully Edge a few times for the fun of it, not a bad cat but ours is a lemon. Doesn't have any power and is super, super twitchy on the sticks. Pisten Bully has been up a handful of times and tells our terrain park operator, which is where the cat is supposed to be working, that it's supposed to run like that. Needless to say, it's a dog if you're doing a lot of pushing, but we've found it to be a decent freegrooming cat minus the stick twitch. We're trading it out next year for a new Prinoth Bison X or Pisten Bully 400, I don't think the boss has made a decision yet.

 

[cat 385]

something to add to the resume,sound's like a good experience for you with more knowledge to look forward to next season congrats.

 

[CascadeScaper]

something to add to the resume,sound's like a good experience for you with more knowledge to look forward to next season congrats.

Thanks! That's the way I look at things. Given the chance to try something new, I do it. As it turns out, I liked it more than I thought I would and will give it another run next season.

 

[Grouser]

Howdy CascadeScaper and thanks for the pics and stories. I used to groom up at Alyeska back in the 80's, they started me out on an old Tucker quad track without a blade pulling a culvert! We finally got a DMC 3700 and then we would freefall all the steeps (winch cats are for p***ies) knock the air out the first passes and let it set up and try it again by hanging on to the berms for dear life. The compacter bars were rudders and you steered with the blade and just made sure the tracks kept spinning.

Once I spun a complete 360 off the glacier bowl while freefalling the landing hill for the gelande jump. It was so steep and so deep I was blinded by the snow coming over the cab and lost fall line and with total vertigo I just picked everything up and when I could finally see and realized I was going backwards I tilted my blade to spin me downhill again and came out the bottom like it was no problem, the people watching didn't even know we had spun . . all they saw was a cloud of snow!:drinkup Brian Burnett (former US Ski Team service tech) was my passenger . . .

 

[CascadeScaper]

Dude that's sick! A guy I worked with this year groomed at Alyeska years ago, I think he said 15 years ago but I'm not totally sure. You're right, the tillers are definately rudders, tiller steering is a must on those slick nights. I try to keep the blade off the snow as much as possible on steep stuff, although sometimes blade steering is necessary but I've found tiller steering pretty effective when descending. I've also found that if you get panicked and start dragging blade you lift the cat off the snow just enough to pull some track out of the snow, thus reducing the amount of grousers touching the snow which are effectively holding you to the pitch. That's just been my observation, although every night is different and some nights you can get away with a little blading, some nights you can't.

I haven't completely spun around, but I know the possibility is there. I've almost gone completely sideways though, that'll wake you up if you were thinking you may fall asleep at some point during the shift. :drinkup

The biggest issue I've seen with getting tons of new snow is not being able to hit it and let it set up. Not helping this situation is the fact that we were on hardcore budget this season and only ran 7 cats every night. In the past, we used to have 2 cats do the backside at 4PM on a swing, then 9 would do the frontside on a grave, providing 110 cat hours on the hill each night. This year, we ran only 70 cat hours per night. Needless to say on the nights we had new snow and things are slick, we were strapped to get done in time. Knocking the air out and letting a run sit for a couple hours to set up then hitting it again just wasn't in the cards most nights. This was zero fun because it just stresses a guy out to leave it perfect if you can't even give it a chance to set up.

 

[Grouser]

It does seem kinda sick now that I think about it!

Yes, the blade steering can be tricky and only a subtle touch here and there is all you get.

I found that in the steep, deep powder the tracks didn't hold you much but if they stopped spinning you dug a huge groove and built up snow in front.


One of the things about grooming is that it really helped me with finish dozer work. Don't you think it has helped you to be able to shape better in dirt? In grooming your always carrying a grade across a plane . . .

I miss seeing massive moguls in front and beautiful groomed behind . . .

Enjoy. :usa

 

[CascadeScaper]

You know, I'm not sure how grooming will help me out running a dozer. I don't think it could hurt me, but I've yet to get back in the dirt since the end of the grooming season. I've been told by a few people that it will help me when running a finish dozer, which is good because that's an area I'd really like to pursue. Had a little experience running a 6R doing finish work, but just a few days before last winter. I suppose maybe the grooming experience will allow me to hold my own on a dozer when I get another chance, I only have about 80-90 hours on a dozer and that's on everything from a 3 to an 8.

 

[9400ieagle]

i drive a 1984 Pisten Bully 200 D with a 18x8 foot drag sled heres the link: http://www.snhtrailblazers.com/snhtrailblazers/Groomer.html