Within hours of the snow hitting and with just a few inches of snow accumulated, Meadows slope maintenance team went to work. Parking lot snow was pushed into piles and loaded into two trucks - a pickup with a dump bed and Big Yeller - an Oshkosh snow plow and sanding truck that we’re using for harvesting.
While the pickup transported snow to the bottom of Buttercup, Big Yeller hauled snow to the top of Buttercup. The rubber-tired vehicles are giving our team a day’s head start on harvesting, as we would have to wait for our access roads to be completely snow-covered before we could use the metal cleated snowcats.
The talent, ingenuity and pre-planning of our vehicle maintenance and slope grooming teams is on display, as they work hard to capture every possible snow flake to ready the mountain for some possible preview days this weekend.
While it is still speculative, and dependent on the forecast snow to materialize, we are readying ourselves for preview days starting as early as Friday. It would be a limited operation - possibly just Buttercup, or Buttercup and Easy Rider. But with enough snow and the head start our team has given us, if conditions allow Mt. Hood Express would be considered. And that would be something we would all be thankful for!
We will post updates here on this blog and our conditions page as the storm progresses.
Think snow - and keep doing your snow dance. They are working!
Conditions Page