Tow tweaks and safety

The first big snowstorm of the season is expected to arrive tonight.  The weather forecast is calling for total accumulations of well over a foot of snow in our area.  If this is the case it should be just enough snow to ski!

We spent the afternoon making an adjustment to the bottom idle wheel to ensure that the rope tracks correctly under various tensions.  We added a pipe across the bottom of the last idle rim (before the rope heads up the hill).  It should help prevent the rope from jumping out of the wheel when someone grabs onto the rope (creating slack behind them).

We're realizing that we'll eventually need a counter weight pully system to take up the rope slack especially when there is more than one person riding the tow.  Another option (if we could somehow get a benched trail up to the top) is to park the truck at the top of the hill.  Having the truck at the top would eliminate the extra rope slack issue.  It would also allow us to not have to keep the rope under a lot of tension (which we currently do to help keep the extra slack down).  A rope with less tension might make it easier for folks to hold the rope up off the ground while riding up the tow.

We also pulled the top bull wheel back about 6' to help tension the rope.  I didn't get any pictures today as my phone camera ran out of battery supply.

I also picked up some more telephone wire and snow-fencing given to us by our good friends Ray and Cheryl Harvey.  The wire will be used to run a circuit for the safety shutoff switches as well as the top stop gate.  We also plan to fence off the bottom area around the truck to keep kids and dogs away from all of the moving parts.