We had a birthday celebration out on the hill for Kricky's cousin, Katie today. It was a perfect bluebird winter day. The snow was deep and powdery. Judging from all the smiles it looks like everyone had a great time playing in the snow.
Katie's fiance, Jeremy, took the honors of being the first snowboarder to ride up the ski tow. It must've been slightly harder to use the tow with a snowboard. Jeremy made it look easy. Melissa took Jackson up the tow for the first time too. Here is a short video that Kricky took of them on the tow.
We were happy to see the tow working fairly well today especially after all the issues we had over the weekend. Hopefully it'll keep on chugging through the rest of the winter. Even if it doesn't hold up I'd still consider it a huge success as we've learned a lot about the tow and what to improve. Jay and I have already been scheming up a better drive wheel that will make it more reliable and less likely to slip. It should also be able to pull more than one skier at a time. With the sugaring season right around the corner we can't spend too much more time working on the tow this winter. We're already looking forward to improving it this summer!
Finally... lots and lots of snow arrived in central VT! We got about 20 inches of powdery snow!
The night it was snowing I was excited and antsy so I made more emergency shut-off switches. I added a little roof and sides to each one so that snow/rain can't accumulate on the red button and freeze (making it difficult to use).
I ended up making three more. I also added a plastic front cover. Currently there are already two installed shut off buttons in addition to the stop gate at the top of the hill. The other two buttons are located at the bottom and at the half way point. I plan to add these three new ones at the third points - making it possible to shut the tow down almost anywhere on the hill.
I also made a few more trail signs and made a slightly longer cord for the top safety shut-off gate.
When we woke up there was already 18 inches of new snow. Here is a picture of the house I took before snow-blowing the driveway.
To celebrate the snow day and valentines day we headed to Suicide Six in Pomfret, VT for a family ski. S6 is a great little local hill that's steep and has no lift lines (even on a powder day). The price is right if you know when to go - on Fridays tickets are $25 and on Mondays tickets are $10. We met up with Pete, Melissa and Jackson. We took turns skiing and playing with the kids in the roomy lodge. Here is Galen hanging by the window watching mom ski.
Later in the afternoon we took the kids out for a few turns too. Here is a short video of Galen with his mom.
Here is Kricky still finding some un-tracked snow mid-day. The snow was deep!
The next day we were excited to fire up the rope tow. Jay didn't have to work so we met up first thing in the morning. I skinned up to the top of the tow from the house and skied down the tow line - un-hooking the rope as I skied down. I also added the new safety gate cord at the top. Here is a view from the top of the tow looking down the hill.
The new shut-off gate cord was a bit too long but a stick kept it up off the rope (for now). Ideally I need to make height of the gate adjustable for the different variations in snow pack.
When we fired the tow up it was having trouble spinning the rope as the rope kept slipping on the drive wheel. We wernt sure if it was because of the moisture and new snow or if the rope had gotten hard enough that it couldn't grip well on the small drive wheel. We spent most of the morning trying to get to work and the rope still slipped no matter what we did. It was frustrating as we didn't really know what was causing it to slip so much.
We even tried wrapping the rope around the drive wheel in different variations with little luck.
We noticed that one of the return wheels wasn't spinning at all. After looking at it closer we saw that there was string around the rim (the string was from when we hung it up to help line the return wheels up - back before we got the rope). The string had jammed up the wheel to the point that it wouldn't spin. Kricky, Galen and I came back out in the afternoon to remove the string. We were hopeful that it might help fix the drive wheel slipping issue. Here I am removing the string.
Kricky tried to take a run on the tow but the rope still slipped to point that she could only get up the hill about a quarter of the way. When the rope slipped it appeared to burn the rope a bit so we stopped using it as we didn't want to severely damage the rope. It was definitely a frustrating day to finally have so much snow and a tow that had issues all of a sudden.
The next day we thought we'd try an extra wrap around the drive wheel (making it a triple wrap) to see if would help prevent the rope from slipping. I skinned up and over to the tow from the house. It was much colder but beautiful with the sun out. Here is a picture I took looking down the skin track.
Tappy appears to enjoy having a skin track to follow instead of wading through the deep snow.
Jay met me at the bottom of the tow and we modified it to a triple wrap and it worked! Here is Jay riding up the tow.
I wondered if the rope gripped better partyly because of the wrap (the third wrap adds an extra 50% of grip surface) or if the colder drier conditions made the difference. I'm curious to see it work in wetter conditions again. We took several runs and it was fun to be able to just ski. The conditions were amazing.
On our last run we were chatting about halfway up the tow when we noticed a lot of extra rope bouncing around at the bottom. Clearly something had gone wrong so I quickly skied over the short distance to the shut-off button at the half way point. When we got to the bottom I was relieved to see that the rope wasn't damaged at all. Unfortunately the rusty drive wheel rim had failed. With the extended double welded rim and the amount of tension it was clearly too much for the modified rim.
Here is a picture of the cracked rim and one of the lug nuts sheared right off.
We were eager to get it fixed as we were sooo close. Not to mention we had a family birthday ski party planned the next day and it would be a bummer to not have the tow working (after all the work we put into it already). So we rallied and grabbed the tire with an extra rim that was in the back of the truck. We went home, ate lunch, cut the tire off the rim, grabbed a sawzall, a lug wrench and a sledge hammer.
We took the rope off the broken drive wheel first.
We took the double welded rim off and attached a single rim back on. Since it was now using only one rim the rope wasn't going to clear the back of the truck bed with so we had to remove the back panel of the truck bed. The battery powered sawzall ran out of juice fairly quickly so we borrowed Mike's cut off saw.
The cut off saw made for quick work.
Poor Roxy (the truck) looked a little rough after the cut job. But it seemed to be worth it as we were able to get it running again.
Hopefully we'll be able to get a few more days of skiing on the tow as is this winter. Jay and I decided that we need to eventually add bigger grooved pulley drive wheels along with a better tension wheel setup.
We received a foot of new dry snow last week. With the little 1-4" hardpack base on the north facing slope - it was just enough to ski!
We ran the tow after work during the tail end of the storm as well as the next day after the storm. Bill came over with his brother and a few friends. Theskiing wasn't exactly bottomless but it was pretty good!
On Sunday morning Kricky met up with Jay to take a few runs while Galen and I held down the fort. The Keown's came over to check it out as well. When I got over there for a few runs later Ray Harvey stopped by on his snow machine. It was a fun time hanging out and skiing with the neighbors.
Jay and I made a few more signs after work last week. I brought them over with me so we could hang them up. Here is one for the safety shutoff switch.
Before I skied with Bill I added a safety switch with a little roof and sides as well as a clear plastic front to protect it from the rain and melting snow. I discovered earlier that water around the switch can freeze up making the switch difficult to use.
We pretty much skied till the truck ran out of gas. Considering the truck only had 4 gallons in the tank I was impressed at how long it lasted so far this season - it's also partly because we haven't had much snow to ski often.
As I was skinning back up the hill to hook the rope up (and ski home) I discovered a spot where the rope was wearing on the saftey shutoff wire. Luckily it had only rubbed off the outer insulation of the telephone wire. The outer metal sheathing was exposed but the actual pairs of wire were still protected.
I re-buried the wire in the snow (in a different location) so it wouldnt get any additional damage. We'll definitely need to bury the wire in the dirt next year.
Here is a short video of the what it's like to ride up the tow.
