At Last: The Event Starts, Jan 26
The best-laid plans, etc: we plan for many many months for this. But we found out within a half-hour of the start that one of our tools was not going to work at all well. We had a 20-foot chain saw blade to remove large chunks. But it just wandered too much, as is evident in one embarrassing photo below that shows the chain coming out the side! We are grateful to Doug Bisson of the Ontario team for lending us a proper wire with attachments for doing this sort of work and you can see how well it cleanly removes slabs of snow in the later photos!
The event begins at 11 am. We have a great model and a giant block of very high-quality compacted snow.
In this photo you can see how our chain saw created a ridiculous outward arch instead of going straight down: straightforward and clean removal of about one ton of snow, all in one piece! The noise it makes on hitting the ground rivals the bombing of avalanche slopes we hear from the ski area above.
But here is the result of using the proper tool. Gravity is wonderful when it is on your side!
Removing piles of snow allows us to go to work with paint to mark up various curves. Tomorrow we will put in a long day trying to discover the curves hidden inside this rectilinear mass.
