Ever wonder how monster snow drifts are dealt with at Yellowstone National Park?
Yellowstone National Park is located mainly in Wyoming, but extends slightly into Montana and Idaho. While summers are lush with all sorts of flora and water features, winters are a very different story.
On average, the park receives 50 to 200 inches of snow every year, although it tends to be heavier in the interior than at entrances. That amount of snow, coupled with low temperatures from end of fall to early spring, forces the National Park Service to stop plowing roads from the first Sunday in November to late April. Only one road is open year round, running from the north entrance at Mammoth to the northeastern entrance at Cooke City, according to Yellowstone National Park Lodges.
While plowing may be stopped, it doesn’t mean that no snow removal occurs within the park limits, so how do you go about it? Snow banks can get unbelievably deep, sometimes nearing 10 feet or more, you can’t just run a plow through it…
Turns out, they have a very unique and skillful way of handling the problem, as we can see in this video taken from a tourist who visited in January of 2019.
The Canyon General Store was covered in about 7 feet of snow and one tough worker was tasked with the job of digging it out. Instead of just putting his head down and starting to attack the mound, he figured out a genius way of moving the snow.
He cut out refrigerator sized chunks of the snow and used two shovels to drag it to the disposal area.
Genius, just plain and simple.
Of course, it’s going to take a long time to clear all of that, but man is it satisfying to watch.
