National Park Bum: You're sick of snow? Give me a break.

I started work just a few days ago and things are going great. I’m currently living down in the bunkhouse in Gardiner and walk a couple hundred feet to work. Buy groceries isn't much fun in a small town like this where things are just a little pricey…what can you do? Another price I pay for to have the Yellowstone in my backyard.

I remove snow. It’s not all that fun and somewhat repetitive but it allows me to be in the park for an extra month and that’s what really counts. We’ve been lucky and haven’t had terribly heavy snow but at the same time, when you remove four to six feet of snow; it’s heavy. Right now, I and six others are working in Canyon and digging out entrance ways, water mains and fire hydrants. The entrance ways can have anywhere from two to five feet of snow. It’s very rare for them to have two or three…

The hydrants and water mains have roughly four to five feet of snow. We have snow blowers to do most of the heavy lifting but the blower can’t get to all the places. There is another team driving bob cats around helping us get to where we need to go but they can’t do it all.

For the most part it’s fun which is a nice bonus. The drives out to Canyon have had no wildlife on the sides of the roads. The first day someone thought they saw a wolf but it was just a cute little rock chilling. Two days ago we were driving back in a van and had whiteout conditions several times. The girl driving was from California and did a good job driving considering we didn't die.

Lastly, overtime has been approved for us so we can get locations opened up for the higher ups. The nice thing about being on the Bull Crew is that it’s based out of Gardiner, Montana. What does that mean? It means over time starts after 40, unlike Wyoming, overtime starts after 48. So I assume that I’ll work the same amount of hours like in Mammoth but I finally get paid extra for being overworked. J