Snow shoes don't skate along the top of soft snow. They spread out one's weight so a large area is pressed down, after which you lift the snowshoe up over the next two feet of snow and press down again. This is tiring – like climbing a stairmaster in a gym. I feel the exercise at the top insides of my thighs. A clear work out! We widened each path four snowshoes wide to provide a firm surface for the snowmachines, but the temperatures remained so high (20s and even 30s) that the upper layers never hardened up for our (admittedly old and heavy) machines. After they got stuck twice, we ignored them and continued to strap on the snowshoes for the rest of the month. (“Why fight a...xxx?” I think about this every season.)
The mostly windless and temperature stable days and nights retained the pretty white layer above black branches and angled tree trunks. I find this so beautiful. But this also meant that the roofs retained their load of snow, too. Fortunately, half of our buildings have 45 degree roofs (1”:1” rise), so they shed snow easily. But the 30-33 degree roofs (1”:3” rise) needed some early attention to slough off the heavy load of precipitation. I found a website that helps one calculate the increasing weights of fresh, settled, wet snow and ice over a given expanse of roof. Yikes! A two foot snow dump can weigh 15,000 lbs on a 20 x 12 roof! I pity the families and work crews attending to the surprisingly shallow roofs I spy throughout this part of Alaska. Sure, flatter is cheaper to build, but... 20 years of maintenance?
