The first thing to do was to dig a path to the camp sites and the bathrooms (5 modern flushers and 2 pit models). It was impossible to get traction with the Kaboda unless you dug down to the roadbed, which tore it up and required a lot of work later to get the road base back where it belonged. No bike riding here to visit the sites! Our area manager (who managed this very campground the previous 4 years) kept saying it was just terrible!...meaning all of the damage from the record snowfall. The wood cage was crushed, tables broken, branches and logs criss-crossed all over the sites. But we didn't know any better and just did as much as we could with our huge can-do attitude.
In the second picture Bob is digging out the host site...and the third picture
shows how the host site normally looked in June. Each scoop picked up gravel with the snow, which I later tried to put back where it belonged (after the melt). Not knowing where the sewer connection was, it got sheared off during a "plowing" run.
The bathroom picture was also taken in June. We found the "snowless" pictures online months later, so we really didn't know what the park looked like, where the tables and firepits were, or even where some of the camp sites might be. It was quite the adventure...and just when we thought we had moved enough snow to open (surprise!) the runoff flooded everything. Even when we drained a site and bailed the firepit, it would fill right back up because the ground was 100% saturated. I found a toy hammerhead shark under one picnic table that sat in a "lake". How ironic....as I'd made it my daily task to try to save this drowning site because I'd met the sweet couple who had it reserved for their family. The opening was delayed until Bob's birthday, July 7th.
The final picture shows my special project. The Kaboda couldn't go into the actual campsites, so I'd take my big shovel and probe for the tables and firepits. Once found, I'd do my "Drift Buster" thing and heave snow into any available bare space. If there wasn't one, I'd clear a table and stack blocks of snow on top where it would quickly melt on the dark surfaces. It was Science! I thought you just needed to increase the surface area and the snow would disappear. On the larger drifts, every day I'd slice off chunks along the edges: "Glacier Calving". We thought we had it made, when a bigger challenge showed up: Mega Runoff! Now my task was to dig more drainage channels because July 7th was coming fast. The site reserved for the darling older couple (who came early to check out their group site) was literally still a lake. I decided to put the hammerhead shark back under their table to float in the flotsom. Nature had won, of course. I learned the hard way that with 100% saturation, the sites would fill right back up with water by the next day. Then we found out the water tested bad, which was another problem caused by the excessive runoff. There was too much coliform bacteria to let anyone drink it. The dirt roads were washing out in a serious way by now. Help!
