Devil’s Head Resort Snowcam

Looking out my window at 6 am this morning it was of course, all black. Well, almost. There was just a small intense bit of light reflecting on the clouds directly over a section of the Baraboo bluff range that  commands the southern horizon where I live. The light means that they are making snow at Devil’s Head Ski Resort. It’s 5 degrees this morning, a perfect night for making snow. As I gaze out at the spot lit cloud I can’t help but feeling a bit of a chill.

Back in the day, back when I was working one of the many myriad jobs I’ve had, I was a bar tender at Cascade Mountain Resort near Portage, Wisconsin. (one of 3 ski resorts in the area). It was often in the wee hours of the night after the chalet had closed and the bar was restocked that I would be down in the locker rooms grabbing my coat and preparing for the cold drive home. It was then when the guys who made the snow would often come in for a short break.

They didn’t bother taking their gear off. I frankly doubt they could have had they wanted too. In would come white ice sculptures of human-like monsters. Massive deformed bodies and heads all cracked and white. The sound of their clothing cracking and creaking with every step. Their breath had been captured frozen and built up on mustaches, eyebrows, foreheads and hoods. Even their eyelashes were thick with ice.

Some would remove their gloves to hold a cup of coffee they’d poured from a green metal thermos, others wouldn’t bother and just hold their cups with large frozen inflexible hands.

Somewhere inside these giant nocturnal yeti bodies, the voices of men would come out. Their voices seemed much smaller than the frozen hulks gathered around the tables. They’d chat for time about boats and cars, wives and problems with the snow machines while the temperature of the air around them dropped like brandy around the ice of a Manhattan. If you stayed in the room with them long enough, you’d have to grab your coat as well.

After a time one of the men would glance at the black rimmed wall clock on the otherwise barren brick wall of the break room and make sound somewhere low in his throat acknowledging that break time was just about over. The men would stand in unison while ice and snow broke free from their frozen outer shells and fell into the growing puddles expanding below their chairs dirty and cracked plastic chairs. Cups would go on counters and sandwich baggies would drop in a big black garbage barrel before one by one they would thump and creak out the door in to the ungodly cold, black, frozen night.
There is no doubt. Some guys really do work for a living.