Shovelling Snow

Yesterday brought the sun back to the canyon in which Ouray is nestled. Of course, a sunny day after a snowy day means shoveling the snow that fell! I was out at it at 7:30am so I could be finished before going in to open up Mountain Fever at its scheduled opening time of 11am. Since we have 2 decks on the north side of the house, I usually start on the lower deck and push as much of the snow over the side as possible. Just like a golfer has a favorite club to be used in certain situations, I have a choice of 4 different shovel styles from which to choose. I prefer the wide shovel with a long handle that has an angle on it to where I can stand up straight and push most of the snow to the desired location. It’s kind of like a show shovel on a stick. So I push all the snow off the lower deck and then head up to the upper deck via our metal staircase we had installed that is anchored into a huge boulder sitting on the boundary of our property. On the upper deck I shove the snow towards the edge and then give it a final push through the guard rail, hopefully with enough force to that it shoots over the lower deck which juts out about 5 feet more than the upper deck. Once finished with the upper deck, I go back down to the lower deck and push off any snow that I was unable to shoot out to the back yard. Back yard – that’s a laugh. Our lot is one of the smallest in town and is taken up by the house, except for the 5 feet setback in all directions from the property line.

Once the lower deck is re-shoveled, I head back up to the upper deck and climb up to the north face of the roof that covers the one floor of the split level. I shovel the snow over to the south side where it will be scraped off later with a snow rake. We shovel the snow off the roof, especially the north side, to avoid ice dams. If that is not done, the damn ice can build up as a ridge on the roof and push ice back up under the shingle. Once under the shingles it can encounter the warmer temperatures emanating from the house. If the temperatures are warm enough to melt the ice, it then finds its way down the interior support beams and becomes a drip inside the house – usually through one of the can lights in the kitchen ceiling.

So, we shovel the back part of the roof so the sun can hit it and start melting the snow not picked up by the shoveling. This time of year the sun is getting high enough tat it melts off pretty quickly. I then go to the garage and get the snow rake. This is kind of like a big squeegee but made of metal. It has a 5-foot handle on it and I have three 5-foot extensions I can add to it as needed. I reach up and extend the rake as high as I can and drag the snow towards me. It falls off the roof and onto the driveway. This is continued for the length of the roof and extensions are added as I move down the driveway since the downgrade of the driveway moves me further from the apex of the roof. As soon as the snow is scraped and if the sun is out, the remaining snow immediately starts to melt with the help of the heat radiating from the shingles.

Then comes the fun part – shoveling the driveway. Some of the snow tossed from the north roof and scraped off the south roof piles up in the driveway, so not only do I get to shovel what nature deposited in the driveway, but whatever came from the roof!

This time it took about 2 1/5 hours to do all the shoveling by myself. Normally Tamara assists me and it goes quicker, but this time she opted to stay in the warm bed. It was a good workout after having the most of January off from any shoveling due to lack of snow. It appears February might make up for the deficit.