Below you’ll find some pics of Grizzly Hill School on March 1, 2023 after five days of snow that started on Thursday, February 23rd. Here’s a short rundown of the school days leading up to March 1st.
School was released early on Thursday, 2/23 due to the impending snow storm. Around 2PM on Thursday is started snowing.
On Friday, 2/24 – after receiving about a foot of snow at the school overnight – I cleared the main pathways with a snowblower – which promptly died at the end of the job from, what I believe to be, a stripped blower gear. I also cleared the upper part of the school (upper grades) of all the snow that slid off the roofs with the School’s badass New Holland tractor. I love that thing – if loving an inanimate object is possible.
I took Saturday 2/25 off. I was supposed to play in Nevada City that night with the wonderful Lorraine Gervais and her band but that got cancelled. Pammie and I saw Tim Bulkley at SPD in Nevada City. I said to him, “I guess we get the night off!” and he responded, “Booooooooo!”.
Sunday, 2/26 I went in and did my usual cleaning job but didn’t touch any snow shoveling. I was hoping maybe the school could open on Monday.
Come Monday morning, I went in at 5:30 and then got the message that school was cancelled due to expected Blizzard conditions. I stayed and shoveled out entry ways and pathways hoping that maybe the “Blizzard” would be a dud because there had been talk of heavy snow but we had only gotten about a foot in the past few days.
Well, the blizzard hit Monday afternoon and lasted until Tuesday night. On Monday afternoon Taylor and I shoveled a bunch. He did the steps coming in and I cleared the parking lot out front with the tractor.
On Tuesday, 2/28 Taylor and I went out to the school and worked for three hours cleaning up what we had already shoveled. We did what I call the top loop of the campus – All the lower grade class rooms, the maintenance shed and the offices. Pammie and Bri walked out and helped us for a while. While we were there, Sunshine came in to take a test. Her dog, “Cream” was tagging along.
We gave Sunshine a ride down Old Mill to a spot kind of close to her home and then we drove back to Sunrise – after getting a little stuck when I missed the turn on to Clark Road!
The snow raged all afternoon on Tuesday and was still rippin’ when we went to bed.
Wednesday morning I went in to start digging ‘er out and this is how it looked..and how it went! There’s A LOT of work to do!
Thursday, March 2nd, I pulled in at 8:15 with high hopes that the day was going to be an epic progress day. The weather was beautiful and folks were due in to help!
I started extending the path from the offices to Cindy and Bonnie’s room. It took about an hour to get there!
Then I started to dig from the office to the front steps. When I got out to the kiosk, a white truck pulled into the top of the driveway and promptly got stuck. The truck worked its way back and forth a bit to try and free itself and then Cindy got out of the passenger’s side. I went out to see if we could get Tom’s truck out. I was psyched to have some company. The truck was freed easily and moved to the lot in front of the school.
Taylor and Bri showed up to dig out Bri’s car (yay!) and we decided our best bet was to get the tractor out and then start clearing the parking lot.
The tractor was confounded by the short, steep hill behind the Maintenance shed. Ice on the slope had to be chipped away before the mighty New Holland could dance in the deep snow at the top.
If you look closely in the vid above, you’ll notice there’s another arrival…MIKE! Damn, I’ve missed MIKE! While we were scheming on how to get the mighty New Holland up the hill, Mike drove by on Oak Tree. He’d been digging out on Skyland Road for days and finally made the snowmageddon hang at the Griz! Welcome to your nightmare, Mike! Shall we dig?
Once I got on the tractor, I stopped taking pics and just started plowing. Taylor and Bri dug out Bri’s car while Mike started clearing the front steps of the school. Sunshine showed up with Ryder. Sammie showed up too. PEOPLE! The meaning of life!
Taylor and Bri finally extracted Bri’s car and commenced to chaining ‘er up.
We loaded the wounded snowblower into Mike’s truck – it wouldn’t fit in mine – and he tooled off to Grass Valley to get the sucker fixed. Sammie, Sunshine and Ryder headed into to town to get some chains for the mighty New Holland. Taylor went in to Sunrise to check on Canyon and Pammie.
I drove back and forth and back and forth and then back and forth on the mighty New Holland and, before I knew it, Taylor came back. Pammie and Canyon were doing great. So much so that Can Man had fallen asleep so Taylor came back to continue digging.
Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and….Mike was back and commenced to digging with Taylor.
Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and stuck and dig and stuck and dig and back and forth and stuck and unstuck and dig and back and forth and back and forth and stuck and…Sammie, Sunshine and Ryder are back with chains for the mighty New Holland.
That’s it for the work part of March 2nd. I got my first sunburn of ’23. Tomorrow is another day. I hope to remember the sunblock.
Back to it! All the melting snow has turned to ice so Pammie and I are moving very carefully to get some food out of the walk-in for her to open up Little Acorns. We drive down together and things look good at Oak Tree. The paths are dry and she’s ready to rock!
Back at the Griz I put the new set of chains – thanks Sunshine! – on the mighty New Holland. I have never put a set of chains on anything in my life BTW. How hard can it be?
After some head scratchin’ and expletive releasin’, we’re good to go. I drive TMNH up to the entry way to the back driveway and commence to back and forthing with the vigor of the beautiful new March day.
Taylor drives into Old Mill road after taking Canyon to school and pulls over to admire the new chains on the tractor. But..wait…they’re falling off one wheel and dangling on the other. *&^y@! There’s more to this than meets the eye. There should be a bungee or something holding them onto the wheel. Taylor’s gotta go to work but he sets me straight so I go down to the maintenance shed to see what I can rig up.
One bungee and part of a cam strap later I’m much better off and I head down to the track to see if I can get through two feet of wet snow to dig out the upper part of the campus. TMNH makes short work of half a lap on the snow-choked track and I start back and forthing in the upper campus. Sorry lawn. Sorry sprinkler or two. Sorry small potion of the track. You gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette.
Help was scarce today but Sierra took a few swipes at the snow and Sammie stopped by with her new shovel and cleared the path on the lower loop. We’re getting there! But…more snow tomorrrow!
March 4th. I was kinda lazy today. We’ve got more snow due so I took care of the home front before worrying about the school. I went into North San Juan and filled up our propane tanks so we’d be toasty in the storm and then stopped at the school on the way home.
I could hear the Aguirre boys shooting hoops in the gym. What a great sound! My goal was opening up the the back door of the gym and then the back door of the office.
Wait…a text from Mike checking in! I responded and then started digging. When the door of the gym was freed, I poked my head in and said hello to the Aguirres and then got back to it.
With the gym open in back by the walk-ins and in front by the steps, I went to work on the back door of the office. A few minutes into this dig, my bestie Roger Goldenberg called from the frozen hinterlands of Claremont, New Hampshire! The lucky bastard is two months from retiring! So good to hear his voice, man! While we yakked it up Mike pulled in out front!
I said goodbye to Rog and hello to Mike and we commenced to slingin’ Sierra ceeeeement. Unfortunately, the sky commenced to dumping more Sierra ceeeement so I though it might be a good idea to get the GHS truck out of the the shed so Mike could take it home instead of his 2WD Tundra.
With the GHS truck extracted and the skies dumping snow, I bid adieu to Mike and headed back to Sunrise. We’ll commence this saga on Monday. Tomorrow I have a gig in Sac, weather permitting, and I’m planning on staying away from GHS all day.
Okay, here it is Wednesday, March 3rd. You have to be thinking that this can’t still be happening, right?! Well, school was called off again today. Let me see if I can take you back through how we got here.
Monday, March 6th was a planned teacher’s workshop day – no school for the students. Our former maintenance guy and all-around hero Shawn Olson put out the call to his firefighter pals that we still needed hep digging out Grizzly Hill School. Pam and I went in to the Griz to get food for Little Acorns so she could open up on Tuesday. Mike was starting to dig out the massive pile in front of the gym.
When we got back to the Griz I fired up TMNH and started clearing the parking lots, driveways and parts of Old Mill Road in front of the school. Shawn and three of his friends were helping Mike dig. They stayed until around noon. All paths were passable and the lot was looking great. A few teachers showed up at the school too. It was looking like school could open on Tuesday.
Tuesday, March 7th. Overnight we got another 8-10″ of fresh snow. We were close to pulling off a late start but, my understanding of why school was cancelled AGAIN, is that our bus company was skeptical that the bus could get out safely on Old Mill Road. Sooooo…Mike and I opened up the campus AGAIN! Shortly into digging out the front walkway and making a passable path through the entire campus, Mike suggested I work on the lots with TMNH so, off I went for another rousing morning of back and forth and to and fro and back and forth and…
One highpoint of today was seeing Phil’s new classroom setup. He’s quite excited to get back to it and try out his new room arrangement. Another highpoint was seeing Scott for the first time in person since the clouds started dumping. His story of getting out down near Purdon’s, a tree piercing the roof of his rental unit, hiking in and out in the first few days of the storm with a kid’s sled loaded with tools, is epic in itself.
Tuesday cleared off to be a beautiful, sunny, warm day. I worked on my sunburn again on TMNH and then finished up the upper school “snow bowl” with Mike. We then dug out a plow blade from behind the maintenance shed. Rumor had it that Karl – a local dude and parent of one of our students – had rigged a plow for TMNH at some point and that it had been used to plow the lots and road in the past.
Mike and I dug out the plow blade and got it into the garage with TMNH to see if we could figure out how to put it on and be ready to plow Old Mill Road. More snow was expected on Wednesday so we planned to get on it early so we could open if at all possible.
The plow flummoxed us. There was no clear way to attach it to TMNH. So, we called Karl. He was in town getting tires so we left a message and I took off.
Later in the day Karl texted or called or whatever to say that the plow was an unfinished project and had never been used. We plan to finish it!
Wednesday, March 8th, I drove out to the school at around 5:15 AM and there was a fresh 4″ of snow on the ground. I drove out to Tyler Foote Road and saw it had been plowed earlier but there was probably 2″ of fresh snow on the road surface. I went back and texted Scott and made a cup of coffee. Shortly after 6 AM the news came back; all schools in Nevada County would be closed today. Probably the right call but WHAT A BUMMER!
