Building Yoshi Mountain

The building begins

No more planning, it's time to build.

After a two hour foray to Lowes (where the hardware lady thought I was nuts) and Tractor Supply (motto: Please Wear Pants), I began building the components that will power the Yoshi Mountain rope tow (naming rights still available). It's a fairly simple contraption once you break it down, but it's taken an insane amount of planning, sketching, rejecting and re-engineering to get to something that I think will work. 

Yesterday I built the guide-rims that hold the rope on the way down the hill, and tested the support ramps that get the tractor wheel (or the 'bull wheel', because I know you want to use the technical term when you retell this to your children) off the ground to drive the rope. And I've worked out the kill switch for emergency shut-downs (advice to rope tow hobbyists...don't call it a dead man's switch around your wife). Finally, I designed the counterweight to keep tension on the rope. All that's left is to lay it out on the hill, get a precise rope measurement, splice the rope into a loop and fire it up. I figure a full day, maybe two if my splicing skills come up short. 

One of four guide rims:

The 'catch' wheels at the top of the hill

Tractor, lifted. The jack is too narrow but remove one ramp and you 

have a bullwheel where the rope loops around (rope guides will be used to

keep in on). 

It's ON.

Riley and I walked Yoshi Mountain today, doing some final calculations. Total distance, 270 feet. Which requires 540 feet of rope, plus 15 feet for the vertical rise on the return and 3 feet for the circumference of the bullwheel (or, as it's more commonly known, the tractor tire), for a total of 558 feet. Where, mind you, would someone find such an enormous amount of rope suitable for a rope tow? eBay of course, for the low low price of $150 delivered to my doorstep. I've worked out the required materials now, and all that's left is a shopping list, learning to splice rope, and a solid day of setup. I've spent way too much time thinking about this, there can be no doubt. But with Ri by my side, we marched off the measurements and I saw the dawning excitement in his face. 

It's on.

Yoshi Mountain Snow Report

10 new inches of snow made for an excellent base, much improved with the arrival of the neighbor kids and their sleds. Their inability to stop before the creek is a bit of a worry, but they seemed to do OK, and their big, flat sleds turned a semi-crusty surface into a perfectly groomed packed powder. I took about a dozen runs, and each was better than the last. Every time I was just about to quit, I yearned for one more, and up I went.

My dreams of the rope tow are reignited, although it's already late in the season. But this was the first true ski day at Yoshi, not just an experimental run or two. It was enough to realize the potential of getting to take a few dozen runs without too much effort, and without the hour and a half drive to seven springs or beyond. 

I almost bought a 600' spool of rope I found on Craigs List, but it was nylon and after a bit of research I realized that it would stretch about 20 percent under load, which is equal to 120 feet of slack. In other words, I'd have one long bungie cord instead of a rope tow. I'll figure it out eventually. For now i've got that post-ski glow for real, and all in the comfort of my own yard. 

Last glimpse of winter (I hope)

Ready for spring. Ready in a very big way. But here's one last look at the beauty of winter. Kylen and I went to investigate the creek behind the house for the first time, and Trudy came along.

And I finally got this scanned. Riley at Seven Springs this year. About four hours before his legs turned to spaghetti.

Ski day: Crystal Mountain

I need to be in Seattle all week for business, so decided to sneak in a day early and spend Sunday on the slopes. I hit Crystal Mountain on the advice of someone I work with, and was not disappointed. What a phenomenal place...as much hard terrain as you want, plenty of steeps nice bumps and great variation during runs. And to cap it off, every lift up you get smacked in the face with a spectacular view of Mt. Rainier.

I demoed a pair of Rossignols, since Southwest kindly sent my suitcase (crushed) with my gear, but not my skis. They were a ton of fun and just loved to carve turns, especially in steeper stuff which gave me more confidence to ski aggressively. At least until my legs gave in, which didn't take long. I'd started with Salomons, but they were just deadly...I've never been on skis so opposed to turning. They must have liked the base lodge, because they just wanted to go straight downhill.

The season's probably over for me, but I was psyched to get in a spring-like day at a fabulous mountain i'd probably never have skied otherwise. It was 40 and sunny. I peeled down to just my base layer, open jacket and no hat and still was too hot.

Now to a week of work, but with my batteries fully charged. 

Snow day at Yoshi Mountain

It just keeps coming down today, at least four inches of new. But it's pretty sticky. I took a run and never really got going, which for a 200' run is about as much fun as sitting in your living room. Check that...it's way more fun. These shots don't give the true flavor. For instance, you can't see Unionville Road at the top. I'm fairly sure i've never stood at the summit of--well, anywhere--and had a snowplow spray me with gray mushy snow.

Starting from scratch (and all the people who went before)

I got inspired to build a rope tow after reading an article in Ski Magazine about backyard skiing. The hills they profile are worlds more exciting than mine, but at the heart it's the same idea. Get me up so I can go back down. Vertical is wonderful...who doesn't dream of carving a hundred turns, stopping and seeing the lift still far below you? But carving five turns is still carving, and a short 30 seconds to do it all again--with the added benefit of improving those biceps--is still skiing. In reality, it's probably skiing in its purest form, back to days when a tractor and a rope where the only game in town...the initial spark that got people excited and led, in a wandering way, to the X-Games.

I started digging online for rope tows, and how the heck to build one, and came across this priceless gem. Heck, it probably works, but it's the description that's worth the trip. The video of their system in practice is even better...it looks like a VHS dub of an old Warren Miller film. Buying a purpose-built rope tow holds exactly zero appeal right now (I may change my mind when I eventually fire this up only to watch my tractor roll instantly down the hill and into the creek).

It does give me hope, however, that Yoshi (the tractor, not the mountain) will be enough to power this system. I'll need to visit the tractor store and have a conversation, and I have a fear that whatever the drive system is for the PTO (I know how to start it, not fix it) may need to be rebuilt, since the time I accidentally turned it on, it leaked a ton of oil. But I was also cutting the grass at the time, so maybe I just screwed something up.

Skiing, Old School

Maybe I just haven't lived until now. I've been lucky enough to get to ski almost every year out west. We've hit all the great resorts. We've skied steeps, bumps, powder to our waist (one glorious day), blue sky days and whiteouts. I'm no pro...I'm finally content in my ability to get from top to bottom and let the kids with the twin tips fly past me forwards and backwards.

I've literally whooped for joy at the feeling of just cruising and looking out at forever, with mountains.

But I never had quite the same feeling as skiing down the 75 vertical feet that is my front yard. Carving four or five quick turns, over small contours, steep enough to want to turn, but shallow enough to never really need to. I launched from a foot beside the road, feeling for all the world like an idiot standing there in jeans and skis, but too out of breath from the walk up to really care. There's a small little headwall launch to start you out right, then around the big oak, and into the open undulations on the way down, ending a few feet from the creek that reminds you there is no runout (and prevents this from being the world's best sledding hill).

I wasn't sure what to expect...more just a feeling of "OK, did that once, now it's out of my system." Instead I was overwhelmed by a desire to be at the top again to try another line. I hiked back up. The second run was more fun than the first...I'd buckled up the boots for real, and knew how the snow would feel underfoot.

I stood at the bottom again knowing I wouldn't hike it. But boy, if there was a rope tow, I'd be making laps like a madman.

Summer project is now in place. My hope is that with a little engineering and enough snow, Yoshi Mountain will open next season. What better place for kids to learn than their own front yard? (We'll just call it Yoshi Mountain until Riley's need to name everything yoshi subsides). The tractor (also called yoshi) has a PTO drive to power auxiliary equipment. Should be just enough power for a flywheel. The engineering at the top might be trickier, but I've sketched it out. You need to keep enough tension on the rope so it doesn't just slip on the wheel, and since a rope stretches and people on and off change the weight, I figure it needs a counterweight that can adjust, so I'll mount that at the top, and use the drive system at the bottom.

600' of rope should do it.