Oct 27 Bring it on!

Eleven inches new with moderate winds yesterday on Paradise telemetry!  Early season measurements can be suspect, but this sounds encouraging.

Look for the feds to start locking the Longmire gate nightly soon.  Also,  please try to stay on the trails & off the meadows as much as possible until there's more snow.  Let's not give the Park Service any more arrows to put in their quiver of excuses for keeping the road closed.

Gary, sounds like you're gearing up for a fight. I would want to think that we should take a wait and see attitude, except that I've noticed your observations over the last couple of years have been fairly accurate. It's rather disappointing, really. Also, do we know anything new about the operation of the day lodge - so often last year the concessionaire was closed when I figured they should still be open - kinda like the new building architecture but wish the 'food grotto' was a bit friendlier of a place to have a cup of joe.

Staying on trails at this point is good advise, though. Much of this early snow will melt off in the coming weeks but perhaps the seasons' first base layer for Pan Point and environs has been laid. Not a bad start.

According to the park website they have already started closing the gate nightly.

OPEN daily, weather permitting.
The road is closed nightly above Longmire, and reopens when morning snowplow operations are completed.

or when they feel like it?

Anyone happen to know if the gate got locked tonight?

David - I'm a powder-hound, not a fighter.  My thread title referred to winter; wish I had considered the Bushian implications.  Is it 'disappointing' that I'm 'fairly accurate', or that there's so much room for NPS management improvement?  Even the old 'lodge' (the Park prefers visitor center) was only open weekends and holidays, but I also noticed a tendency to close early on slow days.  I suggest two thermoses (thermii?), one for the pack & one for apres-ski.  The new Paradise VC, which cost us $25 million, about 15% of the parking spaces, and a six month 'flood' closure, is actually open less than half the year...

trumpetsailor - Yesterday's Park phone message promised a 10 AM opening, so it's safe to assume the gate is now locked nightly.  Interesting that the WA DOT still has Cayuse & Chinook Passes open.  Speaking of thread titles, I've never noticed them changed in a reply before?

'morning Gary. Actually I didn't even pick up on the battle ready implication of 'bring it on' ~ perhaps my own Freudian issue.. And yes, I was lamenting your accuracy in observing a need for improvement of mgt. After all, they're the folks, that when remodeling the main Guest Lodge, saw fit to remove the classic old bar and replace it with a bank of telephones.

I put french onion soup in my thermos. After a ski, at MRNP, I want to sit and sprawl and chat with Letty ,et al, before heading back down. The new vc cafeteria, besides being dank and hard, has little more room than enough for my butt and hat. Nice building but somehow I liked the old one better.