Changes at Mt Rainier -- road closed Tues, Weds

The park has been posting information about the gate opening on Twitter @MountRainierNPS for while now -- so with a bit of data mining it would be possible to chart and compare gate opening times this season vs. last and correlate inches of snowfall with gate opening times.

Looking that the Twitter feed this season -- so far at least they seem a bit more consistent with tweeting both projected opening times and when the gate is actually opens

... with a bit of data mining it would be possible to chart and compare gate opening times this season vs. last and correlate inches of snowfall with gate opening times...

Randy, I have the twitter data from last winter and this year so far in a daily log format, one line per day with tabs.  If you or anyone else want to try adding snow data, drop a PM with email address and I can attach my .rtf files to a reply.

I like Stormking's approach of analyzing how many employees the parks allocate for a particular job.  I'm not sure where he gets his figures; perhaps Olympic is more forthcoming with such information than Rainier? 

I'm guessing the weekday road crew for the Paradise Road is 4-5 people, weekends maybe 6-8.  Probably the number of weekday LEOs is 3-4, and maybe twice that on weekends?  The VC is only open weekends; say 6-8 naturalists are on duty.  What am I forgetting?  Maybe a maintenance man for the VC and a couple more to haul the rubbish and swab the restrooms.  I'm not counting the entrance station or sewage treatment plant, since presumably these are staffed whether Paradise is open or closed. 

I'm sure Randy or someone will correct me if these estimates are way off, but by my calculus about ten people work Paradise each weekday, and perhaps more than twice that many on weekends, say 25.

Again, there's no way to know for sure, but word on the street in Ashford is that the park has a hundred permanent employees.  On any given day about 15% would be on their day off.  Say another 10% are on leave or at training.  I'd guess about five folks each are stationed at Carbon, White River, and Ohana all winter.  It would seem that on most winter days the park has a workforce of about 60 on the SW side.

Here's my question:  What are those other 35-50 people doing each day that is more important than having enough staff to allow the public up to Paradise? 

I don't know staffing or budget details.

I do know from monitoring LE radio traffic while volunteering on Nordic patrol that the LE is kept very busy with "the general public" just driving the road.   I recall one Saturday there was a heart attack (and subsequent airlift), a DUI arrest and multiple cars slid out and stuck and that was on a day without new snowfall.    On a typical weekend there is an injury incident on the Paradise sledding hill that requires ambulance transport to Tacoma (and a ton of paper work).   On weekends there is an ambulance "on call" at Paradise, so that most of the time injured sledders don't have to wait two hours before transport arrives.

I've waited plenty of times for "that damned gate" to open on powder days -- it is annoying for sure.   My guess is that the park's priority is not to open the gate as quickly as possible in the morning, but rather that everyone gets back out of the gate at the end of the day.  That means keeping plow crews on duty until late in the afternoon -- in case of new snowfall or slides over the road (particularly in the section just above the Nisqually bridge).    Having the plow crews start at 4AM would get the gate open earlier, but a second crew or some sort of split shift arrangement would be needed to ensure the road remained drivable into the evening.

Thanks, Randy.  I'm pretty sure they already have split shifts for both LE and road crew on weekends/holidays and my guesstimates reflected that.

Here's my question:  What are those other 35-50 people doing each day that is more important than having enough staff to allow the public up to Paradise? 

Dunno, maybe their jobs? Pretty unlikely they are all trained snowplow drivers. There are other aspects to running a NP.