As I mentioned in my previous post, snow had knocked KUWJ off the air for two days in a row. I started to make my way up the hill to the transmitter this morning. It was snowing fairly hard at the time. The drive up the hill was a bit of an adventure…This hill is difficult enough in dry weather, let alone with up to a foot of snow covering it!

The first part of the climb is a series of switchback bends. The next part of the drive stretches along a ridge at the top of the hill. The snow got deeper and deeper the higher I climbed. By the time I neared the top the road was almost not passable due to the snow but the new engineering truck managed to make it through.

The WPR Engineering Truck slogs through the snow

On this last stretch of road the snow was so heavy that it had caused a tree to fall across the road. Fortunately it was fairly small and easily moved.

No need to move a mountain…Just a tree…

On arriving at the site I found the satellite dish cover coated in ice and snow. This dish also has heaters on it but the cover was preventing them from working properly. I removed the cover and immediately the snow that was falling started to melt as it hit the dish. This also restored audio once again.

One seriously snowed in dish!

While I was on site I also took some time to install additional monitoring equipment and re-wire the remote control. This should allow us to get much better information from the site.

Newly installed monitoring equipment

The snow continued on and off throughout the day…At several points the snow was rather heavy! I almost thought I was not going to make it back off the hill! By the time I came back down it was dark. Fortunately the truck’s tire tracks were not entirely covered and I was able to follow them back down.

Coming back down the road at night

I spent the night in Jackson and drove back the next morning. The station was still on the air in the morning. I still need to make another trip back to finish up some wiring and get the site buttoned up for the winter.