I received a report that our Dubois translator was off the air…It’s not a very big signal but it has a number of listeners.  There had recently been high winds in the area so I suspect something happened to the satellite dish.  It’s going to take a snow cat to access the site this time of year…Our friends from Central Wyoming College lend a hand…

We first tried to get to the lower parking area at the base of the mountain…
Unfortunately our truck fell through the ice crossing a small stream.

This tire isn’t going anywhere…
Fortunately the snow cat had not yet reached this point and was able to come down and tug us out.

The snow cat is easily able to tug the truck free so we can get it back to the upper parking area.

Ascending the mountain in the snow cat…

Made it!  The snow cat perches atop Windy Ridge while we complete work at the site…

Well there’s the problem…The dish had literally broken loose at the mounting yoke!

A closeup of the broken mount…The welds had literally ripped loose!
That must have been one heck of a gust of wind!

Since we no longer had a satellite feed to the site, an alternate audio feed was established via a DSL connection at the site.  Your tireless engineer poses for a photo after completing some reconfiguration.