Dear editor:
The April 7 article on the spring plowing of Yellowstone’s roads is a general description of snow removal operations in the park.
The article incorporates parts of an article from March 2025 that quotes a longtime winter keeper in the park, who stated, “An old friend of mine, who started doing this kind of work in 1973, said it’s the hardest work in Wyoming.”
To say federal employees performing janitorial and custodial spring snowplowing of Yellowstone roads is “the hardest work in Wyoming” is an insult to engineers, heavy equipment operators, truck drivers, guardrail crews, pavers, signage crews, painting crews, flaggers and inspectors who actually built the roads.
In terms of risk and dangerous jobs in Wyoming, farming, mining, logging, oil field, outfitting, law enforcement, and firefighting leave janitors and custodians in the dust. Seasonal bulldozing of snow on Sylvan Pass is indeed risky, but not necessarily the “hardest”.
In the aftermath of the “efficient snow removal convoy” taxpaying, entrance fee paying visitors are witness to the destruction of the “construction convoy” in the form of severely damaged guardrails, curbs, and signs. So-called “snow rubble” ejected from the “massive rotary plows” significantly damage roadside vegetation.
While plowing the Beartooth Highway, the crew stays three nights in a Cooke City, Montana motel.
Once upon a time, the plow crew stayed at the Beartooth Maintenance Camp up on the highway, which was specifically built as a base of operations for maintenance crews. More than thirty years ago the camp was closed. More than thirty years ago, the national debt was under five trillion dollars.
The camp was likely closed due to lack of maintenance for federal maintenance crews to comfortably use. Undoubtedly, the abandoned, withering buildings of the Beartooth Maintenance Camp are inventoried on the National Park Service multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog. With no intention to re-open, it should be sold and taken off the books.
Choosing to not use the government maintenance camp and incorporating a private sector motel raises the question: Why not go private sector all the way and have insured and bonded excavating contractors plow the park roads and parking lots? The plowing would be done in a fraction of the time and expense, offering the hope of extending the summer season for locals.
That sort of efficiency does not matter, the NPS will not open the gates until the schedule opening dates. There could be thirty feet of snow on the roads or thirty inches, spring plowing is always on schedule as are gate openings.
When pressed on leniency of their rigid opening schedule, the NPS likes to say wildlife needs a break.
The aforementioned winter keeper describes plowing operations thusly, “It’s incredibly noisy, incredibly (smelly), and shatters the winter isolation”.
So much for the access battles of yesteryear involving private sector snowmobiles - engines requiring Best Available Technology (BAT) to mitigate blue smoke haze and maintain a serene “soundscape”.
But you and I are a disturbance if allowed in early. So goes the perpetual, false narrative.
Sincerely,
Steve Torrey, Cody
