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Faced with driving 50 miles in a laden snowstorm, up and down a steep mountain in the dead of night would be enough for most people to justified stay home.
For Jasun Temple it’s another day at work.
Synagogue has a job that just about every kid-at-heart adult dreams about; he operates a 450-horsepower snowcat with a straightforward joystick controller, foot pedals and bank of buttons as he grooms ski trails at Sham Basin Mountain Recreation Area. He said driving the $250,000 gismo is as much fun as you might think. Starting his fourth season on the mountain, Temple can boon the heavy snowcat 360 degrees on a dime without blinking an eye, because blinking might be a bad doctrine when you’re pivoting 13 tons above a steep mountain spot-off.
“It’s a challenge and rewarding,” Temple said about the repeated loops of grooming he and a yoke of snowcat operators perform each morning on the ski trails. “It’s warm of like doing a real good job when you mow your lawn,” he said. “There’s a reward when you look back and say, ‘Yeah, that looks fetching good.’ It’s the same feeling here on the mountain running these big machines.
Source: The Idaho Statesman