Snow as a tourist attraction...

I got to thinking about all the frigg'n snow that just fell and where we will be able to store it for the rest of the winter.

If the city made a real effort to pick up the snow, from streets and alleys and piled it up in some location that could become the world's biggest toboggan run....and if we had enough snow...perhaps even year-long eh?

Thoughts?

That is a good idea. Once established - half the mass would even remain through the summer until next winter. The run-off melt could be diverted to a lake that would serve up the summer recreation (lot's to do n water). If there was a mile long toboggan run around we (our kids) would be there today. Just the right slope - not too fast or slow. Tow-ropes going up or the best exercise around - climbing back up. That alone would bring exercise enthusiasts. I'm in - let's do it. The City or Province would grant us the land in exchange for having a place to dump their loads. This would be bigger than the water-park that's been mused for years and never happens.

Dang JTF, I do believe you'd make a perfect Winnipeg Councillor.

Imagine it. We could build a high end Mall at the base and throw in a few condo's to pay for the grooming of the "hill".....Hell, maybe even sell advertising rights to the crawlers and groomers. Of course we'd contract that out for 30 years.

Year-round fun park planned - Entrepreneurs already building winter slides

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/year-round-fun-park-planned-110930154.html

Wont work- no government money! lol
Fun Mountain Waterslides was built without any government support- 3 people put up the money, I believe.
They got a lot of help for creating summer jobs from the provincial plan.
A friend of mine was hired to manage it, when it 1st opened up , many years ago.

JTF wrote:I got to thinking about all the frigg'n snow that just fell and where we will be able to store it for the rest of the winter.

If the city made a real effort to pick up the snow, from streets and alleys and piled it up in some location that could become the world's biggest toboggan run....and if we had enough snow...perhaps even year-long eh?

Thoughts?

except we salt and sand every where that the snow is collected from so year round would not work.

Deank wrote:

JTF wrote:I got to thinking about all the frigg'n snow that just fell and where we will be able to store it for the rest of the winter.

If the city made a real effort to pick up the snow, from streets and alleys and piled it up in some location that could become the world's biggest toboggan run....and if we had enough snow...perhaps even year-long eh?

Thoughts?

except we salt and sand every where that the snow is collected from so year round would not work.

That's right. The road salt collected within the cleared snow from street, sidewalks, parking lots, etc. contain high amounts of salt. Not only would that melt the snow under the right conditions, but all that salt in a concentrated area would cause some serious salinity issues to the ground that it is piled up on, as well as the groundwater underneath that it would leach into. Not the best idea unless you want to create more issues, IMO.

FYI, I was working out at a site south of Brandon, dealing with a soil and gw contamination clean up program, and I must say that Manitoba has the weakest remediation standards of all of Western Canada. Manitoba uses the CCME guidelines (Federal Standards), whereas Sask., Ab., and BC. all have their own provincial standards which are much more stringent. Considering that Manitoba loves to pride itself on being a "green" province, it sure doesn't boast well to have such feable expectations for remediation.

I was just thinking how pretty the city looks with all the fresh white snow. It's only after they start sanding does the snow on the roads and snowbanks become dirty and the look dreary.

Any government that "prides itself" in thinking anything deserves to be tossed out! "Green" in Manitoba?
I never heard of anything from Manitoba being green and proud of it, unless it refers to the fact that 95% of our electricity is water powered as opposed to everyone else being coal.
If a government spent any money for "pride" and the news media found out, lookout!
For example, if our NDP govt decided to spend +1.6 BILLION dollars to run some electrical wires down the west side of a big lake the media would wonder what was going on. Save the boreal forrest- wow! certainly worthwhile to me.
Excuse me I have to google "boreal forrest", and then google "stupid NDP government" lol

If we decided to build the world's biggest/longest/year round tobogan run/hill we could decide to not use salt and sand but rather plow the streets quickly.

Then again, perhaps not all snow would go to the hill.

Details details details...

I think the toboggan run is option #2 for building that contains the museum of wasted money.