#HTE

Mystery Tool Used by Yellowstone Workers To Clear Seven Feet of Snow From a Roof in Chunks

Park employees at Yellowstone have an interesting system for clearing massive amounts of snow–in this case, seven feet’s worth–from the roof of their structures. Here’s what visitor Kerry Countryman observed taking place on the roof of the Canyon Village General Store:

What’s not shown, nor explained, is how they managed to get those perfect vertical cuts in the first place. We had to know, so we poked around and found another video of Yellowstone’s workers clearing a roof in 2015:

By scrubbing through the footage and freeze-framing, we can see that the workers are using an enormous slicing tool:

This explains the staircase pattern of the blocks. To create each block, the worker needs to be able to make two slices at 90 degrees (90 degrees in plan view, that is) to each other. Then the other worker can slide the block out. I call this clever.

Any idea what the heck that tool is?