Dieppe — Frank Watson of Dieppe won the first “Mountain Man” championship 2018, awarded to the plow operator who left the greatest mound of crud out front of a residential driveway.
The awards follow the first major storm of 2018, dubbed a “bomb cyclone” by weather officials.
Watson, 34, won the first title of 2018 by piling a stunning 2.73 metres of mixed snow and ice outside the home of Elizabeth Campbell, who resides on Nixon Road near Turtle Creek. The pile was just five centimetres shy of the regional record, which has stood for 16 years.
“I kinda had a feeling I had something to work with when I comes around the corner, there, you know, where she drifts right some awful in a nor’easter,” Watson told The Manatee. “I had to gear ‘er down, you know, and then I saw the driveway, and I just kinda juiced her, got the front blade really moving, and it fell just some nice onto the side plow…and…man, what a rush. The snow, she was heavy, but not too heavy. It all come together.”
Campbell said it took her plow guy “about two hours” to break through the pile.
Second place went to Claude “homme de verglas” Aubichaud, for his respectable 2.28-metre creation left outside a home on Caribou Depot Road.
Third place honours went to Saint John rookie Howie Franklin, who dropped a 2.10-metre pile outside a home in surburban Saint John.
The announcement was delayed 12 hours, after judges investigated the entry filed by Cal Winters of Fredericton. The 2.96-metre collection of snow, slush and ice in front of the driveway of Carla McIntyre appeared to break the provincial record. However, following a tip that McIntyre and Winters are recently divorced, judges examined the monster mound and determined Winters had used a restricted “double-pass” technique to intentionally add to the height of the pile. As a result of violating regulations, Winters has been served a two-year competition ban.
According to sources within the snowplow drivers, the mixture of snow and ice led to better-than-usual conditions for forming plow piles.