The dam that holds back the Middle Raccoon River into Lake Panorama sits at the quiet end of a network of lanes that drop down through timbered bluffs to the water, switchbacks that turn treacherous fast once snow packs onto them. Leiferman Outdoor Services runs those lanes after every storm, working the grade carefully where a driveway drops sharply toward a boathouse or a dock now frozen in for the season. By evening, with the last light going flat gray over the ice near the dam, the plowed lanes are often the only dark lines cutting through an otherwise solid white hillside. This is steep, wooded, uneven ground compared to the open farm country elsewhere in Guthrie County, and clearing it well means reading each hill the way you'd read it on a summer mowing pass, only faster and with less room for error. When the last driveway is finally cleared and the truck's headlights swing back up toward the highway, the lake community below goes quiet for the night.