Idaho State's campus lots need to already be clear well before the seven o'clock bell, since a few hundred students and staff are about to try to park in whatever space the overnight storm left behind. Gilgen's Asphalt Maintenance runs those campus-adjacent lots and the strip-mall parking along Yellowstone Avenue on the same early schedule, pushing snow to the perimeter before the first wave of traffic arrives. Asphalt takes a particular kind of care in a Pocatello winter, since the same freeze-thaw swings that make the roads treacherous can also open cracks in a lot that isn't cleared and salted consistently. The crew keeps the blade height set to protect the surface rather than scrape it down to bare pavement everywhere, leaving a thin, safe layer instead of gouging the seal coat. Big flat lots like these show a storm's full scale in a way a single driveway never does, and clearing one before class starts is a race against the clock every time.