Where the Shields River bends hardest below Wilsall, cottonwood bottoms hold snow in deep, quiet pockets long after the open range above them has blown scoured and bare. Montana Landscape Contractors Inc spends winter afternoons working the driveways and access roads tucked into those bends, places the wind can't quite reach the way it reaches the open benches above. Clearing here is less about wind-driven drifts and more about sheer depth — snow that falls straight down into a river bottom and simply stays, packing deeper with every storm through a Shields Valley winter. A driveway down in the cottonwoods might need three passes where one on the open bench needs one, and the crew paces the afternoon route accordingly, saving the river-bottom places for when there's still good light left to see stumps and fence posts hidden under the pack. By the time the Crazy Mountains go dark against the evening sky, those low, sheltered driveways are open all the way to the road.