Valley City folds itself into the Sheyenne River valley, a rare stretch of real hills and bluffs in a state better known for flat horizons, and the old railroad Hi-Line Bridge that lends Hi-Line Excavation its name still spans the gorge high above town, visible from half the streets below. Snow behaves differently in a valley like this: it slides off the bluffs and pools in the low streets near the river while the blocks up on the rim stay windswept and thin. Hi-Line Excavation works both halves of that terrain, plowing the steep approach streets down toward the Sheyenne first, since packed snow on a grade stops traffic faster than the same snow ever would on a flat block. The bridges and viaducts around town ice over before the streets do, shaded as they are by the valley walls, so routes near them get watched closely on a cold snap. Barnes County's flatter ground toward Fingal and Sanborn gets its own simpler pass, wide open compared to the folded valley in town. By the time a storm clears, Valley City's grades sit open top to bottom, the Hi-Line Bridge standing plain against the winter sky the way it always has.