By Alex Brown

The Chronicle

A month’s worth of snow has finally been cleared from the roads and parking lots of Mount Rainier National Park, and rangers are going through the final stages of getting the Paradise area ready for eager outdoors lovers following the federal government shutdown.

On Saturday, Paradise will officially reopen to the public.

“We’ve just got to get some of the regular and routine pieces in place before we can open,” park superintendent Chip Jenkins said Thursday afternoon. “That’s everything from getting stakes up and signage up, to getting the elevators serviced in the visitor center. It’s getting the bathroom clean and stocked with toilet paper. It’s all those critical and important but small steps that all add up to taking hours of time.”

“Once we get that done, we will swing the gate and get open as soon as we can,” he said. “Everyone is excited about the prospect of getting open and getting visitors back up here.”

During the 35-day government shutdown, the park remained open with a skeleton staff up to Longmire, though it closed altogether during a brief period due to weather. Paradise, the park’s winter playground that’s popular with skiers, snowshoers and sledders, was closed. The park announced on Twitter Wednesday that the sledding area in Paradise would not reopen immediately, as snow depth was insufficient.

After President Trump signed a bill last Friday to reopen the government, Park Service workers were able to return to work — and finally receive their paychecks. Rainier staff held a welcome-back lunch Wednesday to celebrate.

“People were really happy to be able to get back to work and see each other,” Jenkins said. “By and large, the people here, they know that their work matters. Each one of them plays a very important role in the park.”

Jenkins said the park needed to keep some staffers working during the shutdown, simply because its responsibilities are so vast.

“People don’t fully appreciate that running the park is like running a small city,” he said. “Even if you are ‘shut down,’ there are still things that have to function.”

For example, the park had to ensure that electricity and propane remained operating in buildings, so that pipes wouldn’t freeze and burst. Water and wastewater treatment systems needed to be maintained. And to take care of those duties, roads needed to remain accessible enough for park staff to reach those facilities. Law enforcement rangers also continued to patrol.

Keeping part of the park open the public, even when much of the staff was furloughed, was a “policy call that was made in D.C.,” Jenkins said. The decision “worked for a short period of time,” he added, but the shutdown’s real effects did not end when the government reopened.

“It’s kind of doing a cold start,” he said. “It’s like when you’ve left your car out for a long time in cold weather and you’re turning your engine over. We’re scraping the windows off and getting the car warmed up.”

Things like hiring, planning and contract agreements that were supposed to have happened during the shutdown will need to take place on an accelerated timeline or reevaluated. It will take park officials close to a month just to come up with a new plan for the year.

Meanwhile, the three-week deal to end the shutdown expires Feb. 15, meaning another shutdown could be imminent if President Donald Trump and congressional leaders don’t agree to a long-term deal to fund the government. Jenkins was not eager to think about that possibility.

“I have no more insights than anybody else,” he said. “Our work year was reduced by 10 or 11 percent.. People in D.C. are going to make a decision about whether they want to reduce our work year by more than what’s already been lost.”