Marty Brammer learned to ski at Hogadon. He was also married at the ski area and scattered his mother's ashes on one of the runs.

Suffice it to say he feels deeply, personally connected to the city-owned Casper Mountain ski area.

Saturday morning, Brammer, a Casper radiation therapist, and about 50 volunteers picked up garbage, painted rails and squeegeed windows on the "tune-up day" to get the ski area ready for the winter.

"It's our way of showing that Hogadon is publicly supported, that Hogadon is valuable," said Brammer.

This is the ninth year Brammer has led a team in fixing up the ski area, and he boasted of 40 sponsors providing breakfast, lunch and prizes for participants. He said he conceived the clean-up as something "kind of like adopt-a-highway."

Ski Area Manager Gary Vantrease said the volunteers help cut costs at the ski area, which runs at about a $200,000 loss. With six or seven people painting for three hours each, for example, Vantrease saves on about 20 hours of time a professional painter charges at $22 an hour.

Vantrease said the Farmer's Almanac and everybody else is telling him it's going to be a great snow year and Hogadon will do well.

Patches of snow, left over from last week's storm, lay on the runs. A hopeful skier might think of the snow as a weed, spreading and taking over the mountain, but this early in the season, it is likely to end up as freezing water running down the hill.

Volunteers walked down and up the hills -- the chairlifts were not operating Saturday -- collecting cans, bottles and debris people toss off the chairlifts and leave lying around on the hill.

As Vantrease was talking about the mountain garbage, Casper's sensational sexagenarian Della Works crested the hill lugging a black garbage bag full of booze bottles.

"I found out where you party, Gary," Works joked as she unpacked liquor containers from mountain parties past.

Not to be outdone by Casper's seniors, Joe Johnston, 18, and Tyler Hart, 19, also showed up to clean their local ski area.

The two snowboarding Natrona County High School students wanted to show their thanks to Vantrease for building a terrain park.

"It could be better but it's pretty good for what we have," said Hart.

They also wanted Vantrease to listen to their suggestions for improvements and offered to do the work themselves. Vantrease made no commitments and said he would have to consider liability concerns.

The snowboarders, however, probably gained some points by showing up to help Saturday.