At some point every year white out conditions occur on the Dalton where you can see barely 20 feet in front of you. Here are some photos from last year. Someone went off the road and laid their truck over on its side. Click on the first one and scroll to the right.
Two truckers were caught in an avalanche Monday night on the Dalton. Jack was not involved and neither of the drivers were seriously hurt. The road is now closed and the State is working on trying to trigger avalanches before they reopen. We’ve had tons of snow, seems like a record breaking year for snow actually, but for some reason no one made the decision to deal with this before it got to this point.
There is a short dash cam video on the Alaska DOT Facebook page. And from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner:
Photo credit: Jonothan James Kasak via the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner website
“One of the trucks that was stuck was a tanker carrying methanol; the other one carried glycol. When the highway reopens, the state Department of Environmental Conservation will evaluate whether there were any spills. The other two trucks were able to proceed with minimal assistance from a Department of Transportation crew, Bailey said.
Atigun Pass is one of a handful of mountain passes where work crews frequently fire Howitzer artillery at snowcovered slopes to trigger avalanches in order to prevent unplanned slides. Avalanche gates were installed on the south side of the pass three years ago to stop vehicles headed into avalanche danger. This was the first time the gate has been used.”
Not a calm winter day, but a normal winter day. These were from last year, and actually the first three are from early April and the rest are from one day in mid-April 2016. Click on the first one and scroll to the right for best viewing.
Join Jack while he watches big trucks pass in the snow storm and then crashes through snow drifts for fun.
Last year several ptarmigan flew into Jack’s windshield while he was driving down the road. Yikes! Goes to show, there are myriad road hazards in the far north. Click to enlarge.
Here’s a short video from last year where Jack bumps a guard rail as he’s going through a snow drift, passes by a large drift, and then continues on his merry way.
There’s been plenty of wind and snow on the Dalton lately. Here are snow drifts at Ice Cut that have been plowed away by a loader, creating one lane which is better than nothing! Video by fellow trucker, John Slater. Hope everyone is having a great 2017 so far.
Another set of photos from years past… this guy was coming over a small rise and when he got to the top he saw some hunters in a pick up truck turning around in the road, so he was forced to go off the side and into the snow instead of hit them. Unfortunate.
Years ago Jack came across this load that fell off a truck north of Coldfoot. Click on the first one and scroll to the right. More info on the captions.
Here are more photos of our late summer camping trip up the Steese Highway. Chilly, but hardly a cloud in the sky…
You’ll see Davidson Ditch, a water pipe built in 1920s, that runs 90 miles along the Steese Highway. It used to bring about 180,000 gallons of water per day to the gold dredges in Fox, Alaska from the Chatanika River.
(Click on the first one and scroll to the right.)
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