The Sag River has turned the Dalton into one of it’s branches. This video was taken on the first day of April. Road conditions have been getting steadily worse. The road is currently closed because blowing snow is reducing visibility and they can’t see to clear the road.
More to come.
You may already know that the Sag River has been overflowing the Dalton Highway about 20 miles from Prudhoe Bay. The below video shows what the road looked like about 2 weeks ago. Jack was riding into Prudhoe with someone else because his truck broke down. The river runs along the Dalton for a very long ways on the east side of the road.
A lot more to come!
The Sag River has been overflowing its banks this past month. So much so that it has been giving the truckers and the State (of Alaska) a bit of a headache. The photos below are from about 10 days ago and a lot more drama has happened since. We’ll have updated photos for you in a couple of days.
The Sag River follows the Dalton Highway for quite a few miles during the last 100 miles of the road, when you’re nearing Prudhoe. So when we say it
The Sag River runs along the Dalton Highway for about 100 miles.
is overflowing near the road it could be happening at many different spots, and it is doing just that. According to Jack, overflows are normal but this river overflowing in this area is an unprecedented occurrence since he has not known for it to have ever happened before. No one he’s talked to has either. It’s not an uncommon thing for rivers to do though.
All the talk now is if the State will be able to handle the situation when actual break up occurs. Temperatures are still well below zero pretty much all the time right now so we haven’t seen the worst of it. The question is, what’s going to happen during break up when everything starts to really melt?
Click on the first photo and scroll through to see them full size with explanations.
How did this fuel truck get so far off the road? Jack didn’t ask, he just pulled him back onto it.
(Logo was removed from side of tank.) Click to enlarge.
The Dalton claims another truck!
Jack calls this kind of trailer a bulker. It carries dry powders like concrete, sand, or ammonium nitrate. This one probably carried concrete or sand. He says they use air to transfer the product from one place to another. Unloading a bulker is called “blowing it off” to the people who do it. In Prudhoe they store the product in silos.
Don’t forget you can increase the resolution on a YouTube video by clicking on the settings symbol in the lower right hand corner and choosing a higher number than what YouTube picked for you.
Jack and I found the most amazing sight back in 2006 when we pulled into Happy Valley along the Dalton Highway. Happy Valley is a former pipeline camp at about mile 335 that now is a gravel pullout where various storage units are kept. There’s an airstrip that hunters and Fish & Game use, and Jack has seen mushers there too.
A raven built a nest in a set of moose antlers on the side of a building and 2 young ravens were in it!
This raven nest, with 2 babies in it, is built in a set of moose antlers on the side of a building!
You can see how much of a mess the raven family has made with guano all over the steps, propane tanks and the side of the building.
What a work of art!
The “babies” were absolutely quiet and watchful while I snapped photos and even climbed up on a nearby truck to get on the same level as them. They did not seem traumatized. 🙂
Jack had a close encounter with a very friendly raven a few years ago too.
Raven sitting on Jack’s truck hood and peering inside the cab.
Don’t worry, I discussed with Jack how it’s not appropriate to feed wild animals and that it might even be against the law! 🙂
They are amazing creatures. So smart!
Another truck goes off the road! This one is about 20 miles from Prudhoe.
Happy Sunday everyone! We’re having a beautiful sunny day after some snow and a wind storm that cut out our electricity for a couple of hours last night.
Here’s a short video Jack took the other day at about mile 86 of the Dalton. The truck got too close to the edge when it met another truck and went off the side and rolled over. A tree trunk punctured the tanker and according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation about 3,000 gallons of ultra low sulfur diesel spilled onto the ground. Here is a link to the local newspaper’s article about it.
Jack carries approximately 9,200 gallons in the tanker he uses. Other tankers are larger or smaller. All or most tankers have different compartments though so when one has a spill most likely it’s only that compartment that empties. Having different compartments enables truckers to carry different types of liquids and/or put weight at different places in the load.
(YouTube has a bad habit of giving you the lowest resolution so if you want to see more detail try clicking one of the HD choices under settings in the lower right hand corner of the video screen.)
It’s quite common for a really heavy load to have one or more push trucks behind it to push when going up inclines. Push trucks are commonly used on the Dalton Highway as well as the Parks and Richardson when the loads are outrageously heavy, otherwise it would take a very long time and so much fuel for the truck with the load to get up a mountain, and it would also impede traffic for long periods of time. The push trucks just follow the load when not going up hills.
Taken 11 years ago, these photos really show how close Jack’s push truck gets to the load he’s pushing (a crane). You can see the pad that the push bar pushes against, how the trucks make contact.
I snapped these on Friday when this truck was fueling up to head north.
Jack says they are used for crude oil and that they lay on their sides, not upright like on the truck. You can see the actual metal portion of the pipe that is colored green with anti-corrosion paint. The black is thinner metal and in between the two is foam insulation.
This load is obviously going to Deadhorse or Prudhoe Bay. (FYI: Deadhorse refers to the “town” where companies have their operations, and Prudhoe Bay refers to the actual oil fields and is a much larger area.)
Click on the photos for larger images.
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