In this one and a half minute video, Jack drives over the pipeline then has to wait in back of another truck while a grader finishes clearing the road. Then he continues on down the hill – you can see the grader on the left. (Don’t forget, the video is in HD so don’t watch it blurry!)
Recently the Dalton was drifted shut near Slope Mountain. This video starts right after 2 blades (graters) clear the road and one parks in front of Jack. If it weren’t for the plowed path, you can’t really tell where the road is unless you watch the delineaters, those reflective markers on each edge.
If any of you are very familiar with the great state of Colorado you may have heard of the Shelf Road that runs between the towns of Canon City and Cripple Creek (lots of Cs in that part of the world). It’s a mountainous dirt road with steep drop offs, hair-raising corners, and not even a hint of a guard rail on the whole 24 miles.
The Shelf Road is actually part of the Gold Belt Byway, a string of scenic roads in Colorado so called because of the gold mining in the area.
The average person wouldn’t drive this road, but my husband is not your average person. After buying a pick up in Texas and a camper to sit on top of it in Colorado, he chooses to christen our new rig by taking it on the Shelf Road. Let me just say right now, as the person who sat on the side of the ledge, that it was total insanity. It may have been enjoyable in a Jeep or something but as it was, our huge lumbering beast met a small truck and I was so busy white-knuckling it that I forgot to take a photo!
Below are photos of the drive, with some captions that you can see if you click on the image and scroll to the right, and below those are some photos of Cripple Creek and the mountaintop mine nearby.
Our reward for completing the harrowing Shelf Road was getting to Cripple Creek, a town that is clearly proud of their mountaintop removal! Here is a satellite image of the mine and some from the town itself. Hope you get there someday if you haven’t been already.
About a week ago the State of Alaska triggered some avalanches on Atigun Pass and then cleared a path through for the trucks. The first video is a short one taken right after the loader and blower were done and the second one is longer and that’s when Jack was heading back the other direction, toward Prudhoe Bay. Thanks to the State for being proactive in keeping our truckers safe!
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.
From Alaska Dispatch News:
DEADHORSE — Unprecedented flooding continues to interfere with daily operations on the North Slope oil patch after surging waters wiped away swaths of the Dalton Highway and isolated a section of Deadhorse, the jumping-off point for the sprawling industrial region.
“This is just epic,” said Mike Coffey, commander of the unified incident command, a response team consisting of the state, the North Slope Borough and oil companies. “People who have been here for decades say they’ve never seen anything like it.”
The state has estimated the costs of the damage and repairs since March at $5.1 million. The federal government may pay for much of that, since the icing and flooding on the highway has been declared a disaster, said Coffey, the director of state transportation maintenance and operations.
You can see more photos and get a lot of more info from the article: http://www.adn.com/article/20150521/epic-flooding-dalton-highway-hinders-north-slope-oil-operations
Photos from Joe Kemp of the Dalton Highway eroding because of the Sag River overflow near Prudhoe Bay.
Jack said “Holy Sh**!” when he looked at the Alaska Department of Transportation page today. Not because of the photos of the road flooding but when he saw this:
2015: Dalton Highway 401-414 Reconstruction, will start this summer and is a two year project. Construction contract award is $27 million. The scope of the project is to reconstruct the Dalton Highway from Mile Post 401-414, improvements include raising the grade seven feet, replacing culverts and surfacing the road.
2016: Dalton Highway 379-401 Reconstruction, scheduled for construction in 2016, estimated cost is $40-50 million. The scope of the project is to reconstruct the Dalton Highway from Mile Post 379-401, improvements including raising the grade seven feet, replacing culverts and surfacing the road.
This will raise the road 7 feet above the tundra, so when someone goes off the road, it will be a lot bigger deal. Here is the link for that Alaska DOT page: http://dot.alaska.gov/nreg/dalton-updates/
Here are two aerial photos of the flooding, both from the Alaska DOT webpage. Click on the photos for more info on the captions.
This is a video from trucker John Slater that shows how the Dalton looked last Saturday. The road is now closed because of the overflowing Sag River making it impassable once again. See prior posts for more info.
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