Tag Archives: road

Truck waves on the Dalton

Talk about poor road conditions!  This was about a week ago, before the road closure.  Jack has been told the road will be open tomorrow so he is on his way up.  So sorry to all those who’ve been stuck on the non-home side.

Trucks in this video are going really slow as there’s a layer of glare ice underneath them.  At the end you can see a wave that’s being created by moving trucks.

(Don’t forget you can change the resolution on a YouTube video if it looks blurry, “settings” in the lower right hand corner.)

Alaska governor declares state disaster

Department of Transportation and Public Facilities photo via Alaska Dispatch News

Department of Transportation and Public Facilities photo via Alaska Dispatch News

Governor Walker declared the situation on the Dalton Highway a state disaster.

According to Alaska Dispatch News, this will enable the state to bring up private contractors to help.  700 to 800 loads are backed up in Fairbanks.  Jack is on his way up there right now.  Check out this article, it shows some aerial footage of the road.

https://www.adn.com/article/20150408/dalton-highway-ice-sheet-alaska-gov-walker-declares-disaster

 

 

Sag River overflow & a couple of big bumps

Here’s another video showing water from the Sag River flowing over the Dalton.

And this one shows how the splashing of water has created ice ridges on either side of a flowing area.  Trucks drive over the water and it sprays up and freezes on either side, so now there is a huge dip in the road.  The bottom of the dip is the actual road.  Some people were saying the road has washed out but Jack says no, it’s ice ridges building up and making it looking like a portion of the road has washed out.

(Don’t forget, YouTube automatically picks a low resolution so if you want a clearer picture click on the lower right hand side icon called “settings” and pick a higher number.)

Before the road got really bad

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!

 

Sag River flows over the Dalton

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 and the Dalton Highway.

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.

Coming from Prudhoe, the Sag River runs along the Dalton Highway on the left and as you can see it has overflowed its banks. The State has come through and plowed to create a berm but that’s not stopping it. (Jack is driving south.)
The State has plowed away the overflow as much as possible but it keeps flowing onto the road.
Jack looks out the driver’s side window toward the river. This is not the kind of ice road he prefers to drive.
Jack says he thinks the State plowed through a hole so the river would flow at that one spot instead of in many others.
The road is white where it has overflowed the road and frozen. All of these photos were taken in the same day so you can see how much the road changes from place to place.
The river is overflowing on the left and you can see where it’s flowing into the ditch on the right.
You have to go through this slow because when the water splashes it will freeze quickly onto whatever it lands on. Breakes and valves are not meant to be wet and frozen like that.
Water on both sides of the berm. The farther side has a layer of ice on top, and actually multiple layers of ice and water. The ground might be 3 feet below the layer of ice we are looking at.
There is no berm in this portion of the road and you can see the top layer of ice with water flowing underneath it.

Bulker goes off the road

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.

 

Ravens on the Dalton

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!

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.

Ravens nest in a set of moose antlersWhat a work of art!

Raven young in nest

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 windshield.

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!

Upside Down Truck

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.)

 

Pushing a crane

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.