This was Jack’s first heavy haul load. He wasn’t actually part of the a heavy haul division yet but obviously it was a landmark load for him.
You can see the partially melted snow and the dry road. We are almost to that point in the year right now, and you can probably believe that it is an exciting time for us Alaskans who have snow 8 or 9 months of the year!
Happy Spring and Happy Easter!
The hill that drivers call “Koyukuk” is right next to the Koyukuk River and it’s one of the steepest on the Dalton. It’s about 30 miles south of Coldfoot. The video was taken last winter.
Jack happened to be there to document this huge mod being pushed up the hill by push trucks and also being steered from the back because it’s so long. If you look close you can see someone standing outside on the load as it goes up the hill – he’s steering the rear end as it goes around the curves. The guy doing the steering is one of the former owners of Carlile and he comes up the Dalton for these types of loads that need some special care. (Carlile was sold to Saltchuk Corporation a while ago.)
In case you are wondering, the truck is going pretty slow, about 5 miles an hour in 3rd gear. The last thing you ever want to do, Jack says, is change gears when you’re going that slow with that much weight since you’ll stop before you get it into a different gear. If you stop it’ll take a while to get going again and without the momentum you’re putting a lot of strain on the truck and there’s too much potential for breaking something. The years Jack spent in heavy haul were great years he says, but he doesn’t miss it.
Here are more photos from when Jack was leaving Prudhoe on June 6th. There’s more info on the captions. Click on the first one and scroll to the right.
Here is a quick video from when Jack went through the cleared lane that the State of Alaska loader made after the avalanche on Atigun Pass. Don’t forget you can change the settings in the lower right hand corner if the video looks grainy.
A few days ago Jack was held up for a couple of hours because of this avalanche that blocked the road on Atigun Pass. To me, it looks like a small avalanche. But Jack says this is the average amount of snow that usually falls on the road in this spot. Other areas involve more snow, or less.
If a truck was caught in the path of this avalanche, it could have pushed the truck over the guard rail and ended up rolling it down the hill. This is very rare nowadays since the State of Alaska does more avalanche control, shooting artillery at the mountain to dislodge the snow.
You can see the blocked road, the loader removing the snow, and also the melt water that was running alongside the road before the avalanche and which is crossing the road afterward. The last photo shows the loader dumping water as well as snow. They are best viewed if you click on the first one and scroll to the right. I had to substantially lighten the photos because of low light conditions. You can see the sun over the next hill and all the trucks waiting on the other side of the blockage. This is about 10:30 at night.
These photos are the last of the ones Jack took from when the road was in bad condition. It’s much improved now, to the point where Jack says there’s nothing to take photos of. When the melt starts up there though, who knows what will happen.
Here are the rest of the photos from when Jack drove through the flooded area, the portion of the road that was recently closed because of the overflow of the Sag River onto the Dalton. There is a HUGE tracked vehicle that Jack says can float! I can’t see how that’s possible but supposedly, if it breaks through the ice, it won’t sink to the bottom of whatever it is on. In his case it’s a matter of a few feet to the ground. But it’s just hard to imagine either way.
Click on the first one and scroll to the right.
The road is in much better condition now, but it’s still a work in progress. It’s open 24 hours now but only one lane with a pilot vehicle. More info on the captions of the photos. They were taken the 15th of April. The very first photo is out of order – I put it in front to show what the road is supposed to look like at this time of year. It was taken closer to Prudhoe, after Jack passed through the hazardous area.
Click on the first one and scroll to the right.
These photos are from when Jack was stuck at the road closure. He was waiting there 3 days to get unloaded. As you can see, it was a beautiful couple of days, albeit cold ones. The rigs in the distance are tractor-like vehicles on tracks with tanks to take the fuel Jack and the other truckers are hauling back to Prudhoe. The road is now open during the day. Click on the first and scroll to the right. More info on the captions.
The last I heard from Jack he was still waiting to be offloaded. There are a few freight trucks showing up to wait for a chance to get through, but no fuel trucks will be allowed. Those will still be offloaded about 23 miles from Prudhoe.
The below photos are the last of what Jack took before the road closure, on the 1st and 2nd of April. It’s far from the worst of it. For the deepest water Jack experienced, click on “On a slow truck to Prudhoe” on the right.
There’s a lot of good information in this article and a couple of photos: http://www.newsminer.com/news/local_news/alaska-north-slope-truckers-in-limbo-as-dalton-highway-flood/article_311711ce-dff8-11e4-b9be-0bc49e932ff7.html
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