Tag Archives: winter

Heavy haul load with 2 push trucks

For some reason, years ago, Jack documented this heavy haul load quite thoroughly so why not share it with you guys.  This is a 2006 heavy haul load with 2 push trucks going up Atigun Pass on the Dalton Highway, and coming down the other side.  The load might be some kind of heater, maybe to heat the oil going down the pipeline, but Jack’s not totally sure.  It’s an outside unit so didn’t need to be covered.  Click on the first one and scroll to the right.

Leaving Hilltop, nice and clean
Jack’s push truck
Climbing the Shelf before Atigun Pass
Starting up Atigun Pass
At the top
Bottom of the northbound side of the pass

White out & truck off the road

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 caught in an avalanche

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:

Two tankers in an avalanche - The Jack Jessee Blog

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.”

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Even Texas looks like Alaska!

Well at least the top corner of it did on January 7th.  It appears that snow fell on a majority of states in the continental US in January.  These images are from the NASA Earth Observatory website – the one of the southwest was taken quite recently, January 28th.

Image from NASA Earth Observatory website
Image from NASA Earth Observatory website
Image from NASA Earth Observatory website
Image from NASA Earth Observatory website

A normal winter day on the Dalton

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.

Snow Drifts on the Dalton

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.

Huge mod is pushed up “Koyukuk”

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.

 

Dalton Highway, April 16th & 17th

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.

April 16th, Jack is heading out of Prudhoe. It was a cloudy morning.
The excavator is moving snow and slush away from the road to keep the water flowing to where they want it to go.
That’s all trucks waiting to get into Prudhoe.
This is the next day, heading back into Prudhoe.
These excavators are digging ditches and creating berms to hold the water back. Overflow from the Sag River has been harassing truckers and the State of Alaska for weeks before this.
Jack says this guy is scraping back the ice to find the road.
The delineator is about 5 feet tall so this shows how high the water got before it froze.
This photo is grainy, but you can see the left delineators showing a lot more than the others.