Summer Opening
Opening the road for summer traffic takes nerves of steel
Have you ever wondered about those tall, narrow poles attached to the road markers all along the Highway? They’re snow poles, and they mark where the road is. Easy ‘nuf. But can you imagine what it must be like, going up there to clear the road in a 3-ton snowplow, when all you can see in any direction is white, and all you’ve got are those teensy markers to show you where to go? The Highway snowplow crew out of Carbon County is not a faint-hearted lot. When asked how they manage to find the road each spring, they laugh and say “from experience.” But how do they get that experience? Based on their grins and half-told stories, it often comes with its share of scrapes and notoriety. Jim Avent, past crewmember, related one of those mishaps. “Four to 5 feet came down in June and we had to go up by the state line because there were some tourists stranded. On top there was a snow pole and I chose the wrong side of it–and went off. That truck stayed there four or five days, I think, before we could get it out.” He added that normally the poles show some remnant of the road, but they’re not always intact by the time the crew gets up there.
Jim went on to say that “Randy Baum [ex-supervisor] taught Shawn Mains and me the dos and don’ts of this machine when we took over for him.” Namely, Stay away from the edge! “You start up high on the inside, and knock the snow down to 6-8 feet.” The winter of ’96-’97 was an especially heavy snow year, and Jim remembered that “knocking the snow down” under those conditions meant climbing the Caterpillar up on top of a 43-foot drift overlooking the abyss with no definition of a road and pushing snow toward the edge of the cliff and off. Then backing up and doing it again. Through 35 feet of snow. “When you’re opening it with the Cat, it’ll get your adrenaline going,” Jim says. “You keep pushing the snow out to the edge, and when you’re sitting on that new snow and it settles–even just 3 or 4 inches–sheesh! You don’t forget that right away.” He went a little bit white just talking about it.
When they get it knowcked down to 6 or 8 feet deep–the height of the snow poles–they bring up the blower and, like you do with your snowblower on your front sidewalk, chuck the rest out of the way.
