DALTON HIGHWAY WINTER

their mark in this treacherous territory the appeal of alaska has always been the blank slate there are riches to be won here by the person who's got enough grit determination and stamina to to suffer these conditions measuring fourteen hundred miles north to south and twenty four hundred miles east to west alaska is three times the size of california and ninety percent of the state is undeveloped wilderness it's one-fifth the landmass the united states the coastline is more than half the coastline in the united states and it has uh some so many different areas and features that it is a staggering thing to try to deal with nowhere else in america have so many jobs been so influenced by the extremes of the environment than in alaska temperatures can drop to 80 below zero blizzards can dump 900 inches of snow in a winter at sea storms called willow walls produce winds of more than 130 miles an hour working in alaska it's a little bit like working on the moon it's cold it's often dark it's far away from any place else you face these elements all the time that complicate everything that's really what signifies alaska it's the extremes one third of the state lies north of the arctic circle where winter keeps a death grip on the land for 10 months a year the only overland route ever built across alaska's far north is the legendary hall road one of the most treacherous truck routes on the planet [Applause] [Music] this highway from hell is home turf for an elite band of truckers who supply alaska's remote north slope oil fields and the trans-alaska pipeline built in 1974 the route starts just north of fairbanks and snakes through 400 miles of rugged wilderness to prude bay on the arctic ocean 150 miles north of the arctic circle a hall road climbs over the continental divide at the forbidding attagon pass the wind's blowing 30 miles per hour and the temperature is 30 below zero the snow packed road surface has been polished to a sheet of ice it's a recipe for disaster [Music] with more than 200 accidents a year this is the most dangerous stretch of the entire road yeah another guy was spinning in front of me and uh i can't get around him and oh i hit this little glazed spot and the way she went i've had better days that's for sure even with heavy chains on the tires this 20-ton big rig lost its grip climbing the steep 10 grade i lose the clutch i'm done if he was stuck out here alone the driver could quickly die of exposure but he's in luck the state road crew's caterpillar grader will tow him up the mountain [Music] it's probably one of the most unappreciated jobs around the country people don't realize what you have to go through up here just to get oil and keep oil flowing through that pipeline a lot of hard work about hours and the coal doesn't help a bit less than 40 years old the hall road has already racked up an impressively bloody track record killing and injuring 400 people and wrecking thousands of trucks in 1968 there wasn't a single road on alaska's north slope then that february an exploratory drill rig in prudo bay struck the largest oil field ever discovered in north america [Music] big oil companies raced to stake out wells and begin drilling thousands of tons of drill pipe and equipment were needed at the remote sites without an overland supply route a highway the big boom would quickly go bust you couldn't hardly find a spot in the united states that would be more isolated for any kind of major resource discovery than pluto bay alaska because the oil field was 400 miles virtually from the nearest road the decision was quickly made well we need a road to get here in december the state of alaska launched the first attempt to construct a road to the north slope [Music] wanting to build as fast as possible crews cut a swath through trees and undergrowth [Music] it took eight weeks for bulldozers to gouge a primitive 400 mile long trail across the frozen tundra in march 1969 a convoy of 20 tractor-trailer trucks struck north on the very first trip up the road from the start the rough terrain was a nightmare for the drivers in the rush to build the road crews had scraped off the snow and ground cover that insulated the permafrost the permanently frozen layer of earth just below the surface [Applause] exposed to the sun the permafrost melted and the road bed turned to mud forced to run in low gear over the rough grades trucker charlie barr found himself crawling along at a tortuous three miles per hour you're just sitting there rocking smack back and forth like this it was uh it just draw your teeth out so you're just easing it all the way up it was very slow the hours were just as long as the guys could stand at this when we never shut down till we couldn't go anymore to get the stuff up there the trucks built for paved highways in the lower 48 couldn't stand up to the punishment springs transmissions and motor mounts all broke the drivers had to improvise fixes on the spot if the rigs couldn't be patched up they'd be abandoned one fellow broke out front spring and took a 20-foot floor before and we sawed it off in increments until it had built a spring for the front of his truck and chained it in and then he drove it all the way up and all the way back with that darn four before it worked well the trucks got just one mile to the gallon so fuel tankers had to accompany the first convoy to refill the diesel guzzling rigs trucks were kept running 24 hours a day to keep engines from seizing in the subzero cold each truck burned 80 gallons of fuel a night just idling with no camps to shelter them the men slept in their poorly heated cabs and struggled to keep warm 200 miles into the trip the convoy had to climb over the rugged brooks range through two thousand foot high anatomic pass in the mountains raging blizzards obliterated the road luckily the self-sufficient drivers have carried along their own front-end loader to clear the way the worst part about when you get blown in way the snow covers in the engine it plugs off the air cleaners and all that stuff so you don't get any sleep time you've got to keep tending the trucks and making sure that you can move when the thing does quit blowing so you can get out of there [Music] in late april 450 miles and 23 days after setting out on the pioneering road trip the exhausted convoys staggered into the oil well camps and delivered their loads the intrepid truckers had proven that the north slope could be reached over land but at a heavy cost you know it's tough really tough the worst trucking i've ever done in my life this is when i first started getting ball headed after the spring thaw the road turned into a muddy impassable river it was used once more the next winter and then abandoned the state's pioneer truck trail was a dismal wet failure the next attempt to reach the oil rich north slope by road would be on a much grander scale the new highway would earn infamy as the kamikaze trail one of the wildest and most dangerous road trips on earth [Music] in 1974 five years after the dismal failure of the first hall road work began on an improved road to alaska's north slope the new highway would start just north of fairbanks and travel 400 miles to prudow bay it would serve as the supply route and staging ground for the construction of the trans-alaska pipeline [Music] an invasion force of 3 000 road workers attacked the arctic wilderness 800 pieces of heavy machinery rolled in learning from the muddy mistakes of the earlier road engineers built a raised road bed on top of the fragile tundra gravel filled three to eight feet high was laid down to insulate the permafrost below while one crew worked north from the yukon river another blazed a path south from prudow bay working around the clock the road crews moved 24 million cubic yards of gravel and rock in november the two forces met up in the middle it had taken just five months to construct an all-weather 30-foot wide road across the uncharted arctic the price tag was 125 million dollars more than half a billion in today's dollars [Applause] with the new hall road in place construction of the trans-alaska pipeline got underway in 1975. the promise of billions in profits spurred the oil companies to get the pipeline built as fast as possible whatever the cost black gold fever hit the nation a stampede of adventure seekers rushed north hoping to cash in on alaska's oil bonanza the hazards are working in alaska you know are indisputably high but the appeal in part is the same reason why people buy lottery tickets is because they always think well somebody's got to win somebody's gonna come out on top so why not me so alaska in a way has been the americas lottery in fairbanks there were hundreds of miles worth of steel pipe waiting to be hauled north with an extremely tight construction schedule the pipeline's success rested with the truckers whose herculean task was to move mountains of construction supplies up the untested road thousands of teamsters were hired and handed the keys to a fleet of brand new trucks overnight the hall road became one of the busiest highways in the country it was like a a non-stop sort of a land version of the berlin airlift except this was the the alaska north slope land lift you know all this stuff was being trucked north in a non-stop convoy it was a challenge however you spell challenge this was it the truckers couldn't deliver pipe fast enough to the 18 remote construction camps scattered between fairbanks and pluto bay as soon as the steel pipe was offloaded it entered a massive assembly line where a wilderness army of 20 000 pipeline workers labored non-stop [Music] with hazards and obstacles lurking around every bend it took the truckers three days to make the thousand mile round trip a hundred miles from the start the trucks hit the mighty yukon river a 150 million dollar bridge the first ever to span the yukon was under construction but would take at least another year to complete two giant hovercrafts were custom-built to ferry the trucks across the half-mile wide river with 160-ton payloads they could carry four loaded trucks at a time the hall road climbed more than 100 hills and mountains many had grades exceeding 18 more than three times steeper than the maximum grade allowed on interstate highways the underpowered 300 horse engines weren't up to the task and the trucks got stuck on the long steep grades [Applause] [Music] drivers compensated by using the downhills to build up speed and momentum a risky maneuver on the narrow road it was the only way to carry the 130 thousand pound trailers up the big mountains [Applause] the 80-foot long loads made negotiating sharp corners a nightmare special trailers were designed with self-steering rear wheels to help ease the long loads around curves [Applause] but the trailers caused more problems than they prevented the designers thought the self-steering trailer would go around the corner yo and it would but if you hit brakes on that self-steer it would go sideways and that's what caused a lot of them to go in the ditch [Music] many of the newly arrived flatlanders from outside of alaska had never driven on gravel the combination of equipment problems and inexperience was disastrous [Music] there would be trucks spun out or slid down the hills they would be in the ditches they were constantly all over every corner every hill was a problem in just two years there were 500 accidents on the road killing and injuring a hundred people the hall road earned a telling nickname the kamikaze trail it even spawned a hit record in 1976 that became the anthem for the wild heyday of hardcore alaskan trucking now there's a road up but north of their banks a kamikaze trail well known it's a challenge to any truck driver who really likes to carry their own [Music] the frequent wrecks and traffic jams caused delays that threatened the tight schedule but the truckers matched the frantic pace of pipeline construction hauling in nineteen thousand loads of pipe and over three million tons of supplies [Applause] [Music] in may 1977 the last two pipe sections on the 800-mile line were welded together it had taken three years and over eight billion dollars to build the pipeline [Music] since its completion a staggering 15 billion barrels of alaska crude has flowed south through the trans-alaska pipeline more than 4 000 drivers had overcome very long odds to make the pipeline possible for those who labored on the epic project it was all the adventure they had bargained for and more i would compare it to an astronaut that gets to go to space at the time you know you're doing something that's going to make history basically because it was a one of the wonders of the world when they built it today 30 years after the oil fields began producing the north slope is booming all over again with prices skyrocketing oil companies are racing to build new facilities drill more wells and pump more black gold once again it's up to the hall road warriors to get the freight through on time but in the brutal arctic winter lethal surprises lie in wait for these modern truckers threatening to make their deadly trekking a living hell [Music] february in cold foot alaska the northernmost truck stop in the world it's located halfway up the 400 mile long hall road a brutal trek that is one of the most challenging and dangerous truck driving jobs there is [Music] the temperature is 40 degrees below zero in the extreme cold metal turns brittle and motor oil and diesel fuel stop flowing winter is when the monster trucks of freight hauling start heading north the heavy halls this convoy is moving a 130 foot long crude oil heater unit 16 feet wide two stories tall and weighing a quarter million pounds it's headed to a refinery near prudo bay just a month before this same load flipped off the road 100 miles into the trip the driver survived but it cost a quarter million dollars to repair the damage now they're making their second attempt to get the unit all the way to prudo bay moving this massive load requires not one but three of the world's most powerful tractor trucks they're custom built to handle the harsh conditions and heavy weights the frame is reinforced with double steel rails and the wheelbase is stretched six feet for extra stability heavy duty axles and springs cushion the rough road shock jumbo fuel tanks hold 400 gallons of diesel for the long haul and the standard 400 horse engine has been replaced with a super-sized horsepower motor on the road the lead heavy hull driver pulls the load and coordinates the operation the two other truckers push from behind using heavy rubber pusher plates the push drivers driving blind at 50 miles an hour have to put their trust in the lead driver to steer them [Music] this drive will be the ultimate test of the trucker's skills and stamina first they must climb the high peaks of the continental divide then they have to cross the stormy north slope before finally reaching prudo bay throughout the year the fierce arctic elements wage a constant assault on the hall road heavy rains transform the gravel road into a minefield of potholes avalanches and landslides bury whole sections without warning during the spring thaw the road is flooded and washed out in the summer the surface is pounded into a bone rattling washboard that takes a toll on man and machine flat tires broken struts and snap tie rods are common well it's horrible just beats the truck to death you know it falls apart and then of course we're around it falling apart with it when you get back to town after a trip and you have to hang on the railing to keep them falling on the ground i mean that's that's bad then because you're so stiff and sore it's just like you've been run over by that truck instead of just driving it it's pretty rough the state of alaska spends 12 million dollars a year trying to keep the 400 miles of gravel in one piece is it's falling apart just as fast as we can put it back together once winter comes in and the ground freezes the road will be nice and solid and smooth until next spring and come break up it'll all start over again the road crews rebuild damaged sections with high float emulsion a blend of asphalt water and soapy detergents that hold the mix together gravel is laid on top of the hot oil and rolled out when the high float cures it creates a durable surface that looks like regular asphalt pavement but flexes without breaking up in winter road crews spray the gravel with water to form a thick layer of ice the water fills in the ruts before freezing producing a smooth and fast driving surface it's a necessity for the heavy haul trucks as they speed north the hard frozen surface supports the massively heavy load without collapsing as the gravel would in summer but keeping the extra wide trailer on the narrow icy road takes nerves of steel you're taking up the whole road you've got to look out for the loads the people coming at you it's the best of times up here this road will hurt you that split second you are not taking care of business off rodeo there's danger around every bed a southbound truck in a hurry tries to slip by the convoy it's a near miss he's taking his life in his own hands to do that if i run off the road i'm jeopardizing my life i'm not gonna do that you're going in a ditch 50 miles north of cold foot the monster trucks prepare to take on the mighty brooks range the only way through is attican pass at an elevation of 4 800 feet it's the highest most northern pass kept open during the winter in the entire world the road cuts across 40 avalanche slide paths truckers running this gauntlet are like sitting ducks in a deadly shooting gallery [Music] more than 200 avalanches hit the pass each year traveling at speeds of 70 miles per hour they can vary stretches of road under 20 feet of snow in 1993 six trucks were caught in a massive avalanche the big rigs were tossed off the road miraculously no one was killed after this near tragedy the state of alaska declared war from september through june an avalanche patrol prowls the pass for impending slides they're armed with a breach loading 105 millimeter recoilless rifle that dates from the korean war these bullets that we're firing were actually manufactured in 1952 or 1953 and we haven't had a dud with them or a misfire within the last several years it's wonderful stuff packed with four and a half pounds of tnt each steel shell is perforated to allow propellant gases to escape out the gun's breach when fired greatly reducing the recoil the breech blast is so powerful it will kill anyone standing up to 100 feet behind the gun the shock wave from the shell's impact triggers a controlled slide the size of a football field these pre-emptive strikes take down small slides before they can grow to killer proportions once they've cleared the pass of avalanche danger the road is reopened to traffic and the heavy-haul convoy is ready to take a run at the mountain [Music] the road over atagon pass is a hefty 10 grade one of the steepest on the entire highway it takes all three trucks training at full power to keep the 125 ton load moving up the mountain [Music] to provide extra traction on the snow the truckers attach heavy chains to the rear drive wheels each push truck carries 50 000 pounds of concrete weights if a push truck slips or breaks contact the massive load could spin out of control and slide off the road over the last 30 years hundreds of trucks have wrecked while challenging the steep slopes of attican pass [Music] today the traction's good the convoy makes it safely over the pass with the mountains finally at their backs the truckers still face 150 miles of white knuckle driving through some of the worst weather on earth alaska's north slope is infamous for its blows winter storms that sweep down along the coastal plain with hurricane-force winds the storms produce one of the most hazardous road conditions there is the dreaded white out [Music] truckers depend on reflector poles that mark the road's edge every 20 feet to guide them in low visibility the delineators are the only things standing between the driver and near certain death out on the frozen tundra but in whiteout conditions visibility drops to zero and truckers are forced to stop in the middle of the road and wait out the storm it's taken up to four days for road crews to reach the stranded trucks and guide them to safety if the truckers are lucky and don't get caught in a blow they're home free the heavy hall convoy finally arrives at prude bay after four long days on the road even though it's in the middle of the night the trucks are escorted directly to the outlying oil refinery to offload prudo bay is the central hub for the giant petroleum fields that sprawl out across the north slope 20 000 trucks a year make it all the way here to the end of the road after unloading the hall road truckers turn around and head back down the kamikaze trail it's a challenge the extreme truckers relished taking on trip after dangerous trip [Music] i'm willing to go head-to-head with nature here the slick roads the snow will say experience that in lower 48 too but down there traffic comes to halt we gotta keep going this normal day getting around

Channel: TaigaTurf

Views: 130,532

Rating: 4.8995514 out of 5

Keywords: TaigaTurf, Taiga, Dalton Highway, Dalton Highway Winter, North Slope, Alaska North Slope, Prudhoe Bay, Deadhorse, Atigun Pass, Coldfoot, Extreme Cold, Thompson Pass, Valdez, Alaska Pipeline, Alyeska, Winter in Alaska, Siberia Winter, Canadian Winter, Heavy Haul Trucking, Ice Road Truckers, IRT, Jack Jesse, Alex Debogorski, Lisa Kelly, Hugh Rowland, Maya Sieber, Haul Road, Arctic Circle, Polar night, Dalton Highway Alaska, Darrell Ward

Id: fQjTwvRkHfo

Length: 30min 15sec (1815 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020