Now, bear in mind, this BIG road grader was sent out to do the job after the “big” road grader couldn’t do it. And what it couldn’t do is what my story is all about.
In 1975-1977 I worked as a surveyor on the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline. I had started as an Instrument Man, the one who was always peering through the tube to make sure the lines were all straight, the angles were correct and the distance was measured. After some time I worked my way up to Party Chief, responsible for an entire survey project and the crew that was to complete it.
Those of you who are familiar with surveying will know that, after the instruments themselves, the survey truck is a very important part of the crew. In this case the truck was a 1974 Chevy Suburban with three rows of seats and stretched a little longer than the typical Suburban. This was a good thing, because
on this project, we always had to pack plenty of supplies and equipment. Our assignments could be very remote and it would be a very long way to go back to the supply shed.
The 800-mile long Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline was built across some of the most rugged terrain on the continent. Most of that terrain was only accessible by helicopter or by some very specialized ground vehicles. To allow access by the thousands of fairly ordinary vehicles that would be required for the project, the Haul Road was built. This was a two-lane dirt and gravel highway that paralleled almost the entire length of the project. While it was just a dirt road, it was a very well maintained road and usually provided a very uneventful trip.
Much of the pipeline itself was assembled on a dirt pad that was built to some degree like a road, just not really. In the end, it was more like a big pile of dirt between three and ten feet thick that was dumped and spread and packed to make it hard and drivable. There was some engineering applied to it, but since it was meant as a construction pad, not as a road, we always had to go slow watch carefully when driving on the pad.
The Haul Road paralleled the pipeline and the pad on which it rested and was separated by anywhere from a couple hundred feet to more than a mile, sometimes even more. Access between the road and the pad was provided by access roads that every so often spanned the distance in between.
This particular story started in late spring (that would be sometime in May), after much of the snow had melted but while the nights were still hard-freezing. We were stationed at Happy Valley Camp, about 80 miles south of the Arctic Ocean. Our assignment was to go south about 30 miles to the next pump station site and take some grade reading on some installed pipe supports.
Our crew consisted of five people with a lot of variety in their backgrounds.
There was me, who started surveying for the State of Alabama while in high school, studied engineering for a couple of years in college before serving four years in the Air Force. I finally had come back to surveying after a year of trying to be a life insurance salesman.
John, the Instrument Man, had his Associates Degree in surveying and was pretty sure he wanted to make a career of traipsing around the far corners of Alaska. I often thought he was more interested in the traipsing than he was the surveying, but then, that has always been an important part of surveying anyway.
Joe and Bob were the two Chain Men, responsible for using the steel tape (called a “chain”) to measure distances. They were a couple of college students out for an Alaskan adventure. They were pals and could usually be counted on to volunteer for any task that took them out of the normal routine, especially if the other had already volunteered.
Our Stake Man was named Jill. She had started work on her Associates Degree in surveying and decided to take a break to make a little money to finance her way through the rest of the program. She readily admitted that she decided to be a surveyor mainly because that was a profession with very few women. She was right about that. She was the first female surveyor I had ever known.
That brings us to our Rod Man, Peter. As Rod Man he was the one who held the thirteen foot “rod” with its length marked off in feet, tenths and hundredths of a foot. This is what the Instrument Man spends so much of his time peering at through his instrument in order to determine elevation and grade of the surrounding terrain. While the job requires a steady hand and an adequate amount of technical know-how, Peter was rather over-qualified. He was a PhD in physics. Well, actually he was an ABD, All But Dissertation. He had finished all of his coursework but still needed to publish his paper on his chosen specialty. While trying to decide what that specialty was, he had taken about three years off while he and his wife hitch-hiked around the world. They had made it all the way from the east coast, through Europe, northern Africa, southwest Asia, southeast Asia, and ended up in Alaska on the final leg.
The trip down to the pump station was fairly uneventful and we arrived near the work site in good time. But near was about it, for the melting snow had caused a flash flood the day before and washed out the pad not more than two hundred feet from where we needed to be. Now, carrying our equipment a couple hundred feet would not usually be much problem. We regularly had to travel by foot much longer distances than that. The problem was the half frozen, half turbulent stream that ran between us and our work site. Giant jagged slabs of ice with turbulent frigid water rushing around them did not look like a situation that a smart man would challenge.
With shouts of “Hey, if we jump from here onto that slab of ice, then…”, Joe and Bob were eager to give it a try. Still, after spending some time trying to find a safe way across, we decided that we couldn’t risk it. No problem! We just pulled out the project map and found the next access road on the other side of the work site. Well, not much problem, anyway. The next road was eight miles north, which meant that, after driving eight miles back the way we had come and most of another mile on the access road, we would have to drive almost eight miles along the pad. That would take a while, but it had to be done.
The trip up the haul road and across the access road was, again, fairly uneventful. Except for the fact that, as the day passes that time of the year, the ice in the pot holes melts, and there were a road full of potholes. By the time we made the trip in mid-morning we were splashing and being splashed continuously. I had to ease along at twenty to thirty miles per hour just to be give the windshield wipers a chance to keep the windshield clear.
After about an hour, we found ourselves creeping along the work pad, picking our way between piles of construction materials, work crews and muddy washed out areas of the pad. Farther along we left all the other workers behind and made our way farther along the pad and closer to our assigned work site. With less activity, the pad was in better shape and we actually started making better time.
Then, just at the last minute I saw a spot in the road just ahead that made me bring the truck to a gravel-throwing stop. Mother nature had set a trap for the unwary and I almost drove right into it. Snow had melted and formed a large pond of water on the inside of a curve and the water was up to the level of the pad. In itself, that wouldn’t seem to be much of a problem, but remember, the pad is not a road. The water has saturated the gravel of the pad and after you got close enough you could see a huge wet triangle that stretched most of the way across the pad. These are danger spots that we had seen before. They can become a bog and just walking across them can be tough.
We all piled out of the truck to check it out. Top in all of our minds was the fact that we were still over a mile from the worksite and we didn’t want to carry all of our stuff down there and then back again at the end of the day.
Further investigation revealed some encouraging findings. While the high side of the pad was indeed wet and boggy, the opposite side actually had a dry strip about ten feet wide. Still, we could tell that underneath the dry area the pad material was wet all the way across, so we still had a possible challenge. That’s when all of our engineering and physics and other technical training came into play. We checked the width of the dry strip, we tested the thickness of the frozen soil and we checked how far we had to travel over that treacherous ground. With our “vast” store of knowledge and what we saw on the ground, we made some hurried mental calculations.
“Knowing” that the faster we traveled, the less downward force we would exert, and using our best guess for all the other parameters, we figured that if we crossed the section going at least thirty miles per hour, we should be able to make it. As soon as Peter, the physicist, said “I think we can make it.” Joe and Bob chimed in with “What’s the worst that could happen? We get stuck and have to get pulled out. Let’s go for it!”
Everyone piled into the truck and I backed it up far enough to get a good running start. We were holding steady at about thirty miles per hour as we flew across the narrow frozen strip. At least, we flew across about half of it. Suddenly the front of the truck lurched downward and within just a few feet we went from thirty miles per hour to zero. All hell broke loose inside the truck. People from the back seat were slumped over the front seat, supplies and equipment from the back of the truck were scatter all the way to the front windshield and there was a whole lot of moaning and groaning.
In the middle of all that I heard Peter say “I must have missed something!”
As we poured out of the truck, the first thing I did was to determine that everyone was okay. We were lucky there. But inspection of the truck revealed not so much luck. The front tires were mired more than three quarters of the way into a thick, cold soup of mud. While we could walk all around the truck with no problem, right in the middle of all that seemingly solid ground, we were severely stuck.
I put Joe, Bob and Jill to work straightening up the inside of the truck while the rest of us tried to figure out what to do. “Don’t worry” said John, “I know the road grader operator at the pump station. Let me call him on the radio.” Ten minutes later, after some loud guffaws from the other end, we had a big road grader on the way to get us unstuck.
Well, about an hour and a half later the grader arrived. It was a pretty big piece of equipment and we all sighed with relief as the operator figured out where to attach the chains and which way to pull. Finally the moment arrived and the grader started pulling. But the truck didn’t move. All that happened was that the grader’s tires started digging holes in the pad. The more he pulled, the deeper the holes got. And then we realized, he’s not going to get us out.
On top of that, the grader was in a situation where it couldn’t go forward without running into the truck, and it couldn’t go backwards without getting off the pad and into more trouble. He was stuck too!
Now, we had a real problem. Not only were we stuck and not at work, we had managed to get another large piece of equipment stuck, way off in the middle of nowhere. And we didn’t have a clue about how to salvage all of this.
Luckily, the operator of the road grader knew the operator of an even larger road grader and put in a call to him. And, lucky for us, operators always jump to help other operators in need. The other operator could break from what he was doing and get underway to our location pretty quickly. Unfortunately, he was almost two hours away and we would have to wait.
After a short break for lunch, we decided to send a crew of four on foot to the worksite. Joe (or was it Bob?) stayed with me and the rest went on to get started on the actual work we were supposed to be doing. Even with the mile or so walk to the site, they would still be able to work for about four or five hours, and could even finish the job if all went well.
Joe, the operator and I stayed around the truck and waited for the other road grader. When it arrived, we saw that it really was a BIG road grader. Those six foot tires transported a machine that was a least twice the size of the merely big grader that was stuck behind our truck.
Well, to make a long story short, after some inspection and checking for attachment points and a fair share of friendly ribbing, that big grader hooked onto the other grader and, with just a moderate amount of tugging, had it free. Then it was our turn, and he made it look almost easy. After barely more than a half hour, both vehicles were freed and we were all ready to move on.
That is when I learned the real punch line to the story. While we had been struggling to get stuck and then unstuck on this side of the worksite, a new culvert had been installed on the other side where the pad washout had originally stopped us. All I had to do was drive back around to the pump station and a short distance on the pad across the newly repaired pad and my crew was all together again.
What an ironic ending to a very adventurous day!
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