Clearing Road Like Playing Russian Roulette With Avalanches

As we make our way up Going-to-the-Sun Road, it’s obvious that nature doesn’t cooperate with the effort to open the road for summer tourist traffic.

It never has.

The scenic road through Glacier National Park is hammered in every conceivable way: punishing rocks and avalanches, smothering snow, raging waterfalls and the constant tug of gravity.

A mop-up crew is clearing 200 yards of road that is covered with falling scree. Farther ahead, tree stumps and a rock slab block one lane. We drive past a patchwork stretch where huge boulders have punched holes in the road.

Our guide, West Lakes facility manager Del Zimmerli, points out the place where an avalanche killed two road crewmen and seriously injured another in 1953.

“From what I understand, the avalanche didn’t come out of the snow trough,” Zimmerli says. “It came from a side chute, so they only had a matter of seconds.”

Avalanches can turn corners with a roar that is often compared to the sound of a jet. The thought of it is inescapable as we pass beneath harrowing avalanche chutes that have already delivered their payloads this year.

“This is a bad area; I don’t like this area,” Zimmerli says as we pass through Big Bend. “You’ll find asphalt from the road a good 600 feet down the slope, that has been carried there by avalanches.”

When we encounter the plow crew about a mile short of Logan Pass, the magnitude of the road-clearing effort becomes clear. A bulldozer is cutting a ramp through a 25-30 foot snowdrift. Another ‘dozer feeds a steady supply of snow to a rotary plow that sends a white plume over the cliff.

The work grinds on slowly, steadily, throughout the morning and into the afternoon. There’s a short break when ammonium nitrate charges are detonated to blast away a stretch of drifted snow. Then the crew and their machines go back to work.

Whatever it takes. The crew will advance, and the road will eventually be opened. This year, if finally happened the afternoon of June 18.

Clearing Sun Road is a process that has been refined and modernized for 64 years, and those familiar with the operation say it will continue to evolve in years to come.

Mostly through trial and error, but also through technology, the road-clearing has become a much safer, more formalized process.

“Probably the biggest change was when we got radio,” said Russ Landt, who has acquired guru status after working the road for 35 years.

Landt recalls that before radios were used in the mid-1960s, watchmen threw snowballs at bulldozers when they saw avalanches stirring on the slopes above.

“And you can miss a big Cat when you’re excited,” Landt said. “I personally missed a D-9 and had to make another snowball real quick.”

When Zimmerli came to Glacier in 1990, there was no written protocol for clearing the way to Logan Pass. Veteran crew leaders like Landt “had it all in their heads,” Zimmerli recalls.

Through interviews and research, Zimmerli boiled it down to a 40-page operations plan that prescribes responsibilities and sets forth general policies on everything from safety training to plowing scenarios for different snow conditions.

“It’s not a set pattern that we go through every year in opening that road,” Zimmerli said. “Every year, things are different.”

“The process has just become more and more refined,” said Dennis Holden, a 20-year crew member who was hit by an avalanche in 1975. “Everything has become more sophisticated and less macho.”

Holden was working as a watchman when he took a walk to replace his malfunctioning radio the day the avalanche caught him.

“I just happened to be in a chute, and there was no visibility, maybe 40 feet,” he said. “One broke right over me, and I had the opportunity to take three or four steps and it was on top of me. It took me under about three or four times, and I resurfaced each time. I fortunately ended up on the surface and was able to climb back up.”

Holden was understandably shaken by the incident, which left him with just a small cut on his leg, but he went on to work as an equipment operator until he retired in 1995.

Now there are procedures for watchmen to watch out for each other, if necessary. And when cloud cover moves in, work shuts down.

Crew members are trained in ice-climbing techniques, communications, and avalanche and rescue training. There are safety meetings every week.

But still new problems arise.

One year, marmots started raiding parked machinery and chewing through radiator hoses. The crew has since countered by stringing electrical fences around the equipment after work hours.

There are “dead spots” on the road, where radios don’t work. So a solar-powered radio repeater system was mounted on a trailer that now follows the crew up the road.

Experimentation has been used for years. In 1954, jets were called in to trigger avalanches with sonic booms. It didn’t work.

And just last year, artillery rounds were fired and explosive charges were dropped from a helicopter on cornices above the road in an attempt to speed up the plowing process. Those methods didn’t work either.

Crew members say they are aware of but generally disregard external pressures to get the road open for the sake of tourism and business. They say they can advance only as avalanche and snow conditions ahead of them allow--particularly this year, when snow depths in Glacier’s high country were unprecedented.

“We lost count last Wednesday counting avalanches,” said nine-year crew member Rick Tekulve. “Nine of them hit the road.”

Crew members know it’s a hazardous job, and that may be part of the attraction.

Tekulve first got the notion of working on the Sun Road crew after watching a National Geographic documentary on the road-clearing in 1976. He moved to the Flathead in 1983 and applied for the job.

“I kept applying and applying until I got it,” he said. “I decided it had to be the best job in the world, and I was right.”

Landt, however, has had his fill of wintry weather and avalanche zones. He says this will be his last year on the crew. He intends to move south, where no one knows what Sorel boot packs are.

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “I think I’ve used up my odds up there. You keep playing Russian roulette, and sooner or later that loaded chamber is going to come around.”