From the archives: A Winter’s Tale

Dec 2, 2021 - 3 years ago

In the small, slumbrous hours of a crisp January morning last winter, a tired Wayne Fowlie thankfully parked his pick-up truck in the parking lot of the King Edward Motel and retired to his cabin and to sleep. Only six short hours later, he returned to the truck to find a totally unwanted load — fifty nine inches of wet snow!

From the archives: A Winter's Tale — *6 wheel drive, 6 wheel steer.*

Wayne Fowlie, Service Manager of Rollins Machinery Limited, Aveling-Barford Distributors for British Columbia, was on his way to Stewart, a small community 576 miles north-west of Vancouver, to off-load an Aveling-Barford Super 500 Grader from a ship at Stewart, Canada’s most northerly ice-free port. Situated on the southern tip of the British Columbia / Alaska border at the northern end of the Portland Canal, a 90 miles long mountain girt fiord, Stewart’s history began in 1906 when gold seekers came to discover the vast mineral wealth that nature had deposited in the area. Two miles away in Alaska is Hyder, and in 1919 the Stewart-Hyder area achieved world prominence with the discovery of the enormous and fabulously rich Premier gold and silver mine. Today, mining continues as one of the main industries and in December, 1968, the Granduc Operating Company completed the longest tunnel in the world to be driven from one end, 53,743 feet, to provide access to the Company’s Leduc copper ore body.

Until recently when the British Columbia Forest Service installed a bridge on a series of logging roads connecting Stewart with Hazelton — some 200 miles south-east, and Terrace — 100 miles west of Hazelton, the only access to Stewart was by boat or airplane. For the first time in its history, Stewart had road access to the rest of the province last winter despite weather conditions that dump more than 900 inches of snow annually on some sections of the road. When, last summer, the logging roads were opened on a restricted basis, a twice weekly bus service together with a reasonably heavy general traffic produced a sufficiently high degree of public utilization to warrant the British Columbian Department of Highway’s decision to keep the roads open during the winter. This presented an immense challenge which was fully met by the Department’s crews and machines, the latter including several items of Aveling-Barford equipment.

The choice of machinery for this type of operation is necessarily a compromise between the type of equipment and the distances involved between service depots or camps. If the camps are relatively close together, it is possible to use lighter equipment, because the problem of distance wherein crews are liable to get too far out and become stranded does not exist.

For last winter’s operations, the road was divided into sections, and camps were established at Dease Lake, some 280 miles north east of Stewart, Meziadin Lake, 39 miles east of Stewart and at Good Hope, which is located at Mile 63.

Road Sections were as follows:

From Kitwanga northwards to Cranberry – a distance of about 90 miles. Average snowfall per year about 160 inches. Equipment used to maintain this section included one Aveling-Barford Super 500 Grader.
From Cranberry to Meziadin Lake – distance 76 miles. Average annual snowfall – 280 inches. Equipment included one Aveling-Barford Super 500, one Austin-Western Super 500, one Snow Blower, two Cat D7s and some small truck-mounted snow ploughs.
From Meziadin Lake to Stewart — distance 39 miles. Average annual snowfall about 900 inches. Equipment here included three Super 500 Graders, three D8s, two Aveling-Barford TS 230 Tractor Shovels with Snowblast rotary snowploughs on the front and several truck ploughs.
From Stewart northwards to Granduc Mines, some 28 miles. Snowfall recorded up to February this year was 1,028 inches. Machines included three Super 500 Graders, three D8’s with snow wings, one D9 with a ‘U’ blade, and three self-propelled Snowblasts.

This spring a new northern route connecting Stewart to Cassiar some 280 miles away was opened to the public for the first time. Last winter, the northern most section from Dease Lake to Kinaskan Lake was kept open. This covers a distance of 60 miles, and has an average snowfall of 700 inches annually. On this section, equipment included one Aveling-Barford Super 500 Grader, two Austin-Western Super 500’s, one Aveling-Barford TS230 Tractor Shovel equipped with a snowplough and some rented machines.

The heaviest snowfall in the whole region occurs on the remaining 220 miles stretch between Kinsaskan and Meziadin Lakes. As yet, no one has spent an entire winter here, so no record exists of the actual snowfall. The Department of Highways intends to keep this section open for the first time in the forthcoming winter, and its anticipated requirements are for a further six all-wheel drive and all-wheel steer graders equipped with ‘V’ ploughs and snow wings.

The method of operation found to be most effective is for a path to be cut by a combination of truck-mounted ploughs and motor graders, with snow blowers following to clear the windrows. While it is desirable to make optimum use of high speed ploughing wherever possible, the camp locations and the extremely heavy snowfalls mean that motor graders will always have an important part in the operation. The decision as to whether truck ploughs or graders should be sent out is left entirely to the foreman on the spot, but where, as frequently occurs, snowfalls of 36 inches and more are experienced, the only machines that can shift the snow are the graders.

In readiness for the forth-coming winter, two further camps are being set up on the newly constructed northern highway.

Included in the plant located at Meziadin Lake camp are two Aveling-Barford TS230 Tractor Shovels with Snowblast rotary ploughs mounted on the front. One of the reasons why TS 230’s were chosen is that their rigid frame design permits relatively easy installation of the Snowblast’s drive shaft from the rear-mounted engine. These machines are used to clear the windrows made by the graders, and the D7’s and D8’s are used to push the snow back among the trees on the logging roads.

Throughout the entire area the grader fleet is wholly all-wheel drive, all-wheel steer. Attempts have been made to use tandem rear drive, leaning front wheel machines equipped with snow wings, but these were unable to maneuver in the snow, much less shift it.

When Wayne Fowlie went to Stewart to off-load a Super 500 grader from the ship, he had to borrow a bulldozer to push a trail through to Stewart, his colleague following in the pickup truck. After dozing the snow for 1.5 miles, he took time out to take the picture (seen above). At this point, the snow level was 8 feet above his colleague’s point of reach. A close look at the Super 500 grader pictures will show something of interest to users and Distributors who are about to become involved in providing Roll Over Protection on construction equipment, legislation for which is already operative in Canada. This Canadian-built structure is simple, amply robust, and does not affect the cab structure in any way.

This article first appeared in Supply Post, June 1974, and features our long-time friends and advertisers, Rollins Machinery of Langley, B.C.