Crews With Trucks And Chainsaws Have Begun Months-Long Process Of Clearing Yellowstone Roads

A convoy of vehicles is slowly trudging its way through the interior of Yellowstone National Park. Snow removal is well underway in anticipation of the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that will soon be traveling along the park’s roads.

Clearing several feet of snow from Yellowstone’s roads and structures is an immense undertaking. Both manpower and machine power are needed to ensure everything proceeds safely and efficiently — and they’ve gone more than 41,000 days without an incident.

“A winter keeper named Howard O’Connor slid off the roof of the Old Faithful Inn and broke his arm in 1912,” said Yellowstone author, employee, and winter keeper Jeff Henry. “That’s the only major injury I’ve found.”

Little ’Ole Convoy

The immense task of clearing Yellowstone’s roads of snow starts at Mammoth Hot Springs. A fleet of heavy construction vehicles, decked out with heavy-duty snow removal equipment, were stationed outside the park's maintenance shop ready to load up and roll out.

“They usually have a bulldozer or two chained to a grader with a heavy-duty V-shaped plow leading the procession,” Henry said. “The snowplow provides the impetus, and the bulldozer pulls the plow. That breaks up the hard-packed snow on the road.”

The snowplow-dozer leaves lots of icy rubble as it pushes through the hard-packed snow. The machine is followed by seven massive rotary snowplows that break up 4,500 tons of snow rubble and send it showering away from the pavement.

The construction convoy continues with multiple bulldozers, graders, and other large vehicles armed with plows and blowers, exploiting and expanding the progress started by the lead vehicles.

Working together, the construction convoy makes a lot of progress — and a lot of noise. Henry referred to it as “the ultimate example” of “the machine in the garden.”

“Henry David Thoreau was sitting out in a peaceful countryside when a train came through and ruined it all for him,” he said. “The plowing operation is the ultimate example for me. It’s incredibly noisy, incredibly fumy, and shatters the winter isolation.”

Going The Distance

The section of the Grand Loop Road between Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful is the only road cultivated during the winter season, allowing snow coaches to drive safely on the snow-covered road.

Yellowstone’s construction convoy started their plowing operations from Mammoth on March 3. They reached the Norris Geyser Basin on March 5, covering 21.6 miles in two days.

Progress is slowly and steadily along a predetermined route. From Norris, the convoy turned eastward to Canyon Village, a shorter distance of 12.3 miles that took six days to complete, with a break in the middle.

“They can usually do six miles a day, working four days a week,” Henry said. “They pause at Canyon Village for their weekend, then plow the Canyon area as far south as Chittenden Bridge. Then, they plow back to Norris and down to Madison Junction.”

The plowing operation reached Madison Junction on Thursday, March 13. That’s over 78 miles of plowing in 10 days, and hundreds more to go before the Grand Loop Road needs to be free of snow by the beginning of May.

If there’s a breakdown or the snow causes a mechanical issue, the nearest shop could be 75 miles away. That’s why the convoy includes two mobile mechanics to keep everything moving.

Henry said most people operating the plows live and commute from Gardiner, Montana, to get the immense job done. They’ll get a reprieve from the back-and-forth once they plow their way to Lake Village by April 3.

“When they access Lake Village, they’ll set up camp there,” he said. “They’ll stay in the buildings with a mess hall and a cook and use Lake as a base for the next several weeks. They only have to drive down on Monday and then back on Thursday at the end of their work week.”  

Up On The Rooftops

While the heavy-duty snowplowing convoy started its steady progress on Yellowstone’s roads at the beginning of March, a dedicated crew of people has been living and working in the park all winter to ensure its structures remain intact.

Henry is one of Yellowstone’s winter keepers, and has been for almost half a century.

“This is my 47th winter in Yellowstone,” he said. “An old friend of mine, who started doing this kind of work in 1973, said it’s the hardest work in Wyoming.”

Henry and Yellowstone’s other winter keepers' primary responsibility is to prevent roofs and structures from collapsing under the weight of the snow. This requires constant attention from the first snowfall to the final snowfall.

“Right now, we do the Yellowstone General Stores and the four post offices,” he said. “That’s somewhere in the vicinity of 20 buildings around the park.”

Henry and other winter keepers live at Old Faithful during the winter and travel throughout the park on snowmobiles. They respond quickly and aggressively to ensure their work is easier and nothing collapses on their watch.

“Our philosophy is to start clearing the snow as soon as possible,” he said. “The first snow is usually soft and powdery and won't hold together, but as soon as it bonds we try to get it off, because it comes down fast, and soon, all of your buildings are alarmingly loaded.”

“Alarmingly loaded” can mean 10 to 12 feet of snow on a single roof. Fortunately, winter keepers have tried-and-true methods for removing it.

Geometry And Gravity

There’s a science to clearing several feet of packed snow off a Yellowstone roof. The tools of the trade are crosscut saws, shovels, plywood, and gravity.

“I always joke that we use gravity to move snow,” Henry said. “We don’t fight gravity.”

Because of prevailing winds, most snow accumulates on the leeward side of a building’s roof. The depth and stubbornness of the snow help winter keepers determine the best method for removing it.

The simple (and most satisfying) method is to use a crosscut saw to cut the snow into refrigerator-sized blocks and slide them off the roof.

“We balance the blocks on a broad-bladed shovel and skid them off,” Henry said. “It’s hard to keep them upright, but we let gravity do the work from there.”

They can employ a more straightforward and dramatic strategy on steeper roofs – precipitate an avalanche.

“We undercut the snow with a wire, and if we’re lucky and do it correctly, the whole slab of snow will come off in one fell swoop.”

The hard-packed snow can’t be underestimated. The deeper it is, the harder it is to remove, which is why Henry and the other winter keepers start as soon as they can and continue until the season is over.

“As it gets deeper, it gets harder, which means it's harder to cut, shove, and keep upright,” he said. “And when they fall over, they fracture and leave a lot of debris you have to scrape off. A job that can take you a day or two in late December can take five or six times as long as it takes by March. You can quickly get behind in your work.”

Collapsed And Crushed

Snow removal by winter keepers is critical to preserve Yellowstone’s historic infrastructure. A building covered in 12 feet of snow can cause tremendous water damage in spring if it isn’t cleared off before the heat is turned on.

Then there’s the risk of roofs collapsing under the weight of hard-packed snow. Henry’s encountered the aftermath of snow-caused collapses.

“There's a long history of buildings collapsing under the weight of the snowpack in Yellowstone,” he said. “Broken eaves and crushed doorways are pretty common, but sometimes there’s an outright collapse.”

Henry recalled two consecutive winters in 1996 and 1997 when the north-facing side of the Old Faithful Inn was significantly damaged by “snow creeps,” slow-moving avalanches that tore off large sections of the structure’s roof.

“There was a tremendous accumulation of snow on the northern side of the roof during those winters,” he said.

Henry has some snow-sampling equipment he’s used to determine how heavy the snow can get. Based on his samples and some arithmetic, he calculated that the snow can put as much as 250 pounds of pressure per square foot.

“That’s 8,000 pounds of snow on one 32-square-foot piece of plywood,” he said. “During heavy winters, the weight of the snowpack can be amazing.”

Cheap Insurance

Yellowstone’s plowing operation will reach Old Faithful on March 27. Henry and the other winter keepers will be working elsewhere to avoid the noise and fumes from the heavy-duty machines.

“We don’t like the noise,” he said. “We do our best to avoid the plows and prolong our winter.”

While many Yellowstone officials and businesses see winter snow removal as invaluable work, Henry referred to it as “cheap insurance.”

“We don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen in the future,” he said. “If you could somehow know you wouldn’t have a car wreck in the next year, you wouldn’t buy auto insurance. There’s no way of knowing what the weather will do, so having somebody get up on a roof and clear it off is cheap insurance.”

When Yellowstone’s summer season begins in early May, most of the snow will be removed from its busiest roads and structures. The construction convoy will then turn toward its final tasks: clearing Dunraven Pass and the Beartooth Highway.

“Beartooth Highway is always the last thing they plow,” Henry said.

Henry and the other winter keepers will continue diligently doing their jobs as long as snow needs clearing. Fortunately, they only have to get the snow off the roofs – no shoveling necessary.

“We leave that to the spring crews with their front-end loaders,” he said. “This year hasn’t been particularly heavy, but we’re pretty assiduous with our work. For me, I love being in Yellowstone. I like working hard and the challenge of dealing with the elements. It’s a great package for me and has been for the last 47 years.”

Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.