Highway crew stands by for winter's worst

Ready to roll... photo by Tom Chace

They are on standby 24 hours a day. They live at the peak where the highway out of Sisters merges with Highway 22 to Salem and Highway 126 to Eugene.

It's called the "Junction" and it sits above the Santiam Pass. This is the staging station for the Oregon Department of Transportation's road maintenance crew.

Thirteen men of ODOT's highway crew stay here, seven days a week, waiting for a storm, much as firefighters wait for an alarm. They work in two 10-hour shifts and, if it is rough going, their work day is extended by two hours.

They live here in A-frame houses and modular buildings. Some have families. Most are bachelors. This is where they work. This is where they play. This is where they fight the snow and ice storms. And in summer they repair and improve the highways.

Willie Stephens is the boss, but really more like one of the crew. He can do it all, operate any and all of the dozen pieces of equipment sitting here at the ready. He is the supervisor of ODOT's Santiam Junction Maintenance Yard.

He has two daughters, ages 10 and 13, who live here with him. Both go to Black Butte School which means a double round trip each weekday to Camp Sherman from atop the Santiam Pass.

He does it willingly as his two girls "love it up here and would want to live nowhere else.

"Besides," he says, "it is a great school. One of the best in the entire state if not the best."

One of the regulars is Ken Rinner. Rinner has 23 years with ODOT, "16 years on top." He calls himself a "Diesel Dealer"as he goes down into Salem or Eugene to bring in truckloads of fuel.

"These babies burn it up fast and we need a goodly supply on hand at all times," he said.

One piece of equipment will burn 217 gallons of diesel fuel in 12 hours and they sometimes run 24 hours straight.

"I refuel them on the road when necessary, like the Air Force bombers," Rinner said.

It costs about $198 an hour to run one of the big blowers.

Each of their two snow blowers has two 470 horse power motors. They crawl between three to five miles per hour, depending upon the depth of the snow, working on their own while the plows often work in tandem.

In addition to the two Kodiak snow blowers, the Santiam Station runs five sander-plows which are 10-yard dump trucks with a blade up front, two 10-yard plows and two graders each with a 14-foot blade to which they can add a 12-foot wing giving a 24-foot swipe, leaving a foot on each end for clearance.

Because most of the Santiam Pass road has a mountain cliff on the north side, the plows work the snow to the downside or south side of the road, one following the other.

They pile up a berm of about three feet at roadside and the blowers take it over the lower side edge.

"Where we have passing or multiple lanes is where we need to delay traffic at times so we can move the stuff across four, five or six lanes before we blow it over and out of the way," Stephens said.

This crew is responsible for keeping 90 lane-miles open. They work from the junction of Highways 20/126 with Highway 22 at the top, south to near Belknap Springs and east to Jack Lake Road 12. They also keep open seven sno-parks in their jurisdiction.

"The men who live and work here love this life," Stephens said. "They are die-hards. Most have years on this job. They feel they are wanted and needed. We'll add eight men to our regular crew in summer who commute or live in RVs or trailers."

Stephens, whose full title is Transportation Maintenance Coordinator at Santiam Junction, graduated from North Salem High School and became a laborer there.

"When I heard of an opening with ODOT on the bridge crew I jumped at it and that was 27 years ago. I helped build I-5. I've been up here 12 years," he said.