Traversing a Colorado mountain pass during a storm in the dead of winter is a harrowing experience. Drivers with white knuckles and gritted teeth navigate through howling winds and sheets of snow that obscure the surrounding mountain peaks, not to mention the road they’re driving on.
For Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) road maintenance workers, it’s an every-day challenge. One such crew, composed of plow drivers, snowblower operators and loader operators, takes on Monarch Pass, a stretch of Hwy. 50 between Salida and Gunnison, which only remains navigable year-round due to their commitment.
The crew works odd hours through the heaviest whiteout blizzard conditions. And, currently, the plow driver team is severely understaffed.
Right now, they are working with only three full-time drivers, said Matt Bennett, the CDOT maintenance foreman who supervises operations over Monarch Pass. A full roster would include four full-timers and up to five seasonal workers.
When a winter storm hits, Bennett said it is all hands on deck to keep the road safe. The trio work long, irregular hours that are dictated primarily by the erratic high alpine weather. If a storm continues to layer the pass with snow for days on end, the crew will work for as long as it’s necessary.
“I mean, they do pay overtime, but overtime gets old,” Bennett said. “Nice for the pocketbook but you ain’t got a life sometimes in the winter.”
Despite the sometimes fierce conditions, the strategy to keep roads clear is fairly straightforward. Plow drivers clear the main road of ice and snow, and then drop gravel mixed with a magnesium chloride product called “Torch.”
The snowblower — an industrial-sized version of what many people use at home — driven by a heavy equipment operator, then works slowly along the highway shoulders, throwing the snow the plows left behind up onto the steep hillsides lining the road. The loader, a large tractor, moves between pull-offs and parking areas, pushing snow into piles. A lone mechanic is also on call, day and night, to fix any of the machines should they break down.
It’s a delicate equilibrium between efficiency and safety, Bennett said. The driver’s cockpit of a plow looks like a spaceship, with a dozen blinking buttons and several joysticks. These controls give the operator the ability to adjust the angle, pressure and spacing of its plows.
Most of the CDOT plows are equipped with a “wing extension”, a smaller plow that hangs off the side of the truck to catch snow from the main plow. Bennett said it’s a balancing act to “maintain float”, a process of pushing as much snow off the road as possible without catching the asphalt or hitting a guardrail. Bennett said he has that sweet spot pretty much perfected after so many years driving a plow.
The things that really concern him are the ones he doesn’t have control over. For example, at night, a seemingly mild storm can quickly ramp up in intensity reducing the visibility to zero.
“At times you actually can’t even see what’s in front of your plow. I mean, there are times you absolutely have no idea what’s out there and you just pray,” he said. “That’s the most dangerous part of [the job] in my opinion because you can’t tell where you’re going… but you learn the road and learn what to look for.”
And after 18 years working on Monarch Pass, Bennett knows every dip and bend of that particular stretch of highway. That, combined with plastic ‘delineators’ — poles with reflectors on top that stick up out of the snow on either side of the road — mean he can usually navigate in all but the worst conditions.
Darryl Wilson, a daytime plow driver, has 22 years working on the pass. New hire Chris Feather, the nighttime driver, has only 18 months under his belt. Until taking the job with CDOT, he worked as a short-haul trucker, driving semi-trucks around the Four Corners area. One of his most traveled routes was the one between Salida and Gunnison.
For all of the plow drivers, the nature of the job allows them to nurture unique passions.
Wilson works overtime in the winter so he can travel the national golf circuit in the summer. Bennett had a previous career as a farrier and spends his summers competing in local ranch rodeos. Feather is a born driver. He grew up wanting to drive trucks and said he doesn’t mind the night shift.
The thing everyone on the crew has in common is an intense work ethic and a commitment to the job.
“When we’re shorthanded I have to give it to these guys,” he said. “They’re good workers, the ones that we do have, they’re dependable and they don’t mind working.”
