Northern Region roads: ice, gravel, and paved.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

In January 2014 an avalanche thundered down the slopes of a narrow canyon north of Valdez, burying a portion of the Richardson Highway, the lone road access to the town, under a massive debris pile. It also dammed the Lowe River, creating a half-mile-long lake that submerged more of the highway.

Steve Potter, maintenance manager for the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities' (DOT&PF) Northern Region, was on scene as cleanup began. It took the combined efforts of the DOT&PF and private contractors to clear the avalanche and get the road reopened.

"It was pretty impressive," he says. "It took six days of actual round-the-clock effort to reopen the road. When those types of things happen, you've got to bring in the right equipment."

Record rainfall in Interior Alaska this summer also caused erosion problems along the rivers and led to washed out culverts and bridge abutments and huge potholes. It also delayed routine projects such as marking pavement and cutting brush, Potter says.

Even routine weather this far north means heavy winter snowfall and high winds and drifting snow on mountain passes.

Northern Region DOT&PF

The state's Northern Region is responsible for overseeing 3,385 centerline miles of road--70 percent of the state's total--and 104 airports. It encompasses about 370,000 square miles, or the size of California, Nevada, and Arizona combined, in the most seismically active state in the country. About forty often-remote work camps maintain specific areas of road. The region includes all the roads paralleling the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the area north of the Alaska Range. About 56 percent of the roads are paved.

The state rarely builds ice roads, Potter says, although private companies often do so to reach remote areas over fragile tundra on the North Slope. "Ice roads are ephemeral by nature," he says. "A lot of times that's preferable from an environmental standpoint."

That doesn't mean ice isn't a problem on Interior Alaska roads. Ironically, warm winter weather is the culprit. For the past decade, warm Chinook winds have blown into the Interior multiple times in the winter months, dumping rain on hard-frozen ground before temperatures fall back to well below zero. The roads turn into skating rinks, schools are closed, and everything comes to a standstill.

"Last year, there were four rain events on top of twenty below," Potter says. "It warms up, rains, and freezes, and you get a layer of ice that just doesn't peel off the road. You can't use chemicals either at those temperatures. You're trying to sand and scrape and trying to get as...