Making sure that the cars get through

Press, 26 August 1982, Page 21

Making sure that the cars get through

Jllizzards are all in a day's work for. Harold Wright, the grader driver at Mount Hutt It is his job to keep the tortuous, 11km road up to the skifield open every day.

Most of the time he does. But occasionally a particularly fierce blizzard dumps so much snow on the road every hour that, by the time he has cleared the road from the top the bottom and turns round to go up again, the snow has piled up too high for him to get through. . “If it gets ahead of you, you can get a metre or more of snow on the road and it takes two days to clear it — two days when there’s plenty of snow on the skifield, but no-one can get up there to ski on it." he says.

“Imagine if the field has to be closed the whole day just because, the road’s not clear,” he says, shuddering at the thought. “It doesn’t matter how beautifully groomed it is — if you can't get people up to it, it’s no good.”

To avoid such rare calamities. Harold works right through a blizzard, all night and all day if need be, so that the road can stay open. When he is out working in a blizzard, he sees no more than a metre in front of his cab, and everything is flat and white, Harold has his own sure-fire way of knowing where the edge of the road is.

“The only way you can tell where the road drops off,” he says, “is by keeping your eye on the blades in front of the grader. When you see the snow falling off below the side of the blade, you know that’s where the road stops.” Whiteouts like that are the worst time and the best time for Harold. They are the worst, because he has- to work around the clock in treacherous conditions that would turn a lesser man into a quivering jelly. Once he worked for 42 hours, nonstop, while the snow kept falling. Other times he has worked many more than his eight hours, up anddown 'the road, and then, after.a hasty meal, he has had ,'to go out again in the. bulldozer to clear the skifield carpark. . After long, hard hours pushing snow around, Harold naturally needs his' sleep. The only trouble is, with the

road and carpark cleared and ready for skiers, Harold is too w’eary to go out on to all that enticing new snow himself.

That is the worst part of his job. Harold is a keen skier, but the demands of his job often mean that, although there is plenty of snow to ski on, he has neither the time nor the energy to make the most of it.

“The trouble about being the grader driver is that, when you get good snow, you're too busy clearing it to make the most of it,” he savs.

When does he ski then? “When I’ve had plenty of sleep and the snow is perfect,” he says. Harold has been a mechanic all his working life. He worked on graders for many years in various parts of New Zealand, but it was not until the joined up with Doug Hood, Ltd, (the firm that is contracted to maintain the Mount Hutt “Hood Alpine Highway”), that he really got to know what alpine weather could do to a road. “I worked on the road to Coronet Peak for a while for the Ministry of Works, but that was nothing like this,” he says.

To keep the road open to Mount Hutt skifield, Harold uses a Caterpillar 14G grader, a massive 180 h.p. beast with wheels almost as high as he is, and measuring 18 inches through. Each wheel is fitted with chains that cost about $l6OO each. The cab is rigged with a big, powerful heater and a twoway radio. To clear the high-level carpark, Harold uses a Caterpillar D 7 bulldozer, another mighty yellow monster. He keeps them both in working order, doing maintenance work on them every‘day. On a good day, when it is not snowing or blowing a gale, Harold runs his grader down the road at about 6 a.m. and up again, clearing off any rocks that may have fallen overnight, and spreading gravel on any ice patches. “That’s a good day for me,” he says. Such days give him the chance to’catch up on any major mechanical repairs that need doing, or to take in a bit of ski-ing. On a bad day, with snow pelting down around him.

Harold will be taking calculated risks on the road in the interests of keeping it clear of snow. Several times, he says, he has had the front wheels of the grader over the edge of the numerous precipices on the road. But it does not worry him unduly. “It’s all right if the front wheels go over,” he says. “I just put the blade down on the ground. That digs in and holds it. I've never had the blade go over — parts of it maybe, but never the whole blade. It’s the back wheels, that are important.” There are four back wheels, all of them massive, and that is where the fulcrum of the grader lies. Harold insists that it is all perfectly safe. He dismisses the risks casually. “You get used to them," he says.

It is the other drivers taking unneessary risks on the skifield road that get Harold upset. Some of the closest shaves have been caused by people driving up recklessly and too fast, and nearly crashing into him while he is Still grading the road early in the morning. He is not averse to giving some of the worst drivers a ticking off if he catches them. “People who drive Range Rovers and Volkswagens are usually the worst offenders,” he says. “You see them racing up the hill, skating round the corners, passing me at speed. By the time I get to the carpark, 15 minutes later,, they’re sitting in their cars talking. “All that rush for nothing. There’s no need to take risks on that road. They should know better.”