DYNAMITE AS A TOOL IN ALASKA

Working out in the bush prospecting for gold in Alaska men and machines take a terrible toll from the weather, the work, the hours and a whole list of biting insects and varmints. Outside, back in reality I was a pretty good mechanic , even made a living at it going through college. But when I went to Alaska and was working as a mechanic that was a challenge that could not be anticipated. The first year working in our Gold Mining camp we had a professional CAT mechanic that worked on the pipeline in Alaska and took care of the machines, I was his assistant. I learned a lot from ‘TEX’ and the following year I took his place.

We had three main machines. A caterpillar (CAT) D6-C with ripper and an oversized U-Blade on the front, An International 125 front end loader with a back-hoe attached and an International TD-8 dozer with a 10K lb winch. They were all driven overland in the winter to get them to the mining camp from Galena, Alaska on the Yukon River in the middle of the state. Only when the ground and the Yukon were froze solid could you take a 50,000 lb machine to the mine. That year there was a considerable amount of maintenance done due to the severe beating they all took coming over land in 5 feet of snow and 60 below temps. We had to do a complete engine overhaul on the D6. We threw a big piece of plastic over it and did it outside in the rain. The D6 flipped over in a beaver pond when it went through the ice, and hundreds of pounds of hardface welding rod was welded on the front blades of all the machines. Daily maintenance on all three, new pads for the 125, and new teeth for the backhoe bucket. The work never stopped. They all were stuck in mud and Tundra many times, always a challenge to see if we would lose one in the quagmire or not. It seemed we were always waiting for parts to come from Anchorage or Fairbanks. The driving force behind a gold mine is the heavy equipment, without it you are out of business. We lost half of the useable days of summer for mining due to breakdowns. The final day the D6 broke the final drive gear on one side that turned the track. It was totally disabled.

We got the CAT out of the pit and high enough to avoid the water so we thought. This repair could wait until next season since we were well into October and freezing up every night. We winterized the camp and covered the D6 with an impenetrable tarp and went home.

The next year in late winter I was now the mechanic and had to have that CAT running when the season started. I had a new guy coming with me as a helper but with no experience at all. I told him to do only what I told him to do. We flew out in a Cessna 185 with our gear and a new hot CAT battery to start everything up. The old batteries stay in the cabin hooked up to a wind charger and that kept them warm and useable. We landed on skis in about 4 feet of snow and broke through the crust on the surface that left one ski on top and the other under the snow. We got unloaded and then held on to the strut so the other ski could get up on top and off he went after dragging me 100 ft down the runway before lifting off.

Well the new guy showed he was totally incompetent when I told him to be very careful lifting the new battery and he proceeded to drop it in minus 30 weather and it broke clean in half like an egg and was dead. This was our ticket to warmth, communications and food and now it was gone. At that point I made up my mind that he was leaving on the first plane and I would be better off being alone. I was right.

Since we were going to do a new drive gear Carl figured we may as well do a whole new undercarriage, gear, bottom rollers track and pads a $30,000.00 job. But first I needed to uncover the CAT and get to work on the bull gear. I adapted and got things going that should not have worked but they did. The next morning we went to set started and noticed the huge tarp covering the CAT was frozen in ice. I then cut the tarp loose from the ice and saw that the ice had reached as high as the floorboards of the cab but had not gotten into the engine compartment! Had it done that the season would have ended right there because the block of the engine would have been broken and would need a new one. But it wasn’t so we bought a break. We brought a battery down from the charger hooked it up and with a little ether she fired right up. I was amazed and happy. There was a problem though, the ice covered the whole bottom of the CAT, it was frozen in the ice. The complete undercarriage was incased in 4 ft of ice. I let the CAT warm up as I pondered the predicament. I thought the hydraulics would break it loose, after all it was only ice.

For three days I tried everything I could think of. I brought the other machines there and pulled and chipped and pushed to no avail. There was only one other option. I had two cases of dynamite in the shed but it had been frozen and could be dangerous. I had no other choice. I proceeded the dig holes with an ice auger every couple of feet all around the periphery of the CAT and packed each hole with 3 sticks of dynamite and wired them all together. I got positioned up on the runway behind the TD8 and used the battery in the TD8 to touch off the charge. About twenty sticks went off and it looked like I blew the CAT away! A huge eruption went straight in the air and for a minute I couldn’t see the CAT, it was gone!

As the smoke and ice shower cleared there sat the CAT in the middle of an ice pit with narry a   scratch. I had some great photos of the detonation but they are long gone over the years. I told this tale and showed the pictures to a career service manager for CATERPILLER in Sacramento, California and he was totally flabbergasted and questioned me for hours on what I had done to these machines out in the wilderness. He was amazed. I didn’t know you couldn’t do that, I was also amazed.

Any way that was only the beginning I still had to get that bull gear off and the whole undercarriage before we started. All the track and pads had to be replaced and that was all I needed to do, except get this “cheechako” out of my camp. It turned out to be a hell of year. I got it all done and we went to work that June with an almost brand new CAT.