Roads: Going Over the Edge

 The rock ridge that extends out towards the Owyhee River from the Jake’s Place mine becomes a vertical cliff before it meets the talus rock slope below. This is the first place that I could move the route of the road out of this canyon and onto the rock slide between this canyon and the next. After the nine switchbacks down the canyon, the road had to go past the base of the cliff, across the rock slide between the two canyons, and down into the next canyon. The area that contains the best jasper on the Christine Marie Claim is in the slide between the next canyon and the one after that -- on the southern portion of the claim.

                I had just finished building switchback number nine and was looking down towards the cliff that I had to go around. It looked like I had one more, steep slope down. Then I could lessen the slope of the road and even build it level to the horizon for a while. The rest of the road would be a downhill route around the sides of hills to the south end of the Christine Marie. There would be no more switchbacks.

I was having a lot of trouble building the road around the corner at the bottom of the cliff. There was not a lot of rock to work with and not much room to move it either. I had to angle the road down again to get past the lower end of the loose rock slide created from the mining above. I was in a bunch of big rocks when I got stuck with the dozer almost sideways on the road. I could not move backwards and the only way forward was down over the slide and down the slope.

                Rationalizations for actions in dangerous situations are easily colored by desires that do not reflect reality. I remember thinking that I could just drive the dozer down the slope and start working on the road from the other direction. Never mind that ten tons of steel goes down a slope with a great deal of speed, that the machine could roll over easily killing me in the process, or that operating the dozer on a 60 degree slope might be a little different than operating on flat ground. But the road had to be built.

                I went over the side. I lost all control. I grabbed the right clutch to straighten the machine out as I felt it slide and immediately grabbed the left clutch as I started to slide the other way. With my right hand free I slammed the hydraulic control forward lowering the blade. Rock collected in front of the blade and stopped the machine upright facing straight down the hill. The ride lasted about four seconds.

I sat down on a rock for about 10 minutes with my whole body shaking. I had survived the catastrophe which resulted from a very rash decision.

I walked up to where Jake was working and told him what had happened. The next day he brought his front-end loader down, continued construction on the road down past where I went over to the side and built a spur road over to, and just under, my dozer. I started the dozer, drove it onto the spur road and up to the main road. Getting back on the machine was one of the hardest things I have ever done.