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40 Years at Prudhoe Bay: Prudhoe Bay or bust! Accounts of cat trains, convoys and accidents illustrate just how harsh North Slope working conditions were in early days Rose Ragsdale For Petroleum News
The 1964 cat train expedition from Fairbanks to the North Slope has the honor of being the first overland transport of seismic exploration equipment for hunting for oil on state lands. Other cat trains had made their way north in the mid-1950s in connection with the military Distant Early Warning Line operation west of Prudhoe Bay, but the cat train of 1964 was the first conducted for the oil industry.
Spearheaded by John C. “Tennessee” Miller, founder of the Frontier Companies of Alaska Inc., the 1964 operation stemmed from Miller’s desire to prove that it was possible to transport men and equipment overland for oil industry work. In early 1964, Miller approached Charles Selman, then division geophysicist for Richfield Oil Co., with the idea of running a cat train to the Arctic coast.
Selman had one geophysical crew on the North Slope and wanted to set up another one. The crew would need a cook shack, bunkhouse and three D-7 Cats, or Caterpillar tractors, to plow the snow and pull all of the supplies on logging sleds.
Miller convinced Selman to use his cats on the condition that he loaded all the necessary equipment and supplies and that he ran the train all the way to Sagwon.
After several weeks spent organizing the expedition, Miller then spent two weeks staging everything for the cat train at the Dunbar railroad siding near Fairbanks. Among the crew making the trip was land expert, cook and handyman Don Simasko.
Simasko headed back to Fairbanks to pick up supplies. There he learned a Cheechako’s lesson.
“One time we had to go back to Fairbanks and it was 65-70 below,” Simasko said in an interview published in Renergy in 1984. “I was saying, ‘Gosh, it isn’t so bad. Back at Dunbar, it’s only 38 below.’ Everyone started laughing when they found out we had a mercury thermometer. You see, mercury freezes at 38 below. The thermometer was frozen solid. They told me to get an alcohol thermometer and then we found it was 68 below. So then we were cold!”
In addition to frigid temperatures, the cat train crew battled frequent equipment breakdowns, numerous mishaps, desperately inadequate clothing, poor morale, and dangerous river crossings to get to the North Slope via Anaktuvuk Pass.
The hardware hero of the cat train was Caterpillar Tractor Co.’s D7 model. Why?
It had the horsepower to pull the sleds and higher ground clearance than the D6 model. It also had an angle blade to move snow, good weight distribution in the tracks that could bridge the tundra and available parts, according to Boyd Brown, who managed the train crew from Livengood to the North Slope.
Further use on the North Slope enabled the D7 to prove itself. The heavier D8 made river crossings more hazardous, while the lighter D6 model was a little small for pulling sleds, Brown said.
It took 40 days, though only 18 days were spent actually traveling. The rest of the time was spent making repairs and addressing other unforeseen setbacks. During the trip, the Good Friday earthquake devastated Southcentral Alaska and overshadowed their efforts.
But Miller’s cat train succeeded in what it set out to do, blazing a trail for others to follow.
More trains followed as conditions improved After the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay field, the rush to get drilling equipment to the North Slope encompassed every mode of transportation, including cat trains and truck convoys.
In a 1970 interview with an internal British Petroleum publication, truck driver Burn Roper vividly described the weather conditions as ground-based crews scrambled to deliver BP’s critically needed drilling equipment.
“We needed almost as much fuel to keep warm as to run the rigs,” noted Roper. “The temperatures were something fierce, running down to minus 65 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, steel was as brittle as candy; human flesh froze in 30 seconds. Engines had to be kept running round the clock — from fall to spring, they never stopped.”
Roper drove a 20-ton transport truck in a convoy that in 1968 made the 11-day, 600-mile trip up the winter Arctic Ice Road from Fairbanks to the North Slope. This road was sometimes called the “Hickel Highway,” named after then-Alaska Gov. Walter J. Hickel, who spurred the road’s construction.
The Hickel Highway followed old Native trails and much of the route was bulldozed by Boyd Brown, Tennessee Miller and others during the famous 1964 cat train, which transported seismic exploration equipment to the North Slope. No road was actually built — only a simple path cleared across the tundra.
“We had a tractor with us to pull us over the ice ledges we met along the way,” Roper said. “These ice steps were more than two feet high. We had radios in our cabs, and though we were alone, we could talk to each other and to the convoy leader.”
High rate of accidents Still, the furious activity that immediately followed the discovery of Prudhoe Bay took its toll on human life. Thirty-two men were killed on the North Slope in 1969. Most of them were killed in 10 aircraft crashes, including a Hercules transporter lost with all of its crew. Three men were killed when a hovercraft crashed during an experiment, and two men walked into helicopter blades. Another was crushed between a forklift truck and its load. Two workers were drowned in the cement they were pouring to erect a building, and another was killed during a seismic survey.
In addition, there were many serious accidents on drilling rigs and the Arctic cold took a further toll in snow blindness and amputations due to frostbite. Oil drilling was a dangerous enterprise 40 years ago, and the harsh weather made the North Slope especially hazardous.
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