• Thursday-What'sUP March 9 - 12:06 am

A few weeks back, Barb Bouwkamp shared some photos showing snow removal methods here in the Keweenaw, like the Yooper Scooper and for bigger jobs, a pickup truck with a snowplow. Well, today she's back but with a bigger method of snow removal that she spotted on the streets of Laurium. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this amount of snow to be moved, the machine blowing the snow into the dump trucks, is called a SnoGo or Snow blower. One look at the third photo and you can see why. The snow is pulled through the large auger and then blown out of the chute, into the waiting dump trucks, who then go and dump it somewhere out of the way. It's quite the system and works really well to widen the streets again, when the snow starts closing them in. Here UP North it is a necessity, as we have to make room for more to come during the winter or before you know it the streets would only be wide enough for one car to pass. Kudos to the many snow removal workers across the U.P., that make getting 20" of snow in a day or two, no big deal.

Very cool pics of the "trucks" involved in the snow removal process in the UP ... my son would have loved to watch them in action when he was a youngster! :-)

That's a lot of snow!

The guys running the snow go use to get mad at me when I was a kid as I would leave my sled burried in the snow and they would spend hours digging the steel out of the awuger.

It looks like the Finnish snow god has finally paid a visit. Better late than never? Right! That's what one gets for complaining about the lack of snow in December and the balmy days early this winter.
I do miss the sight of the train plow busting it's way down the tracks in Chassel when I was a student. Of course we had to wait for the highway department to open the road at the RR crossing after they went by. Since I lived on the lake side of the tracks and it made for some late for class days.

That is quite the production!

It IS quite the production. As I said on the What's UP page, these people know what they're doing. Way to go!!!!

I can't speak for everyone but I suspect we all just kind of take Pasty.com for granted. We don't think of all the hard work and dedication that goes into it. So, THANK YOU Charlie & family, Mary, Toivo and all the people who work so hard every day to bring a bit of home to us. Please know that your work really is appreciated.

Amen!

Is that 'snow dump' what is referred to as the 'glacier', that takes a long time to melt in the Spring?

I have been off the grid for a while but just today caught up with the stories and photos on pasty.com. I too pass on KUDOS to all those that make this site possible. Loved all the photos from today and last week as well.

Yes, Shirley, I believe the "snow dump" is the glacier you hear about!! A lot of towns in the area have their own glaciers......after all, we have to put the snow someplace!
When we first moved up here, I did not realize there was proper snow removal etiquette...I had pushed a pile of snow across the street and was chastised for this. We had run out of room on our property to put the snow, so I just thought I will get rid of it, by pushing it across the street; not realizing the plows would then push it into the other person's driveway. That was the year we had some 390 inches of this "white gold".
There are a lot of "snow wars" of neighbor against neighbor battling about where to put the stuff. If you push the snow out into the streets, then your neighbor gets it when the plows come by......but everyone eventually runs out of room.....thus we have the snow go come by every so often.

Thanks Barbara, I sort of figured that was the case. Just wish there was such a thing as a 'storm go' for our area.....more of that 'stuff' is brewing west of us.:(
Brenda, Alex, and thanks to you, Richard for reminding us, I agree with all of you about how important this site is and how grateful we are for it!!

Love the pictures. I think of think of how well the UP handles snow removal every time 2 or 3 inches shuts down Seattle!

James W. Hird (Wvyooper):
"… I do miss the sight of the train plow busting it's way down the tracks in Chassel [sic] when I was a student. Of course we had to wait for the highway department to open the road at the RR crossing after they went by. Since I lived on the lake side of the tracks and it made for some late for class days."

What, you didn't walk/ski to/from school, 'three miles uphill each way'? Heck, I'll betcha it was less than three miles, and not even 'uphill' to the Chassell school(s)! <grin>

I'm thinking "school" refers to Michigan Tech and not Chassell public schools.

I love the snow removal photos; thank you! I had seen part of the process before, but not the whole thing. There are times I wish we had that kind of snow removal equipment available here in mid-Michigan, but we haven't needed it here this year. They are predicting that it will get up in the 60's next week, yay! Then, we have to pray that we won't have a hard freeze in late April or early May, that will kill off the fruit crops, etc.!

Barbara, even down here in the 'burbs, we have snow wars with the neighbors who don't recognize that the plow is just gonna put it in someone else's drive! And, of course, trying to edjamacate these trolls is like beating your head against a brick wall. So, again of course, certain municipalities have passed ordinances to prevent people from pushing the snow into the street. Does it work? Nope. But I loved your pics! A great big vote of appreciation for the Pasty.com administrators and pictorial contributors comes from this lonely little troll who wants to retire to CH! I love the white stuff! Used to dream about having to shovel my roof.

Capt. Paul (Eclogite):
"I'm thinking "school" refers to Michigan Tech and not Chassell public schools."

Good guess, Cap'n: BS ME, class of 1968, in fact. (Thirty-six years before da Cap'n!) That would be somewhere between 6 & 8 miles from the Chassell lakeshore to da Tech — a fairly long slog, even on skis! (Also, the last run of the Copper Country Limited was on March 7, 1968!)

Tho't the 'glacier' was just out of Laurium towards Lake Linden on south side of highway(?)just a natural drift.

You are right , Al, the snow "glacier is just outside of Laurium and is a natural drift. That area wouldn't be big enough to dump all the snow that is cleaned up from the streets.

FRNash/PHX, AZ (Frnash):
"… Also, the last run of the Copper Country Limited was on March 7, 1968! …"

Of course to be precise, the last scheduled non-passenger service, and the last train across the Houghton/Hancock bridge was on September 28, 1982, just FYI.

Mary says: We featured that last train in a Shoebox memory, back on Sept. 25, 2005 (Photo below - courtesy of Dave Poisson). There is also a scanned page from MDOT, listing the Closing Credits for the Switch Box, located in the Portage Lake Lift Bridge Operators House. It's a quick and interesting read. Click here: Sept. 25, 2005

Ahh, the Sno-Go. My last year at Da Tech was the notorious winter of 78-79. Early in the fall three of us decided to spend the year living in the rustic homestead that belonged to the local family of one of my mates. The homestead is almost literally on the shore of Boston Pond. To reach it, we came in off Pontiac Rd. at St.Mary's Location, parked in the yard of the Mikkola's and then skiied or snowshoed back to the farm another 1/3 of a mile. We had electricity for lights and a fridge, a pitcher pump in the kitchen, a woodstove for heat and cooking, an outhouse, and a supplementary fuel-oil fired space heater. We could actually drive back into " The Ranch " as we called it until early November. Then the snows started. We didn't mind the skiing or snowshoeing too much, but along mid-December, the level in the oil tank started to get very, very low. We were faced with a problem since our "drive" was not a county road, but fortunately, "Grandpa Jack" had friends in the right places, and this friend was one of the Sno-Go drivers. A fifth of Jack Daniels is what it cost us to get him to come back down into our place and make a turn around big enough for the oil truck to get around and make a delivery.

Great pics. It is good to show people what we deal with up here.lol