When word came of an incoming snowstorm set to pummel the Snowy Mountains in NSW, the ROADBOSS crew jumped straight on a plane to chase down a beefed-up 4×4 MAN snow plough making waves around Thredbo Alpine Resort
A ROADBOSS story usually starts with an idea, followed by weeks or sometimes months of back and forth, before we finally escape the office in search of adventure. There’s a lot of planning, pitching, sometimes even begging, and we’ve typically got a fair idea of what we want to get out of it.
Sometimes, though, we just have to bite the bullet and show up, hoping for the best. Owing to the incredible people that make up this great industry, it usually works out after hands are shaken, magazines are handed over and a plan of attack is put forward. There’s almost always the offer of a carton of beer, or a bottle of rum, for people’s efforts, too.
A couple of years back we’d had the outrageous idea to join a snow plough operation, either grooming the slopes in a tracked Snowcat, or the roads in and out of a ski resort in a blade-pushing heavy truck. By ‘we’, I mean Harrison Hunkin, Deputy Editor of ROADBOSS, who became quite obsessed with the idea.
G’day fellas, are you here with the truck mag?” the operator yells from a half-cracked window, his frosty breath a reminder of the sub-zero-degree temperature.
Of course, the idea hinged on getting to an Alpine town the day of a snowstorm. While countless plough operators assured us they’d reach out when they expected snow, the timing never quite lined up.
Sitting at my desk on a sunny Thursday afternoon, Brisbane is warming up – evidenced by the air-conditioner set to a cool 18 degrees – but down south it’s a different story. A Facebook post about an incoming snowstorm set to hit the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales piques my interest.
I know Thredbo has a fleet of snow ploughs that work around the clock during a ‘snow event’ like this, so now’s as good a time as any. Fortunately for me, Harrison can’t let his footy team down this weekend, so he’s desk-bound. He’s not happy about it, but I am.
For this adventure, we’re trading truck spotting for storm chasing.
Blizzard bound
A mad dash from the ROADBOSS office to the airport, via Kmart to buy some thermals that just might ready this Queenslander’s ill-equipped wardrobe for snow duties, and I’m in the sky. Melbourne-based photographer Alastair Brook is called and told to get to the airport, no doubt better equipped for the cold.
For this epic adventure, ROADBOSS traded truck spotting for storm chasing in the Snowy Mountains
Arriving at Canberra airport late into the night, with a two-or-so-hour run to Jindabyne planned, the baggage carousel sits idle. The hire car mob closes in 10 minutes, so it’s all a bit stressy.
Suddenly, a steady stream of long, skinny ski bags are ejected from the oversized luggage window. Lean, outdoorsy types rush to grab their prized equipment, all looking the part in Patagonia jumpers and trendy ski-brand caps, having rushed here from all over the country at the news of a snowstorm.
We aren’t the only storm chasers here, but our reason is somewhat adjacent to that of the ski-bums who know this’ll be the last snow of the season. It’s no-less exciting, though.
While the Alpine base towns are littered with mountain bike trails at this time of year, ready to be enjoyed across summer, resorts like Thredbo remain in full swing right through to the October long weekend. We arrive in Jindabyne past midnight as the town sleeps, but the Alpine Resort Motel carpark is chock-full of Subarus with roof pods.
It hasn’t snowed properly here since 2017, but they reckon we’ll get some tonight.
Layering up in our room before dawn, after just two hours’ sleep, the wind is now shaking the windows. There’s no snow yet, but it does feel like a storm is brewing. It’s around an 850m elevation change between Jindabyne and the top of Thredbo, so a lot could change.
Snaking our way up Kosciuszko Alpine Way, the temperature drops. It’s now showing two degrees on the dash, but the wind has died down. Has the snowstorm passed? I suspect we may have wasted our time.
Suddenly, halfway up the mountain, snow-capped ridges emerge. The western face of Mount Kosciuszko is now in full view, as cascading light illuminates the idyllic scene, snow gums and pine trees straining under a thick layer of snow.
The road becomes wet and icy, presumably the result of defrosted snow. I knock a little pace off, both to take in the stunning scenery and to keep us off the white stuff. Having been in 30-degree Queensland heat just a day earlier, the snow feels otherworldly.
It’s an 850m elevation change between Jindabyne and the top of Thredbo, so a lot could change
Speckled, thawed puddles become pure white. The snow ploughs have been here, because the shoulder of the road is flanked by half a metre of snow. Small icicles are now bouncing off the windscreen, barely perceptible but a promising sign.
Making waves
As we enter Thredbo around 5:30am, well before the rush, we see a 10-foot tidal wave of snow making its way along one of the lower car parks (and that’s not an exaggeration). A beefed-up 4×4 MAN 18.320 is pushing an enormous orange plough – akin to a dozer blade – through what must be half a metre of fresh snow, throwing the trucking equivalent of rooster tails.
The pace at which the truck laps the carpark, back and forth, back and forth, is unexpected. We think, perhaps, the two large cameras now pointing at the operator may be encouraging him to put on a show.
“G’day fellas, are you here with the truck mag?” the operator yells from a half-cracked window, his frosty breath a reminder of the sub-zero-degree temperature.
We’re responsible for everything in here so we’ve got the trucks and even things like front-end loaders.
See, while we’ve turned up on a whim, we did call the head office at Thredbo from the car to let them know we’d be showing up. A marketer by the name of Bronte told us that sure, we could come, but reiterated that she wouldn’t be able to chaperone us, or put us in touch with any of the operators.
“They’ll be flat-out clearing snow and we’ll be focused on the snowstorm,” she’d told us. She had, thankfully for us, told Euan Diver, the resort’s Environmental Services Manager, that we’d be coming.
“You were flying mate,” I tell Euan. “You’ve given us some epic shots.” “That’s actually a pretty normal speed for us,” Euan responds, laughing, “but I know these car parks pretty well.”
As it turns out, speed is necessary. Without pace, the snow isn’t thrown far enough, meaning more passes. The aim of the game is to work quick, and to throw the snow as far as you can – often over the top of parked cars – while articulating the massive Wintec blade, all while avoiding curbs, signs and other obstacles lurking beneath the white powder.
A beefed-up MAN pushes an enormous orange plough – akin to a dozer blade – to clear snow
I push my luck, asking to jump in the cab for a few runs up and down the road. “If you’re going to jump in mate, now’s the time to do it,” he says, ushering me to the other side of the truck. “I’m going to be flat-out until we open at 7:30am, so we’ll just do a couple of quick laps.”
Once aboard the MAN, heater cranked, the blade throws the snow up beside us – easily as high as where I’m sitting. Visibility isn’t great, but Euan knows these roads. He’s controlling the blade – which articulates in the middle, as well as up, down, and side to side – while maintaining a speed that feels just a little bit too quick, nudging the curb bumpers hard against the pavement as his guide.
Behind us on the tipper body sits a tank and wet salt sprayer, just like the fertiliser spreaders you’d see on a farm, which operators use to throw a mix of salt and grit onto the road to melt the snow and give cars some traction.
“We aren’t using the sprayer today because we’re so close to spring, it’s actually quite wet,” he tells me. “In winter you’ll get a foot of snow and when you plough it you can never get that last little bit of ice off the road.”
You start out in the LandCruiser … then you graduate to the Canter, and then obviously you move up to the MAN.
Unfortunately, my time onboard is short-lived, for no reason other than the fact we’re holding Euan up. A crowd’s now forming at the Friday Flat ticket office, as eager powder hounds line up to buy a day pass and hit the slopes. I’m eyeing off a donut and coffee stand out front, which based on the long line looks promising.
“Do it, mate,” Euan says, hearing us make sugar-filled plans. “Get me a coffee a bit later on and we’ll chat more – I’ll message you.”
Standing in line, the sweet scent of freshly-fried donuts cuts through the piercingly cold air. We stand out like a dog’s proverbials, wearing pull-on boots, blue jeans and multiple light jackets. Everyone around us is wearing snow boots, ski suits and thick gloves.
A hot coffee warms you up for sure, but add hot, fresh donuts and it’s a match made in heaven. They’re so hot Alastair leaves his gloves on, which doesn’t look as out of place as it sounds. We watch Euan rip around the roads below, now contending with a steady stream of cars.
While the MAN only covers short distances, it’s worked hard; and in Summer carts dirt and rocks
Plough town
Driving around Thredbo, along Friday Drive, up Bobuck Lane and onto Diggings Terrace, where a lot of the accommodation is situated, it’s all freshly ploughed.
Little Fuso Canters plough the smaller carparks and lanes, while a 70 Series LandCruiser ute ploughs around parked cars. The tightest areas are actually cleaned up by skidsteers, which use their buckets to scoop the remaining snow. It’s a team effort.
“Unlike the highways where it’s just big trucks pushing snow off the road, we’ve got this condensed little village,” Euan tells me over coffee at the nearby Avalanche Cafe. “We’re responsible for everything in here so we’ve got the trucks and even things like front-end loaders.”
“Actually, we used to have an eight-speed Unimog,” Euan says, clearly missing it. “It was really cool because it went backwards as fast as it went forwards, so in those day carparks you could get into sixth gear in reverse. Being a short wheelbase, you had to hold it pretty straight.”
We’ve really got that two-hour window to clear the night’s snow, and then if it keeps going we’ll just keep running around.
Even still, the MAN, which is now three seasons’ old, is a serious bit of kit and perfectly suited to this application.
“They’re designed to do this job,” he says. “The Japanese equivalents go okay, but the snow in Japan is all powder, so it’s a lot lighter. The MAN is just proven and it’s what the other contractors out on the main roads use for that reason.”
It works hard too, only ever operating in low gears – flat out.
“Oh, it’s really hard on the trucks,” he explains, “because they never actually stretch their legs. That truck’s got 19,000km on it, but that’s all hard work. Then in summer we take the blade off and it spends most of its time in 4×4 running up and down the hill carting dirt and rocks and gravel.”
The condensed nature of the village needs a fleet ranging from a Land Cruiser to the mighty MAN
Maintenance is done in-house by the same team of technicians that looks after the Snowcats and other heavy equipment on site. Alpine diesel is a must, but the hydraulic fluid too needs to be suitable for sub-zero temperatures too.
“We actually use the same hydraulic oil that goes into the Snowcats,” he tells me, pointing up towards the slopes. Enormous red Snowcats sit dormant in the distance, fired up each night to groom the ski fields.
When I probe about whether he has any snow plough jobs going, Euan reminds me he only trusts a handful of his team to operate the MAN. And, they had to cut their teeth in the smaller ploughs first.
“So, you start out in the LandCruiser, which is a bit smaller and there’s less potential to damage stuff,” he says. “Then you graduate to the Canter, and then obviously you move up to the MAN.
The Japanese equivalents go okay, but the snow in Japan is all powder. The MAN is just proven and it’s what the other contractors out on the main roads use for that reason.
“Of course, that takes time and the challenge we’ve got is that it’s such an itinerant staff group. It’s a pretty Hollywood thing to be ploughing snow, but it’s still hard to keep people.”
Euan, on the other hand, isn’t going anywhere. “I got here in the early ‘90s, after skiing and doing a couple of seasons at Falls Creek,” he tells me. “I ended up here with a real job and I just never left.”
The guys are out from sunrise each morning, but they’re also on standby throughout the night in the event that people need to get in or out of the resort. Of course, there are also 12 buses running non-stop at Thredbo, so much of the clearing effort is to ensure they can get around.
“There’s no use clearing it at midnight, because you’re back at 5:30am to do it again to get it ready for when everything opens at 7:30am,” Euan says. “We’ve really got that two-hour window to clear the night’s snow, and then if it keeps going we’ll just keep running around.”
The MAN is a serious bit of kit and perfectly suited to this application
On a day like today, Euan’s team doesn’t stop. The snow is so unrelenting by this point, less than half the slopes are open because the wind up the top is too strong.
“It’s a proper blizzard,” he says, looking out the window. “That’s why you fellas were so cold out there. But, as my favourite Scottish comedian says, there’s no such thing as bad weather, just a bad choice of clothes.”
It’s not slowing down either, with even more snow predicted overnight. Based on the forecast, there will be another 55cm overnight (or more) and the ploughs will be working overtime.
“This weekend will be huge for us,” he says. “And because it was a poor season in New Zealand, a lot of the pro skiers haven’t got their hours up. We just had an international standard ski race this week, which we don’t do often, and that’s how the pros get their points up.”
A while back a worker had turned up in Overnight One and he’d stepped out of his car just as I was coming past. I just saw this wave of snow bigger than him. You learn to get out of the way.
We wander over to the bottom carpark, where all of the trucks are parked up. It’s snowing, but they’ve just finished a round of ploughing. Euan has been relieved by his right-hand man, Brent Bourke, the Environmental Coordinator at Thredbo.
It’s clear from the moment I meet Brent, he loves his job. His background is as an agronomist, but work on farms put him behind the wheel of a truck on multiple occasions.
“I drove a bit of everything really, but nothing like this,” he says, proudly leaning against the MAN’s enormous blade. “I did a lot of harvests, so I’d be in the trucks, and then I worked up in the Northern Territory and gee there were some rough trucks up there. One was an old Toyota D6000 horse truck with next-to-no brakes.”
It turns out, talking to Brent, that his grandfather owned a number of crane companies, so trucks run deep in his family.
Just when we think we’ve found every possible use for a truck, we stumble upon something cooler
“He had Botany Cranes out of Sydney, Canberra Cranes, Cronulla Cranes and Artarmon Cranes,” he says. “As a young fella I loved going to the yard with my grandfather, and you know, jumping in the trucks and the cranes.”
As we wander around the snowy carpark, I ask Brent whether he’s ever been cleaned up by a wave of snow, given how close we are to the ploughs and how much ends up on the parked cars.
“Ha, I haven’t,” he laughs, “But a while back a worker had turned up in Overnight One and he’d stepped out of his car just as I was coming past. I just saw this wave of snow bigger than him. You learn to get out of the way.”
Final fall
It isn’t so bad chasing trucks on two hours’ sleep when you’re pelted with sharp, icy snow all day, jarring you into a state of shivery alertness. It’s quite invigorating. Nor is it bad calling it a day at a motel perched just above Jindabyne Brewing, which serves pints of locally-brewed stout and foot-long skewers of smokey grilled lamb. Also invigorating.
It’s a pretty Hollywood thing to be ploughing snow, but it’s still hard to keep people.
The heaters are toasty and the beers continue to appear, as we settle in amongst the excited locals (and their dogs).
“It hasn’t snowed properly here since 2017, but they reckon we’ll get some tonight,” one older gentleman says, not really talking to anyone in particular, but rather addressing all of us at the long, beer-hall style wooden table.
And that we did. Dragging myself out from under the doona at 6:00am, the carpark of the hotel is now enveloped in snow, the cars barely distinguishable. As my eyes focus further afield, Lion Island, just off the shores of Lake Jindabyne, is also draped in a blanket of glistening snow, the low morning light ricocheting directly into the room. Snow-capped mountains in the distance, which were just mountains yesterday, are a sure sign the ploughs will be working even harder this morning.
Just when we think we’ve found every possible use for a truck, we stumble upon something even cooler. The urge to disappear to the snow for ‘just a season or two’ has never been stronger.
