A Day With A Lineman #34 ~ Snow, Trees, & Wire Down

As far as power outages go in the Blue Moutains this winter, it’s been pretty quiet. Which is a good thing for our customers. A couple years ago we spent all summer cutting dead trees down around the powerlines. I would say all that work paid off big time. Even though it’s kept me down in the valley all winter. Call me crazy but I really do enjoy getting up in the mountains and battling the elements and obstacles that come when trying to find and repair power outages.

We had a couple cabins out of power the other day. I headed up there just after lunch with the side by side to see what the issues were. During the winter months these places are vacant so it’s not a huge priority. The first one was right off the road. Of course a tree fell through the service wire, tore it down, and damaged the wire. I made things safe by de-energizing the transformer and cutting the wire down in the clear. The whole service needed to be replaced, so I’m gonna need some help and material.

The next cabin in way in the hell back in the thick woods. The first couple spans are east to access until you hit a big canyon crossing. After clearing one tree off the line, I attempted to make may way down to the cabin in the side by side. The so-called driveway was badly overgrown. Cut some trees and branches out of the way, drive 15-20 feet and cut some more. The snow was around 3 feet deep and walking in it wasn’t too enjoyable. Looking at the clock in getting short on time, so I headed back to the bucket truck and loaded the side by side to head in.

The next day we brought some service wire up and got the first cabin up and going. After cutting down the rest of the tree that had caused the problem in the first place. Now we can actually see the service/meter pole. I was pretty surprised that the transformer and wire going to the meter weren’t damaged at all. That made this a pretty easy fix.

Now for the fun part… cut our way into the cabin. We had this driveway cleared out and we were able to drive our bucket trucks in there a couple summers ago. Not anymore!! I guess we better get in here this spring and do a little spring cleaning. It took us about 1 hour and a half to finally get to the other side of the canyon wire crossing. Oh look… another tree fell down and tore the wire down too. The wire was under the fallen tree and tangled up in the undergrowth and old dead trees on the ground. It was a bit of a battle getting the wire in the clear so we could pull it up without it getting hung up. Tripping over branches buried in the snow, getting hung up in the prickly vines under the snow, then stepping into a big hole and sinking up to my… ya know… yes, I took a couple hits below the belt in this battle.

That was a lot of work just to get power back to 2 cabins. We got there around 7:30am and didn’t head down the mountain until 12:30pm. At which point I was starving!!

Thanks for stopping by and watching a video edition of A Day With A Lineman… and no, that’s not my real speaking voice 😉 I just find the Snapchat voice changer funny is all and I hope you do too.

(Soundtrack is from Apple iMovie - Alvin Risk ~ Fade to You)