By Gayle Gresham –
Clayton Phythian
Clayton Phythian of Hugo is a man on the go. When he’s in Colorado, you might find him at the Hitching Post RV Park or at the Washboard Laundromat, the businesses he owns and operates with his wife, Stacey, in Hugo. A week later, however, you will have to go a little farther up the road to find him working his other job — driving the ice roads of Alaska as a trucker.
Clayton drives trucks for CH2M Hill, a con – tractor for British Petroleum at Prudhoe Bay, 240 miles north of the Arctic Circle. He works in oil rig support, primarily hauling drilling fluids to the rigs and taking away used fluids from the rigs. It’s a year-round job in Alaska, 21 days on and 21 days off. His commute takes 24 hours with him flying to Anchorage and then taking another flight to Deadhorse.
“There aren’t any permanent residents in Dead – horse,” Clayton explains. “Everybody works on shifts, even the employees at the NAPA store. People from all over the world come up here, do their two to three weeks, go home and somebody else comes in and takes their place.”
He stays at the Arctic Oilfield Hotel, one of the oldest oil field camps in the region, owned and operated by British Petroleum. The camp houses 800 people, two people to a room.
“People always ask about the living conditions,” Clayton says, “and the living conditions are phenomenal. Although it’s called a camp, it’s more like a college dormitory. With full dining halls and housekeeping, we really do nothing ourselves — except laundry. We do our own laundry. We are actually getting a new camp soon.”
Driving the ice roads
In the summer months, production is limited to areas accessible by roads. The tundra is full of lakes, rivers and marshes, so there are few roads passable in the warmer season. In the winter months, however, roads are built by pumping water into places and allowing it to freeze. They build bridges and roads this way, scraping off the ice to smooth it. The edges of the road are marked with white markers on the right side and orange on the left side every 15 to 20 feet.
The access provided by the ice roads in the winter allows the oil company to conduct exploratory drilling. That means Clayton may be driving to an oil rig on the tundra or to an island in the ocean.
That driving can also mean a chance to see a different type of wildlife than he sees in Colorado. There are Arctic fox, musk ox and caribou. The oil companies work closely with the native peoples there and adhere Prudhoe Bay to the rules they are given. The truckers and other company personnel are not to harass the animals. That includes not getting out of the trucks to shoo an animal off the road. The drivers must wait until the animal moves on its own.
Other times Clayton waits in his truck simply for visibility. Trucking stops only when the weather is listed as Phase Three. Phase One is normal weather. Phase Two requires that vehicles travel in convoys of at least two vehicles. Clayton recalls a time when he had to sit until he could see the next marker along the road. He would drive the 15 or so feet and then stop and wait until he could see the next marker. One time he sat for three hours waiting for visibility. It was 41 below zero with a wind chill factor of 71 below. Yet, he’s ready for more.
“I am hoping to do more driving on the ocean this year,” Clayton says. “They are doing some fracking out on an island where there have been existing wells. There will be a lot of support out there. It’s always fun driving out there. You actually drive across a frozen ocean, it’s the Beaufort Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean, but it’s the inland part of it.
“The last time I was on the ocean, the wind was blowing really bad and I was just trying to stay between the markers. The ice does shift out there. You can see it as you are driving. But they move million-pound rigs out there to these islands and I’m only a couple of hundred thousand pounds, so I’m not too worried about falling through if they don’t fall through.”
Two years ago, a springtime thaw provided an interesting experience for Clayton. “There was some drilling on the other side of a river and they moved some of our equipment over there for us. We were driving back and forth across because they didn’t want to set up another camp. But they mistimed it because the ice broke and we couldn’t drive across the bridge. So, they helicoptered about 12 of us over and I spent about 12 days working on the other side of the river. That was fun. I got to take a helicopter ride.”
Bear alert
Polar bears are the most dangerous. “We are definitely not at the top of the food chain because the polar bears will hunt man,” Clayton says. “BP actually hires security people who track the bears.”
Clayton tells the story of a pad operator who was going through a line of well buildings reading the gauges. The man would enter through one door and leave through the door on the opposite side and then go onto the next well. All of a sudden a truck pulled up beside him as he left one of the little buildings and the driver shouted to him to get in. He jumped in the truck just as a polar bear rounded the corner. The pad operator had no idea the bear had been stalking him the entire time.
Grizzly bears are numerous in Deadhorse. When one is in the area, signs will be posted: Watch for Bear. Clayton got off work one morning and walked across the parking lot from the camp to the base office to turn in his time card. He noticed the signs warning of a bear, but he didn’t see anything. He walked up the steps to the office and turned in his time card. A few minutes later, someone else walked in and asked, “Did you see the bear?”
“Well, where was the bear?” Clayton asked.
“Underneath the steps,” he answered.
Clayton had walked right over the top of a grizzly without even knowing it.
Another time, Clayton was moving trucks from a large heated tent at 3 a.m. He sent the seventh truck out and got ready to get into the eighth truck. As he started walking to the truck, he heard one of the guys start yelling on the radio that there was a bear coming up.
“Well, I was kind of in the middle of no place and thought I’d just shut the door. So, I get over there and start shutting the door. The bear comes by looking at me and I’m looking at him. He kept on going, but I was only 30 feet away from this big grizzly bear. He must not have been hungry. I was sure glad he kept on moving.”
A normal job
Clayton started working in Alaska in August of 2012. Before that he drove a truck for Parker Ag for six years. A mechanic named Wade Bailey started working in Alaska and kept telling Clayton he needed to apply for a job. Clayton finally applied online and did a phone interview. The following day, while hauling a load over the mountains, he got the call and received the job offer. Three weeks later he was sitting in a truck at Prudhoe Bay looking out at the vast expanse. He called his wife asking, “How the heck did I end up here?”
The northern lights
Three-and-a-half years later, some of the wide-eyed awe wore off. “Now it’s just a normal job,” he says. He particularly enjoys the views, the wildlife and the northern lights.
“A lot of guys who have worked up here since they started in the ’60s or ’70s just find it an ugly place,” Clayton says. “But to me, it’s got a beauty of its own. It’s a big, flat nothing, but it’s neat.”
One thing he hasn’t had a chance to do yet is make a haul down the 414-mile Dalton Highway to Fairbanks. “I’ve been down 62 miles south to pump station 2. The pipeline starts in Prudhoe Bay and that is Pump Station #1. But I haven’t driven to Coldfoot or over Atigun Pass. I’d really like to drive the whole haul road. Trucks are going on that road 24 hours a day. There’s so much traffic on it all day, it’s just like Interstate 70.”
Clayton is seeing changes with the current state of the oil industry. “My particular job is stable because they are continuing drilling. I am considered essential personnel, so we are holding on fairly decent right now. But there have been a lot of layoffs up there, especially contractors who have lost their contracts for the little side jobs that aren’t directly related to drilling.”
Clayton and Stacey live in Hugo and have been K.C. Electric Association members for the past 10 years. “We seem to be putting down pretty deep roots here with all of the businesses we are doing,” he says. “I probably never would have done anything like this had my kids still been home. We have three daughters, all grown, living in the Denver metro area. It would have been hard having kids at home and commuting to Alaska. That would be a tough thing. But there are a lot of guys that do it.”
When the time comes that Clayton no longer works as an ice road trucker, he has no doubt what memories will stay with him. “If I take nothing (else) away from this when I decide to leave there, it’s the northern lights. They’ve been worth every bit of it. When I can see the sky, I’m looking at the lights because they are just always there.”
Gayle Gresham is a freelance writer who lives in Elbert with her husband, John, who works for Mountain View Electric Association. She enjoys meeting and interviewing people with interesting life stories.