Clearing the way: Maintaining county roads a big job
From left, Mineral County snowplow drivers Terry Erickson, Jeff Mask, Nick Ostle and Road Supervisor Jason McLees inside their shop in Superior. Missing is Luke Boyce who completes the team of drivers that plow and sand the county roads and parking lots each winter. (Monte Turner/Mineral Independent)
The elevation of Alberton is 3,055 feet. Superior is 2,720 feet and St. Regis sits at 2,635. The I-90 corridor gains altitude as a person drives west where Haugan is at 3,425 feet and the summit at Lookout Pass is 4,710 feet.
The Montana Department of Transportation maintains I-90 and Montana 135 when it comes to snow removal at just under 100 miles of combined road surfaces. And the difference in elevations varies the road conditions but the surfaces are all paved.
Jason McLees is the road supervisor for Mineral County and has five snowplow drivers, including himself, to handle about 130 miles of snow removal every day. Depending on the amount of snow, he said it is usually a full 8 or 9-hour day for everyone.
“That’s an average snow day and when it’s deeper, 6 inches plus, it takes probably 10 or 12 hours," he said. "We have so many gravel roads and it depends if they’re frozen or thawed as those conditions play a big part in how long it takes.”
McLees has worked for the county almost 25 years and still works side by side with his employees.
His oldest snowplow truck is a 2004 model and the latest is a 2023, which is run by the newest employee.
“Once you get into a truck, you don’t want to switch after figuring it all out,” he explains. “It’s yours and it fits.”
He said it’s the same with the areas they plow.
“We all have our own area, and although we cover each other, we pretty much stay in our zone because we know where every pothole is," he said. "You know where every manhole cover is. Where every hazard is after working it for a few years.”
His newest driver is in his second year of plowing and McLees has been there the longest.
In an average year, McLees said they go through 2,000 yards of sand and he loads up before winter from different vendors or locations. This year, the best sand price was from the Dry Creek area. They use straight sand, period. There is nothing in it and they don’t use a road solution like the state does on their roads.
The gravel roads in the mountains are iced up even though it looks and sometimes feels like spring, so he and his drivers are working up Pardee or Keystone. Attention is also at Dry Creek, Tamarack Creek and Cold Creek.
The west end of the county has snow so they are working the plows and sanding on a daily basis. They are also cutting a lot of brush along the roads and doing vehicle maintenance in their shop on Diamond Match Road.
“We’re one of the only road departments in the state that doesn’t have a county road tax so we’ve been separately funded by the Secure Rural Schools bill as long as I’ve been here and before that, but this year it did not pass the Legislature,” he shared. “So Mineral County is going to lose around $800,000 in funding as of right now unless it gets routed back to be voted on again. Now we’re slated to get $80,000 with some of that going to the schools and the rest of that going to the roads."
McLees and his team are aware of the extremely popular $1,000 Super Poker Run in Haugan next weekend and they will leave plenty of snow in the parking lots where the activities are held as they all know that snowmobilers are not very fond of riding on ice. But the other areas will be plowed and sanded for everyone else.