The Machines That Built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 3 Years

In the fall of 1976, a cable system on Alaska's Thompson Pass flew 9-ton pipe sections up a slope so steep a Caterpillar could not work on it. The owners allowed up to $10 million extra a day to save a single day.

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This documentary follows the Trans-Alaska Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez: the 360-mile Haul Road built in 154 days, the sideboom tractors that laid the first pipe in the Tonsina River in March 1975, 78,000 supports drilled into the permafrost, the faked weld X-rays, the cableway and the welders on the 145-percent slope of Thompson Pass, the 18,000 machines put up for sale before the line was even finished, the explosion at Pump Station 8 and the 2002 Denali earthquake that tested the design.

📌 CHAPTERS
00:00 The Cable on Thompson Pass
01:05 A Road in One Summer
06:41 Sidebooms, Camps and 78,000 Legs
17:00 Faked X-Rays and the Steepest Wall
23:47 First Oil, an Explosion and the Big Test

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