# clearing mountainous roads with several meters of snow

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clearing-mountainous-roads-with-several-meters-of-snow/712849>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 16, 2015, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clearing-mountainous-roads-with-several-meters-of-snow/712849 "2015-02-16T20:15:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2015, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clearing-mountainous-roads-with-several-meters-of-snow/712849/1 "2015-02-16T20:15:43Z")

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[Looky here:](http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/914845-mario-kart) someone noticed that a mountain road in Japan with impossibly deep snow looks like a scene straight out of Mario Kart.

I’ve seen pictures like this in tour brochures for Hokkaido, so I don’t have any doubt the photo is real. But it leads me to wonder:

What kind of machine can clear snow like that? Is there a snow-throwing machine with a giant U-shaped array of augers, like [the machines they use to carve snowboarders’ half-pipes?](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1089&bih=632&q=snowboard+pipe+machine&oq=snowboard+pipe+machine&gs_l=img.3...992.3281.0.3363.22.9.0.11.11.0.136.856.7j2.9.0.msedr...0...1ac.1.61.img..9.13.884.jyHzaTc9mTY)

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**Author:** ![buddy431](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2015, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clearing-mountainous-roads-with-several-meters-of-snow/712849/2 "2015-02-16T20:23:39Z")

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Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park is famous for similar snowfall. Here’s a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRRji3g8GTo) of the machine used to clear it. Looks like slow going.

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**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clearing-mountainous-roads-with-several-meters-of-snow/712849/3 "2015-02-18T16:05:02Z")

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That same youtube link shows a bunch of snow removal videos; some from the same roads in Japan. It looks like they use the same hydraulic snow auger/blowers attached to heavy equipment that are used elsewhere in the world. These can throw snow tens of meters in most any direction the operator wants; either to the side where space permits or into trucks in tight city streets where you can’t just broadcast it.

For the really deep snow they simply use an excavator to dig down the upper layers and if required cast it into piles for snow removal equipment to take or blow away. There’s probably not very many drifts an excavator couldn’t remove by either reaching up to the top or carving a ramp to crawl up and remove the upper layers.