Do you ever wake up the morning after a snowstorm, excited to go shred some powder at one of the world-class ski resorts in our canyons? Technological advancements are the only reason we can get to the powder en masse — and I’m not talking about ski lifts. This month, I had the opportunity and pleasure to meet the people who work at UDOT station 2433 and document the work they do to keep the Cottonwood Canyons safe and accessible.

Driving up to the station at four in the morning, I met Shawn Wright, station 2433 supervisor, and Dyllan Rich, a transportation technician. The next person they introduced me to was less of a person, and more of a big, orange beast of a snowplow. Now this isn’t just your average snowplow: these are heavily modified Mack Granite trucks that are specifically tailored to get the job done. They have 13-liter diesel engines that produce 1860 pound-feet of torque to propel the beasts up the canyons, powerful LED headlights and fog lights to see in snow squall conditions and enormous head and wing plows to push massive amounts of snow. Other very important features that these trucks have are a salt spreading system and a truck bed that can hold thousands of pounds of said salt. When these trucks are at full capacity, they can weigh over 90,000 pounds, or as much as 30 Honda Civics stacked on top of each other.

The salt that UDOT uses isn’t your typical table salt either. As most of us living through Utah winters know, salt is used on roads and walkways all the time to prevent them from freezing over. However, in some conditions, plain salt isn’t enough to keep cars from losing traction on the steep inclines and twisty turns of the canyons. To have salt last longer on the roads and increase friction between tires and the road, UDOT uses a mixture of salt and clay, which the technicians call “red salt.” This is the substance that is poured into the beds of the snowplows and spread behind them as they drive up and down the canyons, using a rotary spreader disk similar to those used for fertilizer.

Gallery • 9 Photos

Marco Lozzi

A transportation technician fills up a snowplow bed with a mix of clay and salt at the UDOT Cottonwood Maintenance Shed in Cottonwood Heights, Utah on Feb. 2, 2024. (Photo by Marco Lozzi | The Daily Utah Chronicle)