Challenge one for the epic Alaska Highway Project in 1942 had been to mobilize thousands of men, acquire their equipment and move everybody and everything over vast distances to the Far North.
Meeting that challenge had immediately created challenge two. Thousands of men and massive stocks of equipment and supplies jammed points of entry at Dawson Creek, Skagway and Valdez; the Corps struggled to get men and equipment out to their work, deep in the interior.
By the beginning of July, the challenge had evolved yet again. In place, for the most part, and working, thousands of soldiers up and down the road struggled to build highway. And thousands of support troops and civilian contractors struggled to supply and support them.
Coming north through the Southern Sector, the men of the 35th had conquered Steamboat Mountain, grappled with their ongoing problem of finding a route and arrived at Summit Lake on July 4th. Their supply problem had continued unabated. Chester Russell remembered two soldiers dragging two mountain sheep into camp at Summit Lake–the first meat he had eaten in three months.
The soldiers of the 341st and the 95th struggled behind them, installing culverts and laying endless corduroy.
Over the Rockies and on north in Yukon Territory, the soldiers of the 340th worked south and east to meet the men working north, worked from Nisutlin Bay in Teslin toward the Continental Divide. To get to Teslin they had walked and driven a road built by the black soldiers of the 93rd. In their wake the 93rd reorganized to upgrade and extend their road. Command would shortly change the plan in Yukon, but, for the first time, all the soldiers there focused on building highway.
North of Whitehorse the 18th struggled to get around Kluane Lake; ferried men and supplies across on two rafts built by the 73rd pontoon engineers, towed by two launches rented at Burwash Landing.
Up in Alaska, still struggling to get to their portion of the Highway, the 97th had to build their own access road, had worked their way to the Mentasta Pass and all but stopped. The old pack horse trail they followed twisted and turned through the pass, hugging the sheer cliff. Some sections disappeared in washouts; sliding mud plugged others.
Threading bulldozer tracks back onto their sprockets while the dozer hung over a precipice turned out to be a skill not everyone could master. Sgt Monk explained in an interview years later that the operator “…got to know how to drop that blade to keep from tumbling down the mountain.”