Working around the clock to make sure the Trans Alaska Pipeline holds water

A group of 798 pipeliners welds a section of the Trans Alaska Pipeline. (Photo courtesy of Diane Schenker)Robert Grove had spent three years living in a cabin he built in Talkeetna when he decided to return to Fairbanks in 1976 to find work as a laborer on the Trans Alaska Pipeline.
When Grove went to the labor union hall he found a job performing hydrotests, a process that flushed water through 25-mile stretches of the pipeline at extremely high pressure. It was a coveted job on the pipeline be