Valley Snow Pushers

About Valley Snow Pushers

Buffalo Soapstone doesn't have a downtown so much as a scatter of lakes and muskeg strung along the Parks Highway between Wasilla and Willow, cabins and year-round homes tucked back on roads that see more snowmachines some winter weekends than cars. Valley Snow Pushers runs its plowing routes around that same geography, threading between black spruce bog and frozen lakeshore to reach driveways that often double as boat or snowmachine access come the season's first real snow. The lakes themselves — Buffalo, Soapstone, and the smaller ones without much of a name at all — lock up early and stay locked up long, and the properties around them go quiet except for the occasional trail groomed straight across the ice. Driveways here can be soft and rutted before the ground freezes hard, so early-season plowing means working carefully until the frost really sets in underneath. Once winter takes hold for good, the routes fall into a rhythm of long gravel driveways and short, snow-covered lake roads, cleared one after another through the muskeg.