Shane McDaniel Excavating, LLC

About Shane McDaniel Excavating, LLC

Shane McDaniel Excavating runs its equipment year-round on the same ground around Athol, digging in summer and plowing in winter, so the crew already knows which rural lanes wash out, which ones freeze solid, and which driveways near the Farragut State Park boundary drift shut first when a north wind comes down off Lake Pend Oreille. Farragut's old parade grounds and building foundations sit quiet under snow most of the winter, a stretch of open, mowed grass in summer that goes back to scrub brush and drift the rest of the year, and the crew's routes trace close by on their way to driveways further out. The same tracked equipment that moves frozen dirt in warmer months handles a plow blade well through the deep, wet snow this corner of North Idaho tends to get, snow with enough weight in it to stall out a lighter machine. Long rural driveways here often run past old foundation footprints and fence lines left over from the base's training days, and the crew clears them the same careful way regardless of what history sits alongside the gravel. The light goes gray over Pend Oreille well before the last driveway on the route gets its final pass, and only then does the equipment go quiet for the night.