Machines | Caterpillar 977L Crawler Shovel moving volcanic rock on Tenerife

On our usual late winter/spring walking and sunseeking trip to Tenerife in April, on our alternate day walk up to Los Olivos and Adeje, at the foot of the mountains and the entrance to the Barranco del Infierno, I spotted a big muckshift taking place They looked to be in the middle of moving many thousands of tonnes of volcanic rock. There was a fleet of Cat and Volvo 360’s parked up along with a few Case wheeled loaders and various other bits and pieces. On the Sunday that I first saw them parked up, I saw an old Cat crawler, from a distance it was either a 955 or 977. With security around, although the site was fairly open, I didn’t go for a nosy. Later, when the machines were working, they were a long way from public access. If I had been on my own I would have risked getting closer but I thought I had better behave myself. On our last full day, I couldn’t believe my luck, the Cat shovel, A 977L, was working near to our usual route so I was able to spend a while watching it work. Although I was only wearing running shorts it was actually drizzling very slightly out of the very low cloud hanging on the mountains and it made a good backdrop to my photos. The Cat 977 was my dream machine when I was driving our Case 1150’s in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The truth is it was too big for our needs and nowhere near as versatile in the handling and steering department as the 1150. This was a nicely renovated machine, they still seem to like crawler loaders over in Tenerife. The ground that this was working on, was the worst sort, in my opinion, to work with a crawler. Boulders of an unknown size in a dry and abrasive softer material. Very uncomfortable on a solid seat in a tracked machine. I assume the driver was on an hourly hire rate as he was tiptoeing around very steadily. I was itching to give it full throttle and push hard. The driver was certainly treating his machine with respect though, which was good to see. I’ve made three videos and have a lot of photos to upload at some point in the near future.