Joe Norris' daily commute is brutal, and chances are he's going to be late for work. His one-hour frigid snow machine trek into the Old Faithful Inn reflects the race against time by construction crews to make Yellowstone National Park's century-old icon structurally sound again, with the ability to withstand the next major tremblor in the seismically active area.

An earthquake, coupled with heavy snow loading in the winter when the building is closed to the public, could cause major problems.

"If there was another earthquake today, it would probably go down," said Chris Martison, an associate with A&E Architects in Missoula, who helped create the drawings for the renovation. "But we'll bring that 100-year-old building up to code and people won't even know that it's changed."

Norris usually lives in Helena and met Martison when the two had primary roles in the $25 million restoration of the state Capitol a few years back. In that job, Norris was the liaison between the state and the architect. Now, he's a temporary resident of West Yellowstone, and while employed by A&E Architects, he is the on-site representative of the National Park Service for what is formally known as the "Old House Renovation."

"I'm here on site to defend the design and coordinate the paperwork between the contractors, the park service and the design team," Norris said as he drops a CD of classical music into the boombox in his construction work trailer. "I'm like a liaison, to observe and do quality control."

Some days, that's the easier part of the job. On a recent morning, as the mercury hovered near 18 degrees, Norris fired up his snow machine and headed toward the rising sun for the 30-mile commute from West Yellowstone into the Old House.

At the speed limit of 35 mph, the crisp morning air quickly clears any cobwebs from the brain. But only five miles from the office, Norris has to shut off his snowmobile, kick back and "enjoy the view" in the words of the national park ranger, while he waits for a herd of rowdy buffalo to clear the road near Biscuit Basin.

Finally, the animals amble off and Norris resumes his cold commute, chilled but still slightly awed as each bison gives him its baleful stare, known by Yellowstone regulars as "the old stink-eye."

Delving into the past

It's a job that clearly thrills Norris, as well as the 50 or so other construction workers on the three-year, $22 million project. Their mission is to update and hide the mechanical and electrical systems in the 100-year-old inn, a structure that for many people epitomizes the rugged beauty and grandeur of Yellowstone National Park. They'll also install a new roof and siding, replace rotting logs and make seismic upgrades to the entire structure.

"Things were done kind of hodgepodge over the years, and a lot of the stuff was all visible," Norris said, pointing to electrical wires tacked onto interior walls and sprinkler pipes hanging in hallways. "A big part of the project is to hide the mechanical and plumbing conduit, as well as all the sprinkler pipes. We want to make it look more like it did 100 years ago.

"This is the best crew I've ever worked with," adds Norris. "They know what they're doing and we have a pretty smooth operation here."

Still, that doesn't mean it's been an effortless task.

"For the first couple of months, I had a headache every day trying to figure out what's what," Buck Crawford, the mechanical foreman for Big Sky Plumbing of Bozeman, says with a grin. "When they replaced the old stuff before, they left the old stuff in place. So part of our job is to remove that old stuff when we're putting the new stuff in there."

About 50 craftsmen began work on the main structure of the Old Faithful Inn -- known as the Old House -- in June 1903, with the inn's double doors swinging open in June 1904 to welcome visitors. The adjoining wings were added later, and throughout the past century, upgrades were installed.

"They tell me that you can see the history of plumbing in that building," says Peter Galindo, project manager for the National Park Service. "There's galvanized piping that goes into cast iron that goes into copper piping -- every technology that's been used for the past 100 years."

But a renovation of this magnitude hadn't ever been undertaken, and the enormity of the job initially was daunting.

"We had endless meetings with the concessions operating agent -- Xanterra -- and our business management office in the park. We also met with the Wyoming State Historical Preservation Office and the Park Service's national historic architecture people," Galindo said. "This project was in the design phase for almost four years."

Martison said their architectural team began by pouring over copies of the original drawings by architect Robert C. Reamer and comparing it to what had evolved over the years.

Reamer's plans were drafted on about five sheets of paper.

By comparison, Martison's renovation plans are 430 sheets deep.

"We spent a good 2 ½ years just going into the building and verifying what was there with the drawings," Martison said. "We'd stay there for a week straight, then come back home and update our drawings for a week, then go back for a week."

While spending that amount of time in Yellowstone National Park may sound appealing, it was difficult at times.

"You'd be surprised how the isolation wears on you," Martison said.

Still, that was offset by the ability to go into areas off-limits to tourists, like the interior Crow's Nest that rises 70 feet above the lobby floor, where orchestras once serenaded waltzing guests.

But others tell tales of odd occurrences, and Norris said it was kind of eerie at times being alone in the inn.

"You'll hear weird noises and the hair rises up on the back of your neck, and you think 'I think I'll get out of here now,' " Norris said. "They say there are ghosts here, although I've never seen them."

A coordination conundrum

Undertaking a major renovation at a heavily used tourist destination -- which also is miles from any lumber yards or hardware stores -- posed logistical dilemmas for the National Park Service.

Replacing the hardwood floor in the main lobby has to be done in the winter, when the inn is closed to the public. But the inn isn't insulated and can't be heated in the winter because of concerns over how the temperature change could contract and expand the wood. The heat also could pose problems with snow melting on the wood-shingled roof, which has sagged under snow loads in excess of 100 pounds per square foot.

"We knew that with melting snow, the roof would leak," Galindo said. "The whole structure isn't very weathertight, so we would get a ton of water damage if we heated that space."

So while today's construction workers didn't have to go quite as far as the original winter carpenters -- who heated their nails so they wouldn't shatter when pounded in temperatures that can drop to 30 degrees below zero -- crew members say they sometimes have to go outside to warm up in the afternoon sunshine.

Another construction constraint involves the road into Old Faithful, which is closed to traditional vehicles for about three months in the winter. That meant the bulk of the pipes, wiring, lumber, insulation, nails, generators, electrical cords, ducts and just about every other type of construction material had to be brought in early and stored on site.

Today, those supplies are stashed in the porte cochere, nearly blocking the main entryway where guests used to disembark from dusty stagecoaches.

And rather than have all the construction workers commute each day, a "man camp" was built near the inn, which provides housing and catered meals to the crew.

"We work from 7 in the morning until about 6:30 at night for four days a week, then take snow machines out of the Park," said Shawn Ferron, who works for Phd Mechanical Systems in Helena. "We've got a VCR, TV, a foosball table and ping-pong, and we play a little bit of poker. It's really kind of nice."

The National Park Service will open the inn for business just two months this summer, from July 1 to Sept. 1, and for three months next year, from July 1 to September or October. Normal operations are planned to resume in 2007, when the inn will be open to guests from May to October.

"We looked at closing the inn for an entire season, but Xanterra said there was no way they could afford to do that," Galindo said. "So we decided to just drag out the construction a little longer and work around the visitors."

Beginning at the bottom

As with most construction projects, the renovation began in the basement. One of the first projects was to increase the size of crawl spaces, where the plumbing and electrical wiring are located. Workers also built a new mechanical and electrical room.

But since most of the excavation took place underneath the inn, it had to be done using shovels and five-gallon buckets, since the space was too small for heavy equipment.

"It's volcanic sand," Norris says, grabbing a handful of the soil, which looks like little BBs. "The ground was steaming as they were digging because of all the thermal activity around here."

Working among the maze of pipes in the crawlspace is Mike Ewing of Big Sky Plumbing. He notes that they've got pipes for hot water, for cold water, and for the heating system, which is being converted from steam to hot water heat. Also in the utility tunnels are hundreds of electrical wires, which distribute power throughout the structure.

Norris heads up a stairway to the main lobby. Usually, the room is filled with tourists gazing up in awe at their surroundings, but today the view is toward the floor to navigate a labyrinth of construction equipment.

Most of the flooring is gone, replaced by joists covered with plywood. Atop the plywood lie air compressors, electrical cords, ductwork, conduit, a wheelbarrow and lengths of orange construction barricades.

Below the plywood, over near the fireplace, Steve Krogh with Phd Mechanical is wrestling a piece of tin ductwork into place. His timing was off, so today his job involves crawling underneath the joists for about 20 feet, dragging more ductwork -- work he had hoped to complete before the sub-floor was laid in place.

But Krogh is clearly enjoying the job.

"I'm writing my name on the tin, so when they come back here in 50 years they'll know who did the work," he says with a smile.

About 20 feet in the opposite direction, Barth Schretenthaler with Valley Electric in Missoula can be seen peering up from the lower crawlspace through a tangle of wires.

"They still have the electrical stuff that's 100 years old in here," Schrententhaler says as he grunts from the exertion.

Norris points out that when the new maple flooring is set in place, it will step down about 7 inches near the fireplace.

"Originally there was a sunken floor here, but over the years they had taken it out," Norris said. "So part of the historic renovation is to drop it back down."

They'll also refinish the hearths with obsidian sand and rework both the reception and registration desks.

Ironically, the best part for those working on the project is that in the end, no one should notice what they've done.

"Everything that we're putting in there, all the designs and lighting, is to keep it really simple, not to decorate it all up," Martison said. "A building this age is really rustic, and we think it goes under a kind of 'less is more' philosophy.

"The beauty with this renovation is that a lot of stuff in the building that was put in during the past 40 years takes away from the building's character, like the exposed sprinkler pipes. Our goal is to hide, encapsulate and enclose the system, so (the inn) looks like it does when it was built."

Reporter Eve Byron can be reached at 447-4076 or by e-mail at eve.byron@helenair.com.