Think you’re a badass? Or at least maybe you’ve accomplished some cool stuff at your job? Nope, you aren’t and you haven’t. Know why? Because you haven’t flown six Astra HD8 8×6 heavy duty trucks over the Swiss Alps via cable tramway to service a hugely ambitious tunneling and power plant project. That is unless you work at Groupement Marti Implenia.

Here’s the idea, pump water up into a reservoir inside a hollowed out mountain during low-consumption hours and then use gravity to generate power later. To do this you need to move a lot of rock — a lot. Naturally this means you need some big-ass trucks, trucks like the Astra HD8 8×6. Getting to the jobsite is a whole different matter though. The site is over 6,500 feet above sea level and there are only two way to get there: by cable tram or helicopter.
The Astra HD8 exists outside the capabilities of heavy lift helicopters, so the tram it was. Six of these beasts were hooked to the tram and moved all the way up the mountain, making the engineers and rigging workers behind this feat total and complete badasses. This is indisputable.
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