Chapter Five

Coming Off Mountains

It was a relief to get onto the smooth pavement of Highway 97 before the sun set for the day. Getting into trouble “on a mountain” in the dark wasn’t our idea of fun, therefore the ride down the mountain in the Ford 4X4 Crew-cab truck had been a fast, rough ride as we bounced over the uneven trail strewn with its rock outcrops and potholes.

Harold Olsen was driving, Bob Irvine had the passenger window seat and I was sitting in the middle with my feet straddling the stick shift and the 4X4 shifter. It was better “up-front” when coming off mountains - you didn’t bounce around as much.

We had been out-of-town for the week and wanted to get off the mountain early to drive to Langley in the daylight, but as usual, we stayed to finish the antenna work on the tower thus it was dusk.

Harold was driving a little faster than normal because of our late start from site. He wasn’t the “best of drivers” so I was a little uneasy with his speed; he was the driver we had to keep digging out of snow-banks when we built the Okanagan Mountain site. However, he was the crew chief responsible or ”charged with the care” of this truck so I kept quiet.

It was after-dark when we drove through the “bright lights” of Clinton on-route to Cache Creek. South of town the highway became winding and hilly. Rain showers had dampened the road. Still feeling uneasy, I decided to get in the back seat so I just turned and crawled over the back of the seat. I wasn’t there any longer than five minutes when we started down a long hill with a sweeping right hand turn in it.

I could tell from our speed and the centrifugal force pushing against us that we were not going to make the turn. The truck crossed over the yellow line and Harold tried to bring it back, however we were going too fast. He braked, but the truck began skidding through the oncoming lane. I could see the headlights of an oncoming Tractor-trailer slowing crawling up the hill. As we careened through the lane I wedged myself on the floor between the front and back seats.  We hit the gravel shoulder of the road and all hell broke out. All I can remember was the turmoil of rolling over and over in multiple summersaults while personal items and dirt flew around amidst loud bangs, grunts and yelling. The truck finally came to rest on its roof.

I was able to crawl out through the broken back window to end up lying beside Bob, who also had crawled out. We could hear Harold moaning from inside the cab, but before we had time to go after him the “trucker” came rushing from his tractor-trailer and went to his aid.

            I vaguely remember the B.C. Ambulance and RCMP being there. I remember briefly staggering around trying to collect our tools and equipment that had been in the open bed of the truck, but they were now scattered all along a one-hundred yard stretch of our path through the ditch. I remember the tractor-trailer driver say that we actually “rolled” three times and went “end over end” once – all right in front of his eyes. I remember being at the Ashcroft Hospital but not remembering getting there.

We were very lucky. Harold ended up with three broken ribs, Bob banged up his knee and I had multiple bruises but no broken bones. We were in shock.

The truck was a write-off. The big reinforced bumper with the electric “winch” may have saved us from the engine being crumpled into the cab. I last saw it in the Wrecker’s yard in Cache Creek. Our boss had driven up to Cache Creek, in his big Buick station-wagon, to take us back to Langley. Bob and I went with him; Harold stayed in hospital for a few more days before making his way back. I did not enjoy the drive back through the windy Fraser Canyon….maybe a little post trauma.

 I always drove the work vehicles that I traveled “in” after that accident and remained jumpy for a long time while being a passenger in other people’s cars.

Out in minus forty

The sounds of strenuous exertion, escaping from within a lit-up stage, were getting louder as I shuffled along the darkened road. The sporadic nature of the sounds affirmed the ebb and flow of the epic "event" that was staged within the conical light being projected from a single overhead streetlight. An “ice crystal” haze, that hung over the scene like a fog in still air, muffled the sounds. This illuminated haze defined the boundaries of our venue where we battled for supremacy of the neighbourhood.

It was “street” hockey night in Yellowknife, being played out in front of Jackie Weatherlee’s house on 48th Street, three quarters of a block south of 50th Ave. It could have been anywhere, as we were a group of wild “rambling” adventurers needing only an excuse. The participants came from all parts of the town except old town, where the likes of Steve England lived. He would have had to trudge up the hill with his stick. We also couldn’t claim supremacy over the players from Giant or Con where Billy Smith and Carl Husar lived respectively. Daryl MacLeod came from 46th Street and 50th Ave where he lived with his sister Hilda in the Signal Corp houses. Glenn Weatherby came from 52nd  Street and 49th Ave. where he lived with his older brothers Gary and Gord. Lynn Smith came from over that direction also. Jim Albers would run over from his house on the other side of Con Road, stopping first to slide down the small hill across from Bill Sylvester’s house on Con Road. His brother Doug and sister Joan usually slid there with other neighbourhood enthusiasts. The hill was also known as a good “king of the castle” hill. Len Demelt came running from the Giant Road area, sometimes dragging Mike along. I came shuffling from four houses down the street. “Ringers” and older “participants” often infiltrated our game, so we had to be quick to identify them, and enlist them on our side. We even got Dot Cinnamon to play sometimes. She would bring her sisters and girlfriends who would distract us from our play.

The snowy goal posts were hacked out of the snow-banks that were piled high on either side of the road, and the lumps were placed in the center of the street just within the streetlight’s limits. We had trained the local car drivers to miss the snow-blocks with threats of snowballs being flung at them.

The games would start right after school. Daylight had long since disappeared, thus the need for the streetlight was critical. It would continue until the last two players were called or “whistled” in for supper. We were all dressed in parkas, heavy mitts and felt-lined boots or Mukluks to fend off the -30 to -40 degree temperatures. Most wore toques, but ear-muffs were not uncommon, and of course, we used the hoods attached to our coats whenever the need for extra protection was necessary. No pads were required since our parkas accomplished a somewhat similar function. Besides, our game was more about puck possession and stick handling, than long passes and slap shots. When we got tired, the snow-banks provided an excellent “form-fitting” seat and/or bed where we would flop ourselves for a rest. We refereed ourselves as we all knew the local rules.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Of course all this was the prelude for the weekly Saturday morning hockey games that were contested at the Gerry Murphy Arena. The skating and curling complex sat near the shore of Frame Lake, two blocks from the big wooden “Stanton” Yellowknife Hospital. The skating rink, ringed with it’s rickety wooden bleachers, was housed within an un-insulated, wood- frame shell of a building. The front end of the rink was glassed-in to allow the spectators to sit on the bleachers in heated comfort. The curling rink, with it’s four sheets of ice, had a similar arrangement but their viewing area sported “theatre like” seats, and had a “bar” to serve warmth and comfort to their patrons.

No heat in the playing areas meant the temperature inside was only a few degrees warmer than the temperature outside. That placed both players and spectators in freezer-like conditions, often -30 to –40, but without the wind. Hockey Officials have had hockey games cancelled when the inside temperature reached –40. The concern, of the Officials, was the players over exerting themselves and drawing in great amounts of cold air, thus damaging their lungs.

Practice time was necessary and we all went through the required drills, but it was the “game” time that was the most anticipated. Our coach, Mr. Lovell, had us playing well and we won more than we lost. I fashioned my game after Bobby Hull, the Golden Jet. I was even an “ace” on the team. My buddy, Steve England was playing on the same team as me. He was the one who got me started in organized hockey by giving me an old set of shin pads. I scraped around for the rest of the equipment; Dad came up with the shoulder pads. The Minor Hockey League supplied the uniforms. Sometimes, we even had little scrums or brawls after the games if we thought the game was too mild. Nothing serious and it was mostly wrestling.

Lots of fun, however, skating in those temperatures could and did have consequences. We had to pay particular attention not to lace-up our skates “too tight” and what our feet were “feeling” or “not feeling”. I have witnessed many episodes of my teammates, in excruciating pain, moan and sob as they held their frozen feet in their hands while trying to thaw them. The pain of thawing feet was akin to having red-hot pokers and sharp needles constantly pierce all of your toes, for periods lasting fifteen to thirty minutes. I know because it has happened to me more than once. I have stood in front of the washroom’s sinks with one leg hoisted high and my foot fully submerged in hot water, waiting for the pain to slowly subside, then switching position so my other foot could get the same relief. I may have moaned once or twice during those times.

It was fair to say that I thought of taking up another sport while enduring those painful times. Curling seemed to pop into my head, or should I say “feet”. You got to wear nice warm boots and the sport was co-ed. Jim Eis had acquired “ice time” for the school; he and other teachers were teaching us how to play during our extended Wednesday P.E. periods and on weekends.

The attraction of the sport was reinforced by the sounds of the shouted “hurry-hurry-hurry”, mixed with the rhythmic “wap-wap-wap” of the corn brooms striking the ice, as they reverberated throughout the “frost encased” building shell that housed the four sheets of ice. The sight of the players pushing out of the hacks and “holding” their slides, even after releasing the “rock”, required practice and dedication that would lead to consistency and winning. A team’s success was often judged by the number of admiring spectators that sat watching and analyzing their play. Or maybe it was the sight of so many blatant “behinds”. It was also fun to be on the sheet of ice dodging the chunks of hoar frost as they fell from the roof when the building’s inside temperature started to warm up in the Spring.

Then there was the irony of skiing in Yellowknife. We wore parkas with fur-lined hoods to keep the wind away from our faces while we walked around, heck, we even walked “backwards” into the wind to keep it from our faces. So “why” slap a pair of skis on our feet and speed down a hill to create a 25+ mile per hour wind to blow straight into our faces, at –30 to –40 degree temperatures. We didn’t use the term “wind-chill” factor in those days, but we were smart enough to know that it got colder “quicker” with a wind blowing in your face than just standing around or walking. It was normal, at the bottom of the run, to crouch over trying to thaw out our chin, nose and cheeks with our bare hands as they burned painfully from the instant dose of “frost-bite”, however, that only worked if our hands were not already frozen. Fun? Yes, enjoyable, but it still baffles me “why”. Maybe it was because the others did it too. Or, maybe, just maybe, it was like hockey and we liked playing outside.

Tom Cole, Alfred Abel, Steve E and I used to ski down Old Town hill starting out near Alfred’s house and passing behind Smokey Heal’s garage. Peter Frang and I skied on Yellowknife’s first ski-hill that ran out onto Jackfish Lake from its top near the west side of the gravel pit. Peter and I were cocky enough to ski down the vertical slope of the gravel pit. Short and steep. Damn near killed myself there.

Then came the cross-country skiing. It was a lot easier on my face, which really didn’t bother me as I had a face that only a mother could love. Peter and I often ventured out together. Kam Lake, Frame Lake, Back Bay to Giant, Giant to Yellowknife River bridge. All our trips were “day” trips with food and a small pot to boil water on a fire. Ptarmigans and rabbits had to beware because we were “packing”. The wind was never a huge factor as long as we kept the wind at our backs, but of course, we hoped that any wind would “die down” by the time we had to turn around and head for home. Or, find a road and hitch-hike back…….well, it’s got the word “hike” in it so it must be a sport.

 Then suddenly, as we strode on with our cross-country skis, a Ski-doo roars passed the dog sled team that was passing us ….. hummm, maybe there is “something” to these winter sports at minus forty…….better go check those machines out, they look like fun.

SILHOUETTES IN THE SNOW

Prologue

“ Ice Road Making”

 “Isn’t there anything else for supper”, I mumbled while looking back and forth from my plate to the cook and his stove. It was the fifth straight day of being presented with a steaming hot “TV Dinner” upon sitting down at the supper table.

“You can have the Salisbury Steak instead of what you have. By the way, what is it? Turkey?” the tall lanky “cook” replied preempting my protests. The four other men sitting around the makeshift table snickered at his response. They knew from last year’s experience what the menu looked like. Obviously I didn’t. I had been pampered while working in Mining camps and assumed the food here would be freshly cooked.

In retrospect, I should have known better since I had been into the storeroom, at the Robinson Trucking office in Yellowknife, to pick out my selection of “lunches” and “snacks” from the shelves stacked with non-perishable food and drink. We would take the cookies, crackers, cheeses, Spam, milk and juices with us in our vehicles. The stash of “dry” goods was now in the grader’s cab where it was kept warm. The milk and juice was lashed in a small container on the outside of the grader and was brought into the warmth of the cab when needed.

“How about the Salisbury after this Turkey”, I retorted.

“OK”, said John Denison with a smile knowing that I had come to the realization that this was the best it was going to get.

“The best it was going to get” included a eight foot by twenty foot “hut”. It was mounted on a sled equipped with four skis to glide it across ice and snow while being pulled behind a motorized vehicle. This was “Home Sweet Home” for the next month as we wound our way northward from Fort Byers. We were “opening” a winter “ice road” over frozen lakes and portages to our ultimate destinations of Echo Bay Mines on the east shore of Great Bear Lake, and Terra Mines on the Camsell River, just south of North America’s third largest inland lake. The hut contained three sets of bunk beds strapped to the walls and numerous storage bins. Two elongated bins became our seats when a makeshift table was set up between them. Our source of heat was a brown oil furnace bolted to the floor between our sleeping and living room. Additional storage bins were built on the outside of the hut. These bins held an over abundance of John’s infamous frozen TV Dinners. They didn’t thaw out as the average outside air temperature in January was minus thirty degrees. Our milk and juices were also stored outside. These had to be brought inside and thawed out at least four hours before supper.

Our “cook”, John Denison, was also the main “Push” on the Ice Road to Echo Bay. Dick Robinson, owner of Robinson Trucking, was using him as the expert to get the road built. The road extended from Fort Byers, situated at Ray/Edzo on the MacKenzie Highway west of Yellowknife, to the silver mines on Great Bear Lake. John had pioneered the road with Byers Transport in the years prior to Robinson taking over.

“Coffee”, John asked, poised to pour the hot liquid into my mug.

“Please”, I said knowing that to get the water for the coffee John had to drill a hole through twenty to thirty inches of ice with a hand auger. The easy part of it was he didn’t have to transport the water far as we were sitting on a lake one hundred yards off-shore and all he had to do was step outside and drill.

After supper we would sit and discuss the day’s events. We were still sorting out minor problems with our equipment and trying different things to best utilize what we had to work with. Nick Jones was explaining to John that the Skidder was useless pulling a “drag” in the deep snow. It just sat there “chattering” in the snow as its big tires dug themselves down to ground and jerked the machine forward.

It was the same Skidder that I was following two days earlier on the Rayrock Road portage. I was operating the orange coloured Champion Grader with a big V-plough mounted on front. As I was not ploughing snow off the road I had the plough in the “up” position, thus restricting my close-in view of the road. The ice on a small creek that we were crossing could not support the pounding of our equipment and as a consequence the Skidder, with its big tires, dropped one wheel through the ice creating a deep pothole. “Bang” down went my front left wheel into the pothole. The grader lurched upwards out of the pothole propelled by it’s forward momentum, then all the weight of the front end of the grader and the V-plough came crashing down. All I could do was look on as I saw the left wheel flop over at a weird angle. The downward force of the plough, the grader’s forward speed, and the bitterly cold temperature that causes metal to go brittle, all contributed to the solid frame of the grader’s axle mount being snapped completely through. There I sat completely immobile with no garage for a hundred miles.

After discussing the situation with John, Gord Weatherby and I headed back down the road in John’s red Ford four by four. We turned east at the junction to Strutt Lake where Northern Canada Power Corp had a construction camp. We were hoping to borrow a welding machine. As it turned out, we could borrow the machine but there was no “Welder” available. Gordie had to phone Dick Robinson in Yellowknife to arrange for a Welder to be flown out to a nearby lake the next day.

Everything gelled the next day. We used the Ford to transport the necessary equipment back to the disabled grader. We had the grader propped up with jacks by the time Gordie returned from the lake with our Welder. Dick must have dragged him out of the “Strange Range” a.k.a. the Gold Range Hotel bar because he was still half drunk and without any winter parka or mitts. I don’t know how he did it but he was lying on the snowy road for two hours in minus forty degree temperature welding and chipping away at the broken axle mount. He had ripped a cardboard box apart and was using it to lie on. The rest of us were sitting in the warm cab of the Ford truck watching him. To this day, I can only say, “it must have been the alcohol in his blood that kept him from freezing solid”. I have yet to test the theory that a layer of cardboard could insulate me from a frozen road covered with ice and snow.

The day’s events discussed and resolved, the crew settled into their nightly routine. There was no TV or radio, therefore, we sat around the hut playing cards, reading or just plain talking. Later on in our journey, realizing there was nothing to do, we just kept on working after supper (or had a late supper).

We joked about the first lake we crossed – shallow Marian Lake, where we ploughed our road passed Dave Lorenzen and his crew who were trying to extricate a front-end loader from the ice using his A-frame truck. The loader sank up to the base of its cab as the operator attempted to plough an ice road into the local NCPC camp at Snare River. We suspected that the operator was traveling too fast and the loader, being unstable at higher speeds, began to bounce putting undo pressure on the bad ice of Marian Lake. We also joked about other parts of Marian Lake, where my pounding heart would be in my throat when the grader would suddenly break through “overflow” ice and drop 12 to 18 inches down onto more solid ice underneath. Nick, who was scouting ahead of me in the Bombardier, would help get the build-up of ice and snow off the big V-plough in front of the grader after these little “breakthrough” episodes. We figure that the lake froze over quicker than the creeks and rivers, thus water flowed on top of this ice before itself freezing subsequently forming two layers.

We had lots to talk about when the topic switched to the old Rayrock Mine road. Everyone seemed to have stories about this stretch of portage. It went from the abandoned Uranium mine, past the Strutt Lake turn-off for the Snare River dam, and on down to the north end of Marian Lake. The road was built using crushed waste rock from the mine. It was narrow and had a roadbed raised ten feet above the surrounding muskeg. When we came along, we made a “hardtop” of ice and snow on top of it, therefore, “Equipment” of all sorts would slide off its surface if the operators were not careful, or traveled too fast around its corners. One driver, traveling too fast with a full trailer load, missed a turn and made his own road into the “Tullies”. He was so far in, you had to pack a lunch to go visit him. The funny thing was - he drove taxicab in Yellowknife. He never got me as a passenger after that.

We speculated about the current at the Snare River where the concrete abutments of an old bridge sat in testimony to an earlier time of the road. I would tense up every time I had to cross the river at this spot since our ice road ran parallel to the foundations and I figured that whenever the banks of any river narrowed, the current ran quicker, thus “undermining” the ice.

We conjoured up tales about the “old” Rayrock Mine. We could still see the old bunkhouses, the mill and other buildings perched on the hillside in the distance from where we camped for a night. Numerous company houses were transported from Rayrock after it shut down and used to house people in Yellowknife and elsewhere. “What did they do for entertainment?” I wondered, “Did they glow in the dark?”.

“I’m heading outside to the four by four”, I said at the end of our discussions. I slipped my parka over my shoulders and headed for the privacy of our constantly running equipment. I spent “many a night” lying on the front bench seat of the Ford 4 by 4 truck with my head out the window. My typical evening entertainment was looking skyward at the stars and shimmering northern lights while listening to music fade in and out on the truck’s radio. It was tuned into Edmonton’s CHED radio station, although I could clearly hear an Oklahoma City station on many nights.

Winter ice road, in January, in the sub-Arctic of the North West Territories was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey………so having said that,  “Home Sweet Home” did not have any modern toilet facilities. One had to be sure when you needed to “go”. More specifically, the facilities were open aired, minus forty degrees, twinkling stars for a light, an “optional” snow-bank for a seat and “no” place to hang the roll of toilet paper. No contemplating life, reading a magazine or sitting around out there. Disposal was normally “out of sight, out of mind”, which meant a powdering of snow pushed over the “business” by a couple of sideway kicks of your boot. Needless to say, baths and showers were non-existent. This was all part of the job and one got used to it.

John Denison was having difficulty with his stomach by the time we got to Faber Lake. He was consuming Pepto Bismol by the gallon while chewing constantly on Rolaids and Tums. He could not stand it any longer and finally headed back to Yellowknife in the red Ford four by four to get medical help and recuperate. Gord took over as the main “Push”. I’m glad he went back for medical attention but it “pissed me off” that he took my nightly entertainment

We motored on. The long Rayrock Mine road portage was behind us, we wound our way over Tumi, Rabbit, Hislop Lakes with their flat portages.

Squirrel Lake portage was different; it was gaining a reputation of putting many so called “hot shot” drivers in their place. The mile long portage, traversing a hill, was narrow and somewhat steep. Numerous tractor-trailers would “spin out” on the snow and ice of the hill after the operators, realizing they didn’t have enough RPM/speed to reach the top, shifted down into a lower gear. They would lose traction and spin out. They would then “jack-knife” or back the trailer into the ditch when trying to back down the hill, consequently blocking the road for all other trucks in the convoy. Nothing moved until the narrow road was cleared.

On one trip I had to unhook my loaded trailer and take my tractor up the hill to hook onto a jack-knifed tractor-trailer and pull it around onto the road again. Another time, we had to off-load a D-8 Cat, that we were transporting on a lowboy trailer to Echo Bay Mine, and “walk” it up the hill to pull another truck from the ditch and on up to the top.

To fully understand ice road portages, they depended on “lots” of snow being compacted onto their surface. The snow, when frozen, acted like concrete, but more importantly, it insulated the muskeg from the sun when the weather got warmer. Therefore, more snow and/or ice on the portage, the longer they lasted in the Spring for more trips.

 “Why didn’t you use chains?” you ask. Robinson Trucking didn’t have any on their trucks. They would “chew up” the road and shorten its useful life. Again the sun would melt off the cap quicker when dark ground was showing through.

Mazenod, Sarah and Faber Lakes were nice sized lakes to plough. I could quickly make three passes on them before moving up the road. I would have all the blades down. The V-plough doing the widening, the belly blade skimming the snow close to the ice and the wing blade shearing the top of the newly created bank and throwing the snow away from the edge. I would try to give the road a profile that looked like a saucer. The idea was to not to give the drifting snow any nook or cranny to “fill in”. The Skidder, Beaver and FUD would be working away on the portages packing down the snow with the steel “drags” they pulled behind them.

We camped out on Rae Lakes just a mile from the Dene village. “We have to pack down the air-strip here. NWT Health want the strip available for Medi-Vac flights”, Gord said.

So off we went, rumbling our way through the village’s “main” street, past the wide eyed little children who came running when they heard us. We used four vehicles, each pulling a “drag”, to complete the job in one morning. Nick Jones in the Skidder, Dave Thompson in the box shaped “Beaver”, Ben Hunter in the FUD and myself in the Grader. We were closely supervised by a small group of on-lookers sitting on a snow bank at the edge of the strip.

Having decided to stay camped there for another night, I took some time to go scouting with an old Dene hunter. We scooted up and down the road in the Bombardier looking for caribou. I was hoping to spot some since the hunter was going to give me a “hind quarter”. I had the perfect freezer. We saw a few tracks crossing the road that afternoon but no “live ones”.

However I did see the front end of a snow shovel and learned a lesson about bombardiers. They act the same way as Ski-Doo in deep snow; they ”can” and “do” get stuck. It took me slightly less than an hour to dig myself out after trying to get through a small gully separating a couple of sloughs. The snow was deep. I was glad it was sunny and only minus thirty.

We worked our way northward, over Taka, Sequin, Hardisty, Malfait Lakes where we began to intersect hard packed snow trails created by “thousands” of Caribou migrating to their feeding grounds north-east of Great Slave Lake. They were everywhere. The Dene from Rae Lakes and the farther away Fort Franklin (Deline), on the west shore of Great Bear Lake, depended on this herd for their yearly meat supply. It would not be long before we would be seeing heaps and heaps of skinned and quartered caribou carcasses, stacked beside the ice road, waiting to be picked up by passing trucks and transported to Rae Lakes.

Across Beaver Lodge Lake where you could still see the remains of a Bristol Freighter aircraft operated by Pacific Western Airlines. The left-hand undercarriage broke through the ice on landing and the aircraft fell onto the left wing bending its spars and damaging the fuselage. The plane was later hauled onto shore to retrieve the engines and strip out the instruments; then abandoned as it had been written off the books by the company.

Onto Stairs Bay and then Hottah Lake. Hottah is a forty mile long lake that widens out to twenty miles in places. It was tedious when I had to make long “back and forth” passes with the grader. We parked “Home” on the north end of the lake after I made my first pass. I turned around after lunch and ploughed back down to the south end in the diminishing daylight. I knew that it was going to be a “long” day with lots of ploughing in the dark. There was three to four hours of daylight between sunrise and sunset at this “arctic circle” latitude in January, however the twilight periods extended the light a little longer.

Hottah, being a larger lake, could develop cracks and small pressure ridges along its length. I had to be on the “look-out” for these anomalies as I made my widening passes down and back the lake. On the run up the lake, the bombardier was ahead of me scouting out the route and avoiding “bad” ice; I followed along ploughing the initial road while pulling an 800 gallon fuel tanker. Cracks might not be seen at this time but on subsequent runs, when I was operating alone, the cracks “could” show up when the ice was exposed from my ploughing. I ran with the grader door open and the heater on “high” during the times the wind blew the snow away from the door. I guess I believed that I could jump out and “save” myself if the grader went through the ice. “Better to slowly freeze on top of the ice than freeze instantly underneath” I thought.

The return trip took me over six hours to complete, mostly in the dark and cold. The lights on the grader shone on the road ahead while illuminating the fine mist of snow crystals blowing over the top of the big V-plough. I could see flying snow disappear into the darkness behind me as it was shaved from the bank with the wing blade. Passing Bell Island I could see the lights of “home” twinkling in the dark a mere thirty miles away. It seemed like hours before I rolled to a stop beside the other equipment scattered around the sleeping quarters called home.

I had to refuel the grader before retiring. While doing so, I noticed that the copper antenna of the HF Radio was strung out. I looked at the sky and saw that the Northern Lights were absent so I mumbled, “Should be a good night for radio contact with Robinson’s base in Yellowknife”. We had been without radio contact for three days because of the “lights”; they caused major interference with the radio signals.

“McAvoy is flying in tomorrow with Mercredi and Soldat”, said Gord, “You and I have been here for three weeks so we can get “out for a break” but, I need you to come back here three days from now. Hopefully the crew will get to Echo Bay by then and I will fly you in there”.

Gord had obviously got through on the radio. Jim McAvoy and his Cessna 185 had been chartered to bring us the personnel, equipment “parts” and supplies we had requested earlier. It was going to be nice to get back to Yellowknife and get a hot bath and a shave having been without for a long time.

I think Gord was happy to get out and be flying again. “Overseeing” the road from the air, as the tractor-trailers began their trips hauling supplies into the mines, was refreshing after twenty plus days crammed in a shack.

The plane landed on Fishtrap Lake where we were working on the portage. We had put our personal stuff in the bombardier first thing in the morning, so all we had to do was to collect everyone involved and go to the plane. Everything transferred and instructions given, McAvoy took off with Gord in the front seat beside him and me in the back. The bombardier was leaving the scene as we took off. Gord noticed something on the ground and leaned over and said something to Jim. The next five minutes were akin to the wildest roller coaster ride I have ever been on. Jim literally dive-bombed the bombardier four times trying to get the occupants attention. We would pull up at the end of the dive into a steep climb then nose over while we were almost weightless into another dive which ended with our stomachs in our feet. Attention gained, Jim opened his side window and made motions to the ground then watched as the bombardier turned around and went back to pick up the package.

I had an enjoyable rest in Yellowknife as the rest of the crew continued to plough and pack the ice road. They got past Fishtrap Lake onto Yen Lake before they managed to burn “home” to the ground. Not being there, I leave it to others to explain what happened. Nothing was left of the structure except for the charred deck of the sled with its four big skis. I lost a sleeping bag and pair of cover-alls while the others lost the same plus their personal kit. I have yet to talk to anyone who was sorry to see that shack burn. It belonged to another era when cat-trains were pulled across Great Slave Lake to Yellowknife from Hay River.

Being without a place to sleep and having only the food in the “snack boxes” carried in their cabs, the crew split into two groups. One headed for Echo Bay while the other branched off and made the push over to Terra Mines.

Nick Jones, Dave Thompson and two others with the Skidder, Beaver, D-6 and low-boy ploughed their way from Yen Lake over a series of small sloughs and lakes eastward to Terra Mines. They took the time to pack down the snow on the numerous new portages with their “drags” as they moved along.

Johnny, operating the grader, followed Louie in the bombardier as they headed down the newly made Yen Lake portage onto Conjour Bay. They made the long run snaking around the islands on Conjour Bay and then through the narrows at the north end of Richardson Island. After poking out onto Great Bear Lake, they made their final long run northward paralleling the shores of McTavish Arm into Labine Bay where Port Radium and Echo Bay Mines were located.

They reached the end of an ice road that covered a distance of more than 320 miles through Canada’s sub-arctic land of stubby trees, muskeg and Precambrian rock. It had taken us close to a month to complete the road in temperatures that consistently reached minus forty degrees. We had equipment breakdowns that delayed us; we had to improvise to make machines workable; we had to pull and tug equipment here and there; we left equipment behind; we overcame all problems presented to us and got the job done.

I flew back to the ice road at Echo Bay Mines with Gord the next day…………..  

PICTURES (Clockwise from top left)

1) Home sweet home after fire

2) Home sweet home on sled - Dave Thompson (L), John Denison (R) and Louie MacKenzie 

3) Brian McLeod

4) Bombardier, Grader and Brian McLeod

5) Dick Robinson, D-8 Cat at Squirrel Hill

Your Flight Has Been Delayed

( Epilogue of under TERRA firma )

Terra Mines was behind me, both figuratively and literally. I was on board a single engine DeHaviland “Otter” flying south from the mining camp. The flight from the silver producing mine, located on the Camsell River just south of Great Bear Lake, to our destination of Yellowknife, N.W.T. was scheduled for approximately three hours. Our flight path would take us over the sub-Arctic taiga with it’s thousands of lakes and sloughs.

The past month had been “awkward” around Terra. The company was having financial difficulties that led to shortages of equipment, material and supplies; essential production equipment was not being replaced or repaired. As not to belabour the company’s problems, it is suffice to say that my decision to “leave” my job was reinforced when the Sheriff from Yellowknife arrived via floatplane and slapped a bailiff’s “Seizure” notice on the big scoop-tram that was being used to haul ore from “underground” to the “crusher” housed on a small rise above the mill.

We had taken off amidst a snow and rain squall on a grey, dull day in mid October; the thermometer was hovering right at the freezing point. The plane lumbered into the air after an unusually long take-off. I watched the pilot from my seat in the passenger compartment. He was busy adjusting the flaps and trim while occasionally re-setting the throttle.

I settled into my seat as we reached cruising altitude. I was hoping to get a little “shut-eye” before we landed. Touch down at the Wardair float-base in Old Town was in less than three hours now. Besides, a little snooze was appropriate as I anticipated an evening of carousing and debauchery since Terra was a “dry-camp” and had no women employed there. I had endured it there for more than four and a half months. The pilot was still fiddling with the controls as I shut my eyes.

I don’t know how long I had been dozing when I became aware of a change in the engine’s RPM. I opened my eyes and looked out the window. The ground, only a thousand feet below us, had recently received a light dusting of snow. It coated the rocks and trees thus giving the “higher” ground a frigid look. I turned my attention past the forward bulkhead opening into the cockpit and saw the pilot looking intently at his controls then out his windows searching for something. I glanced around giving a questioning look to the other four passengers and they just shrugged their shoulders in return. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 11:30 am. We were an hour into our flight, which by my calculations would have put us 120 to 150 miles south of Great Bear Lake.

Although the pilot was circumventing most of the bad weather, the plane was still flying through squalls of freezing rain; this was causing the plane to act “heavy” on the controls. I saw concern on his face as he increased the engine’s RPM to climb the aircraft while fiddling with the radio and speaking into the microphone. He seemed to be repeating himself; maybe trying to reach “base” radio in Yellowknife. We flew on.

The pilot put down the map he had been scrutinizing and with a deliberate movement banked the “Otter” and came around on a reciprocal course.

“I have to put the plane down”, the pilot shouted as he leaned through the doorway and spoke to the passengers, “there is a lake four miles back that looks OK for landing”.

We “all” had our faces up against the side windows by this time searching for the “OK” lake. We realized which one when the pilot circled a long narrow lake with what looked like a small beach at the south end. The lake was large enough and seemed “deep” as it was not yet frozen over; unlike numerous smaller ones that had a sheen of “inch thick” ice covering. We were reassured by the sight of small waves on it’s surface which acted like a wind gauge for the pilot.

After flying past the beach at the end of the lake the pilot banked the plane onto the “base leg”. He initiated his landing procedure by reducing the plane’s speed and applying flap. He then judged the angle to the end of the lake and banked the plane onto it’s “final approach” to the lake. He reduced his power and applied full flaps thus allowing the plane to glide down over the short stubby trees and muskeg, past the beach and finally over the water where he flared the aircraft into a perfect landing.

Swinging the plane around the pilot taxied in towards the shore. He was unsure of the water’s depth and what may lurk just below the surface so he cut the engine when we were still fifty yards from shore. He unbuckled himself from his seat and hurried past us to the rear of the plane where he dug out a paddle from a stowage compartment, opened the rear cargo door and stepped out onto the pontoon. I followed close behind to see if I could help in any way.

The wind was slowly pushing us towards the beach aiding the pilot as he used the paddle to steer us clear of any underwater obstacles. It was a relief to see that the beach was primarily small pebbles with sandy spots. The floats ground onto the beach fifteen feet short of the shoreline. It was “shoes off” time for anyone who wanted to go ashore.

The pilot climbed back into the plane and asked for our attention, even though he already had it for the last twenty minutes.

He explained that he had to get the plane on the “ground” quickly because we had been picking up “ice” and the plane was not handling properly; in essence it was forcing us down. He hoped that it was warmer down at ground level and that the ice would melt. He continued by saying he had a gallon of menthol hydrate on board that he would wipe over the wings and tail sections, but first he had to scrape and chip the ice off the floats. They were covered with a layer of ice that was weighing us down.

One of the passenger asked if we were going to spend the night here.

He answered that was a possibility and we needed to talk about. There was a “storm front” between us and Yellowknife and he wanted to make sure we are light enough to fly through the weather if we decided to go…..or, we could sit here and wait it out.

Another passenger pointed out that we were not equipped to overnight it here. The pilot said that he did have a small emergency kit with two sleeping bags, tarpaulin and a few C-rations.

It began to snow lightly at this time. We saw that it was just a squall that would pass quickly but it focused us on our little “predicament” of sitting on the shore of a small remote lake hundreds of miles from any settlement. The consensus of the passengers was to get the ice off the plane and get flying. The pilot, who’s name we learned was Frank, cautioned us that the storm front was still between us and home. However he was eager to get going also, since, even though he tried to contact his base while we were in the air, he had been unsuccessful in notifying his company of our unscheduled landing. If we didn’t show up in Yellowknife on or near our appointed time people would be getting concerned.

So, Frank’s plan was to sit “on the beach” for a few hours waiting for the storm to pass then make a dash for it. None of us wanted to be the focus of a “search and rescue” and Frank wanted to get close enough and high enough to make radio contact with his company to let them know what the situation was.

It was getting too cold in the plane so we decided to get a fire going on shore. I was wearing running shoes so I took them off, rolled up my pants and stepped through the cold, shallow water to the shore. The snow squall had past. The snow that made it to the ground melted immediately however it was sticking higher up in the hills.

We got the fire going the old fashioned “northern” way; paper from an old paperback novel, a pint of AV gas drained from the plane and a Zippo lighter. There was lots of dead wood lying around the area so we dragged enough to the fire where we looked around for the axe to cut it up. We spotted the axe in the hands of the pilot who was standing on one of the pontoons using the “blunt” side of the axe head to chip away at the layer of ice coating the pontoons. We all gawked at him and prayed he didn’t slip and fall, or worse still, punch a hole in the floats.

           The fire was large enough for six people to sit around comfortably. It was warm and near “smokeless” as we didn’t have to keep the black-flies and mosquitoes away. It was too cold for them this time of year. We sat there staying warm and keeping one eye on the sky; there was a light breeze blowing in misty drizzle for brief spells.

           The conversation, for obvious reasons, inevitably got around to the stories of missing aircraft and crashes. We speculated on Chuck McAvoy’s fate after disappearing on June 9, 1964 during a flight from Bristol Lake, near the Arctic Ocean, in his Fairchild 82. Did he and his passengers, Doug Thorpe and A. Kune, get blown up by the dynamite they were reputably carrying onboard? They were prospecting terrain south of Bathurst Inlet. Did he disappear to collect the insurance? Even though he hadn’t been found for these past several years the general consensus around the fire was that “they will find him someday”.

            We speculated on Martin Hartwell’s odyssey. He was found alive with two broken legs after surviving 31 days in temperatures reaching –37 degrees Celsius. A pregnant Inuk woman and the attending government nurse, named Judy Hill, were killed instantly when the plane Hartwell was piloting crashed near Lake Hotah enroute from Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife on Nov. 8,1972. An Inuk boy suffering from appendicitis, David Kootook, survived the crash and helped Hartwell survive but finally succumbed to his illness the day before rescue. We sat around the fire and quietly discussed the “what if” scenarios associated with the rumours of cannibalism. What if…..it was you?

            We could tell it was getting a little warmer as we were getting short rain squalls now, however the sky to the south did not look promising; it was still “socked” in. Two guys rigged the framework for a simple lean-to from our ample supply of dead trees. They draped the tarp over it and voila’, a wind-break and partial shelter to dry our damp clothes. 

            We stoked the fire and changed our conversation to the air search for Henry Busse and two others, Gunther Geortz and Vic Hudon, from Giant Mines. Busse, who had a photography business in Yellowknife, chartered Ken Stockhall’s Cessna 185 for a charter into the Nahanni Valley but didn’t return. That search lasted for two months but was unsuccessful. The plane was finally discovered in June 1963 in a valley near Cli Lake, over eight months later. Did they fly into a box canyon in bad weather and hit the steep walls while trying to turn? I can still see the time-lapse photograph of the midnight sun(s) over Great Bear Lake that Henry took. It showed 12 sun(s) dipping close to the horizon thus showing its trajectory in a 12 hour period.

            The talk turned to Bob Gauchie. A frost-bitten Gauchie was found on April 1,1967 standing beside his aircraft. He lost his way in a storm, ran out of gas and was forced to land his Norseman, way off course, on the ice of a lake east of Great Bear Lake. His flight-plan had him going from Cambridge Bay to Yellowknife. He survived for 58 days, in arctic winter temperatures of “up to” minus 48 degrees, by eating his “cargo” of Arctic Char. The official search had been called off by the Military however many local pilots kept an “eye” out for him on their travels. Luckily, Ron Sheardowne and Glen Stevens had been flying a regular route to a base camp 45 miles south-west of Coppermine for 5 weeks. They may have been a little off-course themselves one day when they spotted Gauchie and his plane.  Gauchie lost 70 pounds from his ordeal.

            Others were not found. The wreckage of the plane or bodies of Frank Avery and Bob Markle were never found. They were on a local flight around Yellowknife and did not return. It is speculated that the plane went through the ice and is sitting wrecked on the bottom of some nameless lake. Mike DeMelt was never found. It is believed that he also crashed through the ice.

            Some of us around the fire related how we were involved in these searches. The Air Force would fly their “Buffaloes” and “Hercs” into Yellowknife and “call” for volunteers to act as “spotters”. We would scrutinize the ground as the planes flew the pre-planned search grid. Local “bush” airways volunteered their time and effort for one of their own. I always dreamed of finding them.

            Many other pilots have gone “missing” in the North over the years. They are part of the legend of the “bush" pilot created by their exploits while helping to develop northern Canada. Most of us around the fire were too young to talk about those exploits but we had all read and dreamed about them.

            It was mid afternoon and our stomachs were telling us that we needed to be fed. We scoured the supplies to found the C-rations. Frank had also requested we go through our baggage and take out anything that we could “do without”. I took out my miner’s boots, oilers, hard-hat and an assortment of work clothes. All told, we came up with a small stack of items that were going to become a permanent fixture on the landscape. We estimated the stack weighed in at two hundred pounds. Better than leaving a warm body behind. Besides, Frank said the company would compensate us for our loss.

            The weather seemed to be improving to the south even though we continued to see rain squalls in the distance. Frank was of the opinion that the “ceiling” was at 1500 feet and “lifting” and the sky was starting to look better, however,  “it’s only 2:30 so let’s wait for another one or two hours before we try again”. If we waited as late as 5:00 pm we could still get to Yellowknife by 7:00.

            We sat around the fire again. This time we talked about everything under the northern sun. Small talk. I reminisced about the time, as a youngster, going with Chuck McAvoy as he flew an amphibian Grumman “Goose” from his base in Old Town over to the YK airport where he was to drain water from the plane’s belly. The short flight was memorable since I sat in the co-pilot’s seat as the lake water streamed over the windshield obliterating our view until the plane gained enough speed to get on “step”. The other memorable part was that we were pointed toward shore and in my mind the “distance to the shore” wasn’t that far away. The others related their experiences but you could feel the apprehension in the group as we wanted to “get going” but knowing it was better to wait awhile longer.

             It was 4:30 and it hadn’t rained for over an hour. We finally disassembled the lean-to and buried our trash. We loaded our bags and ourselves onto the plane. I and another passenger volunteered to push the plane off the beach and keep us facing the wind. The water was freezing; kind of like swimming in Yellowknife Bay in front of Giant Mines before all the ice melted from the bay.

            The floats were just clear of the bottom as the pilot cranked over the big Pratt & Whitney engine with a whir of the battery. The radial engine caught with a loud deep throated roar and a puff of black smoke from its exhaust pipes. We gave a final push and hopped on the pontoon. My partner headed straight in through the door while I used the paddle to keep us off the bottom. I looked at the cockpit to see Frank lean out the door and give me the “nod” to get aboard. I had just shut the rear cargo door when I heard the engine noise increase knowing that we were taxiing away from the beach. I regained my original seat in time for Frank to hurry past me to double check the cargo door. He was back in the cockpit in less than twenty seconds.

            We were airborne in less than a minute after a short warm-up. Frank banked the Otter into a climbing turn to the south and leveled off just under the base of the menacing clouds. The rain squalls could still be seen in the distance, but more importantly, the base of the solid mass of grey clouds was getting pretty close to the top of some of the higher hills in our flight path. We crossed our fingers hoping the clouds did not close ”in”, and the pilot could find a route under the clouds. I could see him talking on the plane’s radio.

            He finally poked his head and yelled over the sound of the engine that he had been in contact with his Base. The weather was not that good but there was still room to fly. The cloud ceiling at Yellowknife airport was 1100 feet above ground level, not the best for VFR flying. He went on to say the ceiling was ”lifting” in the Gordon Lake area; meaning that it was clearing up to the northeast and if we had to, we could swing eastward before heading south to Yellowknife. At least we had choices as long as we had enough fuel.

            The cargo area of the plane once again became nice and warm. We were able to discard our wet and damp outer clothes and relax in our seats. I was too hyped up to take a snooze so I watched the ground below us to see if I could spot any landmarks that I could get my bearings.

             I knew that we had to pass near the old Rayrock Mine with it’s derelict buildings and mine roads. One road and power-line wound their way over to the “powerhouse” on the Snare River. This powerhouse also supplied Yellowknife with most of it’s power so the “right of way” shouldn’t be too hard to spot from the air. If our track was farther east I might be able to see the old North Inca Gold Mine on Indin Lake.

I could see a solid mass of clouds directly ahead of us however it seemed better to the east as Frank had said. He was slowly changing his bearing to a spot where the base of the clouds was the highest from the ground. We flew on.

            I finally spotted something man-made. It took me a few moments to realize where we were. It was the Bluefish Dam and Powerhouse on the north end of Prosperous Lake. This was where Con Mines got their power. We had flown north of Yellowknife to circumvent the bad weather. I felt the plane bank southward from the Dam and knew we would be flying over the lake itself, then Yellowknife River, then Yellowknife Bay past the distinctive head-frame of Giant Yellowknife Gold Mines and finally into Back Bay where the Floatplane base of Wardair was located.

            We landed at 6:30 pm, 5 hours behind schedule but in time for the beers.

              Nothing is for sure in the North. Although insignificant, this little incident made me aware that things could have been quite different. What if the ice seized the plane’s controls, what if we punctured a pontoon when we landed, what if we had to overnight, what if………

North Warning

(Once in a lifetime 1987 –1994)

I have a haunting photograph of the radar site called PIN-M. The picture shows a huge radar radome and various communications antenna arrays clustered around a white and gray clad building. They are being highlighted against a dark winter’s night sky by strategically located floodlights. The building houses the radar rooms, equipment rooms, offices, sleeping and living quarters for the military and civilian personnel assigned to operate and maintain the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar site. It is situated at Cape Parry just north of the 70^th parallel of latitude in the North West Territories of Canada.

The long narrow building, called a building “train”, was constructed with rooms along either side of a long straight corridor. Fire doors close off numerous sequential sections giving the ambiance of a train as a person walks the full length of the building. A second “train” parallels the first. The two trains are connected at the middle by a 150 foot enclosed walkway/utility corridor thus giving the entire complex an “H” configuration. The complex can house upwards of two hundred people.

PIN-M is one of many radar sites stretching across Canada’s northern Arctic coastline; acting as the Continent’s ears and eyes to search and detect for any airborne threat. The DEW line system was built in the mid 1950’s to detect unwanted missiles and aircraft, and transmit this “early warning” information to the Canadian and United States military command of NORAD located in underground bunker complexes at North Bay, Ontario and then onwards to Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

It was this environment that I found myself in the late spring of 1987. I had flown in to supervise a construction crew sub-contracted to install new communication equipment at site. We were part of a major program to modernize the DEW line.

The program called “North Warning System Modernization Program” started in 1986 and continued through 1994. New sites were built and others were modernized with new radar and communication equipment. When all was said and done, twelve long-range radar (LRR) sites, thirty-six new short-range radar (SRR) sites, three Logistics Support Sites (LSS), One Regional Communications Centre (RCC) and the Regional Operations Control Centre (ROCC) were either modernized or built.

I worked for Canac/Microtel, a consortium created by Canadian National Telecommunications and B.C. Telephone to modernize the “long haul communication equipment” that sends information via satellite from each radar site to the ROCC at North Bay.

This was a military project and being of a “sensitive” nature all employees had to be screened and given “Secret” security clearance. Some of us required “Cryptography” and “NATO” security clearance.

As the “Civil Installation Manager”, I was responsible for the installation of all “outside plant” telecommunication structures and equipment; such as 22-foot diameter satellite dishes, 30-foot radomes to house the dishes, equipment shelters, armoured fibre-optic cabling, security systems, weather stations. I had four “installation” crews to get the sites ready for the four “technical equipment” crews that followed in our footsteps. Each six-man crew would “build” a site in a month and a half and complete three sites per construction season. We would push the weather envelope by planning to “start” at the middle of May and work through to the end of September.

I was assigned the additional duties and title of “Transportation Manager” after the incumbent Manager got sick and was forced to retire. Thus I wore two hats. Before his departure, he and his team had the “bulk” material and equipment for each SRR site barged to the nearest beach access along the Arctic coast via Northern Transportation Co. The crates were stacked on the beach and left over the northern winter in order to be available for next season’s work.

In short, I had to get all material, equipment and personnel to the right site at the right time and to ensure that the civil installation was completed on time to bring in the technical installation crews.

Most of my winter-time work was consumed with planning and organizing for the next season; plus preparing other “special” projects that the military would want C/M to perform the following season. I also worked on preparing Requests for Proposals (RFP) for major telecommunications projects in Malaysia and another in Indonesia. Both proposals took me to these countries to scope out the work but that’s another story.

My summer time was spent traveling around the Arctic. I would work with various air charter companies to move the crates of material from the beach to the site using a Civil Installation Crew as “ground” crew. We would then hop over to the next site and move that material into site. The late spring weather could be inclement. The western Arctic was relatively easy compared to the eastern Arctic where we had to dig the crates out of the snow on more than one site on Baffin Island when the summer season was slow to come. Once the material was delivered and the Installation Crew was on site, I would get the other crews mobilized.

The work was going on in 5 geographical zones across the north so I would jump from zone to zone all summer long dealing with material, equipment, and personnel issues.

 I also had to get the crates of electronic equipment from our “assembly and test” facility in Coquitlam, B.C. to each site. We used truck, C130 Hercules aircraft, Boeing's 737’s, Twin Otters, Bell 212 and Bell 206L helicopters to get the equipment to site. If we got the equipment from the plant early enough in the season I could ship each site’s six large crates to Edmonton via truck, along with the other scheduled site’s crates. They would be loaded on board a chartered NWT Air’s Hercules C-130 aircraft and flown to the closest major airport of the recipient sites.

Many of the new SRR sites did not have airstrips so helicopters were the only method of access. I would use ski equipped  “Twin Otter” aircraft to transport the crates to the sea ice below the sites and then use helicopters to sling them up to site one at a time.

Moving material and equipment into site and then moving Installation and Technical crews from site to site in the different “zones” made for busy summer seasons. I put in many hours flying along the Arctic and Labrador coasts. I observed the natural splendor of the land and marveled at its ability to sustain an abundance of wildlife. From the Alaska border to southern Labrador. The job was demanding at times, however it had its rewards for someone who loves the outdoors.

It was truly an “once in a lifetime” project filled with travel, hardship, drama, danger, adventure, fun comradeship and that was just during my free time. My work time was filled with all of the above and more as it was a 24-hour a day job.

Kangok Fjord

It was mid May and the weather was perfect for flying. Eight Canac/Microtel employees were sitting around the departure lounge at the Iqualuit Airport waiting for transportation. A Bell 212 helicopter was being fuelled up and the pilot would come to get four of us, and our baggage, when that was completed. The other four were waiting for the pilot of Air Baffin’s Cessna 337 to taxi his push/pull machine onto the apron. I had arranged for both aircraft to transport Ivan Foss, Alan Pratt, Jack Grant and myself, along with the remainder of the Civil Installation crew, north to the Kangok Fjord situated on Baffin Island’s mid eastern coast.

The radar site called FOX-CA was located overlooking the end of the fjord. There was a small “post-stamp” dirt runway roughed out along the coast four miles from the site. Our immediate job was to sling the crated communication material from the beach to the site and then leave the six-man crew there to install the Satellite dishes, radomes and ancillary equipment. The Installation window was for the crew was six weeks, however, they could normally beat that schedule and would clamour to get out for a “break” before they headed into their next scheduled site. The nearest big city was Iqualuit.

Both machines arrived on schedule, so we got loaded and were off to our first site of the season. The helicopter left 20 minutes before the 337. We were still in the air nearing the site when we saw the 337 fly past us 500 feet away and then continued on to circle the small airstrip before making a bumpy landing. The 337 was just taking off as we landed near our crated material at the side of the airstrip. The aircraft would be back with another load of baggage and equipment before the day was over.

We walked over to inspect the crates of material while the helicopter pilot and his Engineer inspected the cache of “Jet-B” fuel brought in on last year’s material sea-lift. Satisfied with the condition of the 45-gallon drums, they refueled the chopper.

Our inspection of the crates revealed that most of them were still half buried in the snowdrifts that filled every nook and cranny around the airstrip, even though the surface of the airstrip was bare. The spring “melt” in the eastern Arctic was late this year especially on Baffin Island. I was sure we would find the same conditions at two other sites we were scheduled to go to after completing the move at this site.

We decided that two men would go up top to the site “to position and un-sling” the crates as they arrived. The rest of us stayed on the beach to dig enough snow from the crates to enable us to get our slings and/or cargo net under the crates.

We started off with the easy pickings. The return trip by the helicopter took 15 minutes so we had to work fast to prepare sling loads. The chopper had made five trips before we managed to get the slings under the first bulky eight-foot “cubed” crate. Kris Powell stood on the top of the crate as the chopper hovered inches above his head. He slipped the sling’s metal ring into the chopper’s cargo hook. The chopper rose slowly to take up the slack on the slack slings. Kris jumped to the ground after making sure the slings were not tangled and scrambled away from the hurricane type winds that the chopper was blowing around. The engine noise changed pitch as the pilot applied more torque for the lift. The crate weighed 2900 lbs; which was nearing the “lifting” limit for the helicopter at sea level. Everything stood still as the chopper strained against gravity; then, inch-by-inch, the crate began to rise from the snowy ground until it cleared all obstacles. The pilot started moving the chopper forward giving it more “lift” and we could see the crate being lifted higher as the chopper gained speed.

“Seven more large crates to go”, I said rhetorically to Ivan. We had been working steadily for the last hour and a half and had shed most of our winter gear. Some of the large crates had four feet of snow around them with their bottom timbers frozen to the ground. We had to break the crates free of the ice before we could put the lifting slings under them. 

The second crate rose slowly off the ground but just hovered there; a foot off the ground, for what seemed an eternity before the pilot lowered it back to the ground. He hovered there but did not disconnect the sling.

“If he could get the crate clear of the snowdrifts and other crates he could get the forward momentum that would help “lift”, I yelled to Ivan.

I saw the machine take up the slack on the slings again. The crate rose to the same height and stayed there. I motioned to Ivan and two others to rush the motionless crate under the hovering chopper. We pried, shook, pushed and lifted the crate. It began to rise again so we continued lifting until it cleared the snow-bank. We then literally “walked” and “skipped” the crate 75 feet across the snow-covered ground until the chopper had enough forward speed to pluck the crate from us and complete its lift. With speed the pilot had no problem getting the crate up to the site.

On the return, the pilot landed over by the fuel drums. I went over to speak to him as they began off-loading all spare equipment and tools from the chopper.

“Every pound will help”, he said as he instructed his Engineer not to refuel yet as he had enough for at least another two round trips. They even unloaded the Engineer’s personal toolbox.

By this time the guys were eating a late lunch and watching the ice out in the Fjord. Black spots appeared slowly and then disappeared.

 “Seals” said the pilot, “there are hundred of breathing holes out there”. We all relaxed in the sun for a half hour. A few of us were wondering about Polar Bears. We didn’t have a rifle so we had to be more vigilant. We were also hoping that the helicopter noise would keep them away.

The third crate could not be lifted. No matter what we did, it would not budge. The chopper just hovered over the crate at full torque while four of us struggled underneath it to free the crate from the snow-bank. After what seemed minutes the pilot reduced torque and jettisoned the slings. He landed while we re-grouped and prepared another load of smaller crates. We continued with other loads that afternoon until it was time to depart for our accommodations. The Installation crew had accommodations up at the site where a “construction camp” had been set up; complete with rigid sided tents for sleeping. I had made arrangements for the helicopter crew, Ivan and myself to stay at the nearest DEW-Line site called FOX-3. It was located at Dewar Lakes, approximately 60 miles to the west. We arrived there by 6:00 PM in time for a hot meal that the cook had kept heated for us.

FOX-3 was a single building “train” site with the large Radar radome and equipment room situated near the center of the train. Twenty plus personnel normally worked and lived on-site although there was accommodation for more people. The site office was next to the equipment room. The kitchen, dining room and main lounge separated the work area from the sleeping quarters. Each of us got our own room with bed, desk, chair and closet. The lounge had satellite TV with numerous movies on VHS tapes. A small pool table took up the remainder of the space. There was also TV in a smaller adjourning room that made it quieter for serious TV watchers. Two washrooms complete with showers and toilet facilities were located in the sleeping quarters section of the train.

After supper I found the pilot, Jim X pouring over the technical manuals for the Bell 212 helicopter. I went and sat beside him. He was perplexed why we couldn’t lift the third crate. We both knew that the chopper had a lifting capacity of over 3000 lbs; and the shipping weight of each crate was clearly stenciled to the side of the crate. The crate we were having trouble with weighed 2850 lbs.

“C-GAHD had no problems lifting all the crates into our western Arctic sites last year”, I said, remembering back to when we moved our material into BAR-BA3 at Storm Hills and the other sites at Horton River, Croker River and then Harding River.

 “But then again…. thinking about it…. that pilot was really good”, I continued.

This got a scowl from Jim before he realized that I was just joshing him. He was an excellent and conscientious pilot who had flown the helicopter up from Toronto. He had spent a lot of time flying Air Ambulance around southern Ontario before being assigned to spend the summer in the eastern Arctic working on our contract with Canadian Helicopters Corp (CHC).

We discussed next day’s work for a while before we challenged each other to a few games of “Pool”

We were back at it next morning after picking up the crew from the FOX-CA site. The pilot wanted to try lifting the third crate again so we rigged it up the same as before, but again the chopper just hovered in the sky straining on the dead weight as we pried and pushed underneath in the swirling wind and snow. No go.

We were disappointed but we still had to get the material to the site therefore I agreed to the plan of stripping the crate of it’s top and sides. That would reduce the weight by maybe four hundred pounds however it would increase the risk of having the radome triangular panels damaged during transportation. There was no corner store where we could get replacement panels.

We pried the top off and dragged it out of the way. The sides were more difficult because we had only dug enough snow away to get the slings under the base. It was after digging and prying a side off that we saw that there was ice in the bottom of the crate. After removing all four sides and dragging them away we saw four inches of ice covering the bottom of the crate. Even though we had pried the base up at the edges of the crate to get the slings underneath the center of the crate was still frozen to the ground.

 “No wonder the helicopter couldn’t move the crate”, I muttered. The additional weight of the ice alone brought the crates weight up past 3400 lbs and the center was still frozen to the ground.

Mystery solved. I went over to Jim our pilot and explained the situation. He was very relieved to hear it; he thought it was “something that he was doing wrong” or “something the chopper was incapable of doing” that was causing our problems. As a consequence, I had to buy him a couple of beers when we got back to Iqualuit as I had bet him, the night before, that it was his old “junker” of a helicopter that couldn’t lift anything. Beers in Iqualuit were expensive and scarce unless you could get into the Canadian Legion.

The good news was, “we knew what the problem was”; the bad news was, “we had to do a lot more physical work”. We had to dig the remaining five large crates out of the snow-bank, uncrate the top and sides, clear the ice and snow from the base and finally break the base from the frozen ground before we positioned the slings under the base.  The helicopter still strained to get the crates off the ground but it went well. We slung the five crates to the radar site before we stopped work for the day.

After we dropped the crew off at the upper site we headed back to FOX-3. While enroute, the pilot got a weather update. A frontal system was developing to the south; snow and low visibility was expected within the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours. We had ten loads remaining to be transported from the beach to site before we could clean up and leave the area. Time was becoming a factor.

We got all our material to site on the third day. We disposed of the crating material by burning it in a big bonfire. The fire burned for over three hours and created a twenty-foot diameter hole, six feet deep, in the snow-bank right down to the tundra. There was nothing left besides ashes and rusty nails.

We loaded the cargo nets, sling gear and baggage onto the chopper and flew to the radar site to drop the crew off. We looked around one last time and said good-bye. It was still winter up top and they were in for another blow. They would have to just hunker down and wait it out.

We left FOX-CA heading south, on our 300+ mile trip to Iqualuit, around 2:00 pm. Within an hour we knew we were not going to make it. Our only choice was to turn around and return to our accommodations at FOX-3.

We attempted to get to Iqualuit for the next three days. We had to turn back, due to zero visibility, the first two days.

 It was on one of our attempts we were flying a mile from the end of the airstrip at FOX-3 when we saw something sticking out of the ice in a small lake. Closer investigation showed that it was an old grader with just its operator’s cab exposed above water. We found out later, from the Site Manager, that back in 1957 the American air force (USAF) wanted to get rid of the grader by allowing it to sink into the lake when the snow melted. Problem was "nobody" checked the depth of the lake to see if it was deep enough. Oops.

Finally on the third day we succeeded. We spent the night in Iqualuit where we met up with another C/M Installation crew. We hopped on the chopper next day and headed north-east to Cape Mercy where Cumberland Sound's north coast meets the Davis Strait. No surprise, our crated material was also stuck in the snow at the beach below the radar site at BAF-2.    

Storm Hills

“Can you see anything from back there?” the pilot queried. The question came through the headset that I had hooked into the helicopter’s intercom system. I was sitting in the “machine gunner’s” seat of a Canadian Helicopter’s Bell 212 looking out sideways as we flew along the Arctic coast on a rainy and foggy day. Our visibility was down to less than two hundred yards and we were flying low through swirling fog.

The question sounded a little odd so I glanced briefly in his direction before I replied. I saw his head turned to his right as he stared intently out through his “open” sliding side window. The large plexi-glass windshield in front of him had gone completely opaque. We had flown directly into a freezing rain-squall and a thick sheet of ice had formed very quickly on the front and side windows of the pilot’s cockpit. The window defrosters were useless; we were now “flying blind” except for the small window opening through which the pilot could see the ground.

“I saw a guyed tower two hundred yards to our left about a quarter mile back”, I replied quickly realizing the urgency.

We had been flying from the radar site at Keats Point to Croker River when the weather turned foul on us.  We figured we were within five miles of the DEW-Line’s radar site PIN-1 at Clinton Point so we were heading for their airstrip. Now, we were just searching for a place to land. I felt the chopper bank to the left as the pilot swung the machine in that direction.

“I got it”, the pilot, said as he spotted the blinking red beacon on top of the communications tower through the fog.

 “Thanks” came through the headset two minutes later. He had found the end of the gravel airstrip. I watched as he flew sideways slowly down the length of the strip before choosing a landing site near a solitary small maintenance hut at the end.

I looked around the main cargo area where the Canac/Microtel (C/M) Installation crew sat uncomfortably on the removable webbed cloth seats. Without headsets, they were oblivious to the “goings-on” around them. The six of them stirred and looked around now realizing we were about to land. A couple of them had been asleep.

 We were ”hop-scotching” from site to site, moving material off the beach and up to the short-range radar (SRR) sites strategically located on prominent high ground along the coast of the Beaufort Sea. We would “work and fly” all day then “overnight” at the nearest manned radar site. We would “move on” the next day, proceeding on our easterly trek. We had completed the sites at Storm Hills (BAR-BA3), Horton River (BAR-E) and Keats Point (PIN-1BD) and were heading to complete the sites at Croker River (PIN-1BG) and Harding River (PIN-2A). This trip covered the coast from Inuvik in the MacKenzie River delta to Coppermine (now Kugluktuk) in the Coppermine River area and was scheduled for ten days.

We rigged the loads for lifting, then stood under the chopper to connect the slings and cargo nets. We maneuvered the crates as they were being lowered, then de-rigged the slings while the helicopter hovered over-head like a humming-bird.

This far reaching hop-scotch trip was giving us ample opportunities to get close looks at the topography of the land and even closer looks of its wild animals and birds. The caribou herds grazing on the low growing vegetation and lichens of the tundra; the wolves lurking around the perimeter of the herds waiting for their chance to pick out the sick or old; the arctic foxes scampering around looking for lemmings; the swans paired up on the thousands of small ponds and sloughs; the flocks of migratory birds settling in for a season of raising fledglings; and the large sleek snow owls pouncing on the lemmings and artic hares.                            

We saw the “Pingos at Tuk”. I didn’t count them but it is said that there are around 1400+ of them in the Tuktoyaktuk area including the “Ibyuk Pingo” that rises 160+ feet in the air. These conical shaped phenomenons grow when water under pressure in the ground freezes and forces muskeg and ice upward.

We stopped at a deserted building sitting on a bluff overlooking the Amudsen Gulf in the Beaufort Sea. It was made of old crates, boxes and driftwood. Judging from its appearance, it had been there for many years. It had three crude rooms so our guess was that it was some type of old trading post or sealing post. Weird as it sat all by itself on a windswept bluff with nothing around for hundreds of miles; a lonely existence for its long departed occupants (maybe a “deranged” Hudson Bay Company employee fresh from England, Scotland or Ireland). I thought I saw the name “Nick Jones” carved into the wood wall of one of the rooms.

We flew over the “Smoking Hills” located on the east coast of Cape Bathurst, approximately 170 miles (250 km) east of the MacKenzie River delta. Exposed Bituminous shale deposits have ignited spontaneously at several spots in the 300-foot sea-cliffs along a twenty-mile (30km) stretch of coastline. They have been burning for years. Smoke plumes from the burns can be seen for miles and the smell from sulfur dioxide, sulfuric acid mists fumigate the surrounding tundra as well as the helicopter as we flew over.

We flew along the coast looking for whale bones. James Morrison, our pilot, was a pack-rat. He would salvage anything of value with his helicopter. At night, over coffee in the various dining rooms, he would tell stories of his adventures acquiring things from aircraft engines out of wrecked planes to whale vertebrate and bones from the shore. He would stick them in the cargo area or sling them underneath the machine and haul them back to Inuvik. It helped that he was the company’s base Manager as well as Chief Pilot.

“The Site Manager is not sending anyone down to the strip to meet us and is refusing us permission to go to the site,” James said. He had just got off the helicopter’s radio after speaking to the “communications” operator for the site.

 “He wanted us to leave the area immediately but when I explained our predicament he relented and said we could use the maintenance shed for shelter until the weather changed,” James continued.

We were mildly irate to say the least. C/M crews had been working and staying at dozens of DEW Line sites all across the Arctic for three years and this was the first time we were refused assistance. I phoned the Site Manager from the telephone in the Maintenance Shed. He still refused us access to the site even after I explained  “who we were” and that we all had “Secret” military clearance. I then phoned my military point of contact (POC) in Ottawa on the DEW line phone system. It was Sunday so there was little he could do from his end except phone the Site Manager himself. The Site Manager still refused. Technically he was completely within his rights to refuse; normally, “access” was gained by approved written requests coordinated days earlier. What didn’t help was the fact that the Manager was a “Felec” (Federal Electric) employee.  Felec had the contract to operate and maintain the sites across the north and they were not too happy with anyone “modernizing” the DEW line and take away their jobs.

So, there we sat, in a shed a-kin to a cold storage room, but it was out of the drizzle and wind. The weather eventually cleared six hours later. A very cold, damp and miserable group piled into the chopper and flew off into the “wild blue yonder” after “giving the bird” to the site’s Manager as we flew past. We arrived at our “approved” accommodations at Cape Young (PIN-2) close to midnight, over six hours late for supper.

I heard later that the site Manager was seriously reprimanded after word of this incident worked its way through the senior ranks of the military that were working on the modernization project. That made me feel a little warmer.

Willy’s Bandits

“Now this is nice”, I said settling back into the leather seats in the passenger cabin of Adlair’s King Air 100. I took a sip of the “Scotch” that we had poured ourselves from the well-stocked mini-bar in the cabin. We had just taken off from Cambridge Bay in our chartered aircraft and had just reached cruising attitude on-route to Gjoa Haven. The twin-engine machine was cruising along at 250 miles per hour. John Knapp and I were on a “site-ready” inspection trip visiting the sites we were going to install this summer.

We had flown into Cambridge Bay, from Vancouver, the day before and had spent our free afternoon being tourists. During our walk around town we bumped into Bill Lyle, an old acquaintance who stayed at Akaitcho Hall while he attended Sir John Franklin High School in Yellowknife. We got to "talking" and soon he was acting as our tour guide showing us the “fish plant” and other points of interest around town.

“Are there any Musk-ox around this area”, I asked.

“Five or more miles north of here”, Bill replied. “Here, take the truck and go see them”, he continued, throwing me the keys and pointing to the Co-op’s van. His driving directions were simple since there was only one dirt road heading northward out of the village. The road soon petered out into a one-lane track winding its way across the tundra of Victoria Island.

We spotted some Caribou up ahead but they moved off at a slow walk, still feeding on the lichen, when they heard us coming. I had seen Caribou many times before. I have seen them take refuge from the swarms of black-flies by standing underneath the radome platforms at the Tuk radar site, thus forever extinguishing the notion that Man and his structures were detrimental to the Caribou and their free ranging travels. However, I had not seen a Musk-ox so we journeyed on. We finally spotted two but couldn’t get close to them. They would spook and move away when we tried to approach them.

We continued on until we crested a small rise. We saw three Musk-ox feeding down by the bank of a small river. Luckily, the track of road went down behind another small rise that was even closer to them. Hidden by the second rise, we left the van, walked to the top and saw that they were still there, oblivious to our presence. We crouched and crawled down the gentle slope until we were 100-150 feet from them.

There we sat, taking pictures and watching them.  Neither of us knew how dangerous they were but I thought they became defensive, rather than aggressive, when encountered by perceived danger. We also thought they probably had poor eyesight because we were sitting out in the open on the barren-lands with nothing between them and us. After 15 minutes I think they either smelled us or saw us because they slowly grouped together and waded in the small river. They stood there for a couple of minutes before deciding to ford the river and trot off into the distance.

To pass the time en-route to Gjoa Haven, John and I chatted about work or just looked out the windows as the ground and Arctic Ocean slipped past far below. I spotted the unique shaped “Hat Island” in the distance so I told him of my experience there two months previously……….

…………We were flying around the area in Adlair’s Twin “Otter” doing an Operation & Maintenance (O&M) inspection trip prior to “handing over” completed sites to DND. We had enough space on the aircraft to pick up and move a C/M technical Equipment crew out of the radar site called CAM-B on Hat Island. The site was perched on a small plateau where a very short, rough airstrip was constructed.

Our pilot, Willy Laserich, had moved the crew and their equipment into site three weeks ago. He was concerned that we would be too heavy to take off safely from the short, rough runway with all of us onboard; so, he decided to land at an abandoned airstrip at the old decommissioned DEW “I” site miles away. He left the “four of us” there while he went to pick up the crew from the top site.

 It was 10:30 “pm”. Willy said he would be back with the crew in an “hour” to pick us up. The abandoned strip was quite long so Willy was confident he could take off easily in the STOL aircraft with all of us on-board.

He also obviously thought we would be OK there for the short time he would be at the top site.

There was nothing of interest at the old airstrip. There wasn’t any buildings or shelters where we could relax. One old fuel tank could be seen in the distance sitting on the barren landscape. The cloudy evening sky made the sky look like dusk even though we were in the “land of the midnight sun”.

After two hours the wind started to pick up; when they say “barren-lands” they mean “land devoid of any shelter”. There wasn’t even a boulder big enough to break the wind. We had to sit huddled together on the surface of the airstrip in the cold arctic night. We had our parkas but the rest of our gear was on the aircraft. We didn’t take any food or water either since it was only going to be “one” hour. We couldn’t even make a fire for absence of trees and bushes.

At 1:30 am, after three hours of waiting, we were sure something had happened to the plane and we were now stranded on a deserted island in the middle of Queen Maud Gulf where ice floes were still floating. Not quite the picture I had envisioned in my dreams when I was marooned on a deserted island with sandy beaches, coconut trees and beautiful native women running around bare-breasted. Reality was “huddling together with three other hairy men, with bad breath, on a cold night in the middle of an arctic night with no food or water”.

It was at 2:30 am when I promised myself that I would never let an aircraft or pilot out of my sight again. “Stick close to the plane”.

At 3:00 we built an Inukshuk as a memorial to ourselves, and as a landmark to cache messages for our next-of-kin .……. actually, we made it to stay warm.

At 3:30 we were trying to figure out “who” was on the menu.

At 3:45 am I heard a different buzz over the tormenting buzz of the ever-present swarm of mosquitoes and black-flies. I looked toward the sound and saw a small dot low in the sky turn into an aircraft.

Thus ended my night of camping out in my parka on a small island in the Arctic Ocean at the seventieth parallel.

The reason for the wait was related to the new equipment the Technical crew installed. It had failed a “test” so the Technician had to troubleshoot the problem and then re-test the equipment. “Just one of those things”.

Pictures: (clock-wise from top) More pictures in "Photo Albums"

1) Brian McLeod and Walter Foss positioning antenna crates on platform at Storm Hills

2) Brian McLeod and Walter Foss working under helicopter at Storm Hills

3) Ivan Foss digging out snowbound crates at Kangok Fjord

4) Positioning and Landing Radome crates beside Radar platform at Storm Hills 

5) NWS site positions along Canada'a arctic coast - couresty of lswilson.ca/dewline 

6) Brian McLeod, Ivan Foss and crew with Bell 212 at airstrip at Kangok Fjord

7) Hooking slings to a hovering Bell 212's belly hook 

Land of the Polar Bear

The muffled roar coming through my headset changed to the more familiar “whomp-whomp-whomp” of a helicopter as the pilot, Joe, adjusted the pitch of the rotor blades with the collective-stick that he controlled in his left hand. This allowed the Bell 206L Long Ranger helicopter to lose height and thus begin our descent to the helipad at BAF-4A. He adjusted our forward direction with small movements of his right hand on the cyclic-stick that extended up between his legs in front of him, and the two pedals under his boot clad feet. We circled the site to get the wind direction and speed indications from the windsock attached to a pole near the helipad; then landed scattering dust, dirt and loose material in all directions. We got out of the cockpit as the rotor blade whirled slowly to a stop and walked to the small crowd of people who had assembled to watch our arrival.

We had just spent two hours flying southeast from Iqaluit, formerly Frobisher Bay, along the northern shore of Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island down to Loks Land where this North Warning System radar site was located. We had come to Loks Land to overnight at the camp. We were flying from site to site repositioning 45 gallon barrels of “jet-B” fuel from our fuel caches at BAF-3 on Brevoort Island and BAF-4A to other strategic spots where we could refuel the helicopters. The choppers were to ferry Canac/Microtel’s men and material to their next worksite at LAB-1 on the Labrador coast via the site at BAF-5 on Resolution Island.

I was there because I worked for Canac/Microtel (C/M). The company had been awarded the contract to modernize the satellite communications systems on the Distant Early Warning system. The DEW-Line provided early radar detection of incoming enemy planes and missiles from the Soviet Union. There are 51 sites stretched across the Canadian north from the Alaska border to eastern Baffin Island and then on down the coast of Labrador to Goose Bay. The system is now called the North Warning System (NWS). I wore two hats; first as the Civil Installation Manager responsible for all of C/M’s Outside Plant construction and installation, and second as the Transportation Manager responsible for the movement of all telecommunication crews, equipment and material into the sites that make up the NWS. I was also there because I enjoyed flying around visiting the crews and seeing the country. The job was a paid holiday to me.

The work camp at the site consisted of prefabricated “Atco” trailers joined together as one unit. It housed a kitchen, small dining room, washrooms, lounge and bedrooms for up to twenty people. Once the construction and installation was complete the Short Range Radar (SRR) site would be commissioned by the Canadian Military and become operational. At that point, there was no longer a requirement for people on site so the work camp would be de-mobilized and shipped out of the North via barge.

            Tonight there were eighteen of us on-site. The excitement or ”buzz” of the day was still being bantered about at the supper table. An incident had happened last night. A big male polar bear had come prowling around the camp in the middle of the night. After sniffing around he reared up on his hind feet and bashed in the Camp Supervisor’s bedroom window. He tried to crawl up through the three foot by three foot opening but the commotion and yelling of the sleepy, frantic Supervisor must have spooked him. Scared the sh*t out of the sleeping Supervisor and got the camp into an up-roar. The bear scurried away into the night amidst the noise and turmoil and before anyone could get the 30-30 rifle out of the storage closet. It made for a good story and the crew could laugh about it now and remember it for later. 

           The camp settled into its normal routine after supper with the voting on which VHS movie was to be played on the TV in the lounge. Others, not interested in the movie ended up in the kitchen playing bridge or reading in their room. I watched the movie and then retired to my allocated bunk in one of the bedrooms. Upper bunk again and in REM sleep by midnight.

           The sound of a loud “crash” and the shaking of the whole trailer woke me at 1 AM. The sound and racket persisted for at least a minute as my sleepy head cleared and I realized that I was also listening to the violent growling of a polar bear. He had bashed through the 18 inch by 18-inch window that was set into the upper part of the main door; and was trying to get into our building through the front door. I didn’t know if he was in the complex’s hallway creating havoc. A flimsy wood door to the bedroom, partially open, separated me from the hallway and the rest of the complex.

            “Stay put,” I said to myself, “if he’s inside he will probably sniff out the grease and food in the kitchen.” Minutes passed with no further noise so I cracked open the door and looked into the hall. I saw two other heads poking out of the other bedrooms. We talked and conclude that the bear was not in the building. I ventured over to the door that had sustained the damage and saw that it was still upright but was barely hanging on to the lower hinges. The upper hinges were ripped from the door jam and cold night air was streaming in. One more push and the bear would have been in and prowling around.

            We searched the complex and the immediate area around the camp before we declared “all clear”. Everyone had assembled in the lounge area. Emotions were running high. The camp Supervisor was standing in front of the assembled group. He had the loaded 30-30 by his side. He had just sent his camp attendant up on the roof with a powerful spotlight to try to locate the bear. It was interesting to observe the reactions of the people. My unscientific poll indicated that a third of the group wanted the bear “killed” outright, a third wanted him “scared off” and a third wanted him to be “left alone”. Their rational was that we had invaded his domain and we had to respect his company.

            It was well after 2:30 before most people were back in bed. The camp attendant was still on the roof with the spotlight. He was to remain up there for the rest of the night.

            I woke at the regular time to get in for breakfast. The talk at the dining table involved heated discussions on what had to be done with the polar bear. No consensus had been reached. Joe and I finished our breakfast and prepared for our departure over to BAF-5. One of the workers came in to tell us that he had found a good set of bear tracks. We went outside to the location and looked down at the largest paw print that I have ever seen. “Hope to hell he doesn’t come back again,” the worker said, “it will be pretty hard to out run him if catches us in the open.” The standard joke these days was to tell people that if they went for a walk to “take someone with you that was slower at running than you were” in case you came across a bear.

           It was our intention to sling 9 barrels of fuel over to Resolution Island this morning. It would take three trips with the barrels slung in a cargo net under the helicopter.

           I was sitting in the left hand front seat of the helicopter waiting for the machine to reach operating temperature. I put on my headset and pushed my transmit button, “when we get airborne let’s do a couple of circles around the camp to see if we can pick up any more tracks”. Joe Powers, my pilot, looked at me and smiled. I think he was going to do it anyway but it was nice that I made it “official”.

           Official because I was responsible for the movement of the helicopters. I had 4 under contract to move men and equipment; two Bell 206L long Rangers and two Bell 212 machines. Each machine was guaranteed 90 hours of chargeable flying hours per month. The 206 could lift 1500 pounds and was charged out by Canadian Helicopters (CHC) for $1000 per hour and the 212’s could lift 3000 pounds and was charged out at $2500 per hour. One of the 212’s was presently hopping from site to site, having started at the Alaska border, and was working it’s way eastward to Baffin Island. The other 212 and the 206L that I was aboard were flying around the sites on Baffin Island and the northern Labrador coast. Another 206 was flying the Labrador coast with Ivan Foss, my senior Project Manager/Site Supervisor, responsible for the coordinating the site builds in the LAB sector. We joked one time that we were almost as big as the Canadian Air Force since we had 4 helicopters, 2 Twin Otters, 1 Navaho, 1 Boeing 737 and a C130 Hercules under contract one summer.

            We found the bear two miles from camp. He didn’t seem to be moving away from the camp that was positioned on top of the largest hill in the area. We easily picked up his white fur clad body lumbering slowly across a rocky outcrop of dark gray rocks. We could see him look in our direction as we got closer but he wasn’t spooked enough to run. We hovered 150 feet from him but that didn’t intimidate him.

            “ I don’t think he wants to leave the area”, I said over the intercom.

            “We can shoo him down the hill if you want,” Joe responded.

            “You’re flying,” I said insinuating that he was in control.

           Joe moved the chopper in closer with small delicate movements to the sensitive controls. A helicopter pilot had once told me that landing a helicopter was like landing on a beach ball. The downdraught from the blades got more intense as you approached the ground and rebounded back up to the chopper causing instability. Joe Powers had lots of load slinging experience, and more importantly, I trusted him with my life. He was a likeable Newfie from St Anthony on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland. He was one of our two regular pilots who had flown the helicopter up to Baffin Island for the summer. We closed to within twenty feet of the bear. “Look at his feet, they are massive,” he said.

           “I need to get a picture of this,” I said scrambling through my pack for my camera. We were now almost on top of him when he reared up and swatted at the helicopter.  His paws slashed within a couple of feet from the landing gear of the machine. A little too close - we backed off. The bear was now agitated and frustrated. He looked around, back up at us, then roared and bolted away over the rough rocky terrain. Joe got him heading in the downhill direction and then backed off enough to gain height and distance. The bear had slowed to a fast loping stride and it looked like he would continue in that direction. We watched for a couple of minutes until he finally slowed to a fast walk. We were happy that he did not over heat himself during this run. Joe punched the coordinates of the bear into the Global Positioning System (GPS) mounted on the chopper’s control panel and then we flew off to work.

            We made one sling load trip to Resolution Island before we returned to check on the bear. The return trip had taken two hours. We went and checked the coordinates of the bear. We found him again and got behind him. He heard us coming and looked back but did not stop his slow steady pace down the hill.

            “I don’t think he will be back, we really spooked him,” Joe ventured.

            “I’m glad he is still alive”, I said nodding my agreement. We punched in his coordinates and monitored his progress for the rest of the day as we made two more return trips to the BAF-5 radar site.

PHOTOS:

1) Brian McLeod "On the Beach" at Loks Land (BAF-4A)

2) Polar Bear heading over hill near BAF-4A

3) Polar Bear on the move near BAF-4A

4) Polar Bear looking up at helicopter (note the size of his feet)

Land of the Polar Bear (Continued) 

The radar site, BAF-5, on Resolution Island could be seen from twenty miles out to sea as it was perched on the highest point of land on the island. The three glistening white radomes, that housed the radar and satellite dishes, acted like a beacon in the sunlight. We could also see the old radar site as we got closer. The radar radome was gone now but it’s concrete supporting structure still dominated the highest point. The two massive Troposcatter billboard antennae stood silently facing the Greenland coast while the parabolic Troposcatter dishes were shooting back to the deserted communications site overlooking Iqualuit.

.           This site was part of the old Pinetree Line (www.pinetreeline.org/backgrnd) that tracked and controlled all air traffic for the military of Canada and the U.S.A. This site housed hundreds of military personnel from both nations. The communication system linked sites from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to Greenland

The building trains, housing the men, were sitting parallel to each other. All buildings were joined by covered walkways. It was an eerie sight to see the site from the helicopter. Deserted for years, the buildings were showing serious deterioration from the long winters. And the new NWS site sat in the middle of it all.

It was in this environment that Darrel Kryvenchuk, a C/M Installation Supervisor, was working. He had just finished the “bit-error” test on the new installed communication equipment in the equipment room and was walking back to the camp from the Technical building nestled among the old buildings at BAF-5.  He was rolling a cigarette as he turned a corner and came face to face with a polar bear.

Resolution Island was at the junction of the Davis Strait and Hudson Strait and it was late September. There was no ice on the sea. All the hungry bears were eager for the Labrador Sea to freeze over so they could hunt seal on the ice but in the mean time they traveled their island stomping grounds looking for food and that included the old radar site.

Darrel had no choice but to run for it. The safety of the camp was 100 yards and he had a ten-yard “head start” on the bear. The epic run finished with Darrel as the winner by three feet. The bear swatted at him as he slammed the door in the bear’s face.

Sitting there panting Darrel realized that he had thrown his tobacco pouch at the bear to try to distract his attention…maybe the tactic worked but he didn’t have a smoke. After a half hour of vigilant observation Darrel decide it was safe enough to reclaim his precious tobacco pouch so he ventured outside to retrieve it. Wrong move. He barely made it back again with the bear hot on his tail…but he had the makings of a new cigarette.

Darrel had told me his bear story earlier in the summer as we were moving him and his team into a site. Joe and I were flying across the wide mouth of Frobisher Bay with Darrel and two others. The Labrador Sea had just broken up with lots of flat ice floes drifting in the current.

 “Polar Bear,” Darrel yelled through the intercom. Sure enough, fifty miles from land was a bear swimming from floe to floe, heading southward. He was at total easy in the water paddling to the next floe where he would scramble up onto it, shake himself free of water, trot over to the far edge and jump in again. Quite a spectacle to watch from a helicopter hovering just a hundred feet over the Davis Strait.

Davis Strait in the summer was iceberg alley. The current was such that the calf-ing icebergs from the Greenland glaciers were swept from the Greenland coast over towards Baffin Island then south down the Davis Strait and the Labrador coast past St. John’s Newfoundland and on into the Atlantic Ocean.  

*****

On another trip, Ivan Foss and I had chartered Aero Arctic’s 206L helicopter for a visit to BAF-4A (Loks Land) and BAF-2 (Cape Mercy) in early summer. We departed Iqualuit on a clear day but encountered fog two thirds of the way to Loks Land. The pilot, ex-military, had to go on instruments to get us to the site. He stayed with the chopper and had a “nap” as we inspected the site.

We departed Loks Land, still in the fog, and headed for the BAF-2 radar site at Cape Mercy. It was situated on the north shore of Cumberland Sound on Baffin Island’s east coast.

We were flying low using the blue of the water between the break-up of the ice as our only horizon. The altimeter read one hundred feet and we were flying blind with only the GPS to guide us through the fog.

“Keep your eyes open will you”, said the pilot rhetorically. I was a little bewildered about that statement until fifteen minutes later I caught a movement in my peripheral vision. A big, mother of an iceberg went whizzing past the left hand side of the chopper. All I could say was “Did you see that” and Ivan answered from the passenger position in the rear “Yup, it was f**king big”. I looked over at the altimeter and we were cruising at one hundred forty knots over the ice at a height of one hundred feet. I don’t think we missed it by one hundred yards. Survival on the iceberg floating down Davis Straight and into the Labrador Sea did not appeal to me but in my heart I knew that the pilot was concentrating on not slamming face first into the side of a big berg. 

It was unbelievable to watch the GPS at work. It plunked us within a half mile of the site at Cape Mercy. We could see the cliffs along the coast and we made our ascent to the high point of land where the site was situated. We took an inventory of our material lying on the beach below the 1000-foot cliffs where the site was located.

The ride back to Iqaluit was unbelievable. The fog had blown off Cumberland Sound and onto the land between Cumberland Sound and Frobisher Bay, directly in our path back to Iqaluit. The problem was that we were flying VFR (Visual Flight Rules) and had to visually see the ground and we had only 2 hours of light left to fly. If we didn’t get back to Iqaluit by sunset we would have to land on the tundra and wait until morning to continue. Air Traffic Control (ATC) would not let the helicopter fly at night. We were in a race with the night and the pilot acted accordingly.

The best way to describe the flight was to say “it was like being strapped onto a cruise missile skimming over the land while hugging it’s contours”. We would crawl up the hillsides sideways through the fog then creep downward until we got underneath the fog then the pilot would push the nose of the chopper down and we would roar across the open clearing until we reached the next fog bank where the pilot would then pull up the nose to slow the chopper down. We would then swing sideways again to crawl up the hill with the helicopter’s skids barely 15 feet from the ground and then another short run at 140 knots into the next fog bank to again creep sideways up a hill. Most of our two hours time was spent within fifteen to twenty feet of the ground.  The pilot was in contact with ATC every few minutes stating our position as “one hundred miles back”, “fifty miles back”, “forty miles back”, etc. At “twenty miles back” we didn’t think we were going to make it, at “ten miles back” we knew we were not and at “five miles back” we came out of the fog to see the lights of Iqaluit in the dark but we continued.

 I believe ATC chose to ignore our arrival well after sunset. They could plainly see us since we had the helicopter’s landing lights on for the past hour, as we needed to see the ground in the dark.

Although I was a passenger sitting in the co-pilot seat, I went through the same “two plus” hour adrenalin high as the pilot. I was wound up and had a hard time getting to sleep that night.  

*****

BAF-2, Cape Mercy, was one of the sites that my brother Keith and Brett, his sixteen-year-old son, visited on their epic expedition around Baffin Island. I had two helicopters flying around the site and a fixed wing “Beech” waiting at Pangnirtung. We were moving the equipment installation team and their equipment out of site and down to BAF-4A. They wandered around the site and watched the 212 Bell helicopter load up and struggle off with a full load of equipment in the cargo area and slung under the chopper.  I had sent a helicopter load of C/M personnel to Pang to wait for the rest of us to continue their trip to Iqaluit on the fixed wing Piper Chieftain aircraft of Air Baffin. When the 206L piloted by Joe Powers returned two and one half hours later Keith, Brett, Loyal Branson and I hopped aboard for our trip to Pang.  

  Pangnirtung, famous for whaling in the late 1800 and early 1900’s was my favourite northern village. It is situated halfway up the Pangnirtung Fiord near the head of Cumberland Sound. It is the southern gateway to the spectacular Auyuittuq National Park that features Mt. Asgard and the Penny Ice Cap.

We approached Pang and the Park from the south and could see Mt. Asgard on the horizon. I told Joe that we wanted to see it close up so we veered 15 degrees to the east and went on a sightseeing tour. The razor back mountains falling a thousand to two thousand feet straight down to the glaciers are awesome to fly over in a helicopter as it was literally skimmed the peaks with its landing gear. We were flying into the setting sun so we circled Mt. Asgard, at an altitude of 6600 feet, to be presented with a picture postcard view of the mountain with its massive cliff plunging down to the ice glacier far below. The mountain had two flat tops with a saddle between them so I asked Joe if he would fly between them.

His answer was to dig out a movie camera from his personal bag lying by his feet and handed it to me. It was thrilling and scary to fly through the saddle with cliffs on either side at a speed of 30 knots then have the nose of the chopper pushed down to swoop down at 140 knots into the Pangnirtung Pass thousands of feet below….. just to be confronted with the awesome view of Mt.Thor jutting over the Pass.  We flew past its looming cliff while twisting and turning along the floor of the Pass following the river. We were low enough to see the faces of startled hikers and wave at them as we flew by them. They would be hiking on through to Broughton Island, a five-day hike through the Pang Pass.

            The sun was close to setting when we reached the airport at Pang and the waiting Piper Chieftain aircraft. A day I will always remember in a most rugged and awesome part of northern Canada where few people have been and few will ever get to.  Mt. Asgard and its sheer cliff to the glacier below was used in the James Bond movie “The Spy Who Loved Me”.  

*****

To say that we were just flying around was half true. I had to get a helicopter to Pangnirtung from Iqaluit so I took Keith and Brett with me in Canadian Helicopter’s 206L piloted by Joe Powers. We had lots of time so we stopped at Kekerten Island in Cumberland Sound just south of Pangnirtung Fiord.

Bowhead whaling was big business in the Cumberland Sound area for British, European and American whaling ships during the early and mid 1800’s but then died completely in the early 1900’s. Up to 30 whaling ships would visit the sound each Fall during the 1850’s and 1860’s. Scottish whaler William Penny built a station house on Kerkerten Island in 1852 for the Arctic Aberdeen Company where they would boil the blubber for the oil. The building(s) are gone now but the government has turned the site into a historical site complete with wooden walkways and information plaques. You can still see old foundations, rusted out cauldrons and other rusted equipment scattered around the site.

 I stopped at an old elongated box made of driftwood and planks and lifted a two-foot plank from the top and looked in. I called Brett over and we took all the planks off the top to expose a complete skeleton of a human being. Obviously someone from a whaling ship who died on the island. A very interesting historical site preserving the whaling history that went on in Cumberland Sound.  

*****

The fog stopped us from continuing down Frobisher Bay to Resolution Island so I decided to go sightseeing over to Lake Harbour (now Kimmirut). I was flying with pilot Joe Powers, Keith and Brett in Canadian Helicopter’s Bell 206L that I had on a monthly charter. I had to use up 90 hours of flying time on the choppers I had chartered, or pay for those hours anyway. Joe swung the chopper around in a right hand turn and off we went.

We flew through a deep fiord with sheer cliffs plunging to the water’s edge on route to our destination. As we neared Hudson’s Strait on Baffin Island’s southwest coast we could see the outline of a large ship at the mouth of Lake Harbour. As we closed in we saw it was a Canadian Coast Guard ship in its red colour with the coast guard white strip. We circled the ship a couple of times at low height and then continued down the harbour to the Hamlet. It was one of the earlier Hudson’s Bay Company and RCMP posts on southern Baffin Island. It had a small airstrip with hills on two sides and village on the other two. We landed in the school’s playground and went for a cup of coffee and a little tour.

We returned through what is now Katannilik Territorial Park Reserve. The main feature of the park is the Soper River valley where the environment allows a stand of the tallest willows on Baffin Island and wildlife such as caribou. We flew low snaking around the bends of the river. At times the river’s original banks were above us. We startled a group of caribou and took pictures of them in full flight as we flew along at the same level as the bank of the river. We flew along the Itijjagiaq Trail that was the traditional dog-sled trail used by Inuit to travel to Iqaluit. Present day snowmobilers say they can reach Iqaluit in 5 hours. It’s a distance of 75 miles. Ian Wright, the traveler on the “Lonely Planet” TV series featured this trail on one of his episodes.  

*****

Air Baffin, operated by Jeff Mahoney, was a colourful little charter airline trying hard to get established in the eastern Arctic at Iqaluit. The first time I flew with Jeff was in 1988 when Canac/Microtel chartered Air Baffin to fly down to LAB-2 at Saglek, Labrador to pick me up and fly me out to Kuujjuaq. I had been sitting waiting for a week at LAB-2 for the weather to clear in the south. He arrived from Iqaluit in his twin engine Piper Navajo and off we went with me in the co-pilot’s seat. We hit it off right away.

I used Air Baffin wherever there was a landing strip at site and I had to move minor things and personnel on inspection trips. His fleet was a Piper Navajo, Cessna 337, Cessna 185 and then a Piper Chieftain to fly scheduled runs to Pangnirtung and Broughton Island.

I flew into FOX-3 at Dewar Lakes with my boss, John Knapp. I was facing forward in the Navajo’s four-seat cabin and John was sitting across the aisle facing backward. It was at night so when I finally spotted the site’s searchlight on the horizon I told John. He wanted to see better so unbuckled his seat-belt, got up and turned around.

At that moment both engines went dead. All you could hear was the wind whistling over the fuselage. Everything else had gone silent. The instrument-lights were still illuminating the cockpit in an eerie greenish light. John scrambled unceremoniously back into his seat and hastily buckled up. I watched Jeff intently as he scanned the instruments in front of him. I envisioned crash-landing on the barrens, thirty to fifty miles from FOX-3, in the late Fall with fresh snow on the ground. We had winter gear but no food. As I watched, Jeff looked up at some overhead toggle switches, reached up and flipped one. One engine then the other roared back to life. He calmly sat there and adjusted the controls to achieve the steady drone then pulled back on the stick to gain back the height that we had lost.

 In the twenty to thirty seconds that the engines were stopped I had time to reflect on many things. We landed without further incident.  

*****

I needed to get to LAB-2 at Saglek on the Labrador coast. I phoned Jeff at Air Baffin and he checked the conditions. Weather was good but the runway still had one third of its length covered with deep snow banks. We decided to go. The reason we hit it off was he liked flying low as did I. When I mean low I mean fifty to one hundred feet in a twin engine Piper Navajo.

We crossed Hudson Strait to Port Burwell on Killinek Island at one hundred feet and then went “feet dry” by skimming the ground at 250 miles per hour, past abandoned buildings and radio antennas poking up everywhere. We stayed low as we barreled along the narrow waterway that separates the island from the mainland. The cliffs and steep hills were spectacular and we poked out into Grenfell Sound in the Labrador Sea.

We continued our flight down the Labrador coast at 500 feet while watching the massive cliffs and deep fiords tower above us off to our right a short distance away. The northern coast of Labrador is as awesome and beautiful as the east coast of Baffin Island. We flew past LAB-1, where we could see the work activity of the general contractor as they built the site at Cape Kakiviak, and then to Saglek. The wheels of the Navajo stopped twenty-five feet short of the snow-bank on the runway.

PHOTOS: (clockwise from top)

1) Air Baffin's Navajo getting loaded

2) Iceberg floating down Davis Strait 

3) Polar Bear swimming from floe to floe across Cumberland Sound

4) Old deserted radar site at Resolution Island (BAF-5)

5) Mt.Thor  (picture courtesy of Louise Wholey at wholey.net_auyuituq website)

6) Mt. Asgard  (picture courtesy of Louise Wholey at wholey.net_auyuituq website) 

7) Bell 212 on landing pad at Cape Mercy (BAF-2)

8) Brian McLeod beside Canadian Helicopter's Bell 212 at Pangnirtung (looking north into Pang Pass)

Silhouettes in the Snow

The message reached us at 12:30. A young clerk from the main office came rushing over to our table and handed me a folded note. He had tracked us down to the cafeteria where we had just finished lunch; and were sitting back in our chairs nursing our coffee and discussing what we had to do in the next few days. The message came from the mine’s manager. He received a phone call from his counterpart over at Terra Mines via the radio-telephone. He hurriedly scribbled the short message down on a notepad then instructed the clerk to find the “ice road” crew and give it to them.

I thanked the clerk as I looked down at the note and saw the words “Call Dick at Terra Mines” scrawled on the paper.

“Dick” was Dick Robinson, owner and manager of Robinson Trucking Ltd. based out of Yellowknife.

“What is he doing at Terra?” I wondered as I passed the note to the others to read.

I excused myself from the table, walked over to the frost-trimmed window where I stopped and took a sip of coffee from the mug that I had brought with me. Ice build-up on the window-panes was distorting my view so I used the palm of my hand to melt a clear opening. I then used my shirt-clad elbow to wipe the water away before it re-froze to obstruct my view again. Satisfied, I looked past my “achievement” to survey the sky to determine our present weather conditions; however it was the land that immediately caught my attention.

A large bay stretched out before me, gleaming brilliantly white in the sunlight. The bay was icebound from the foreshore to the far-shore, a mile away; deep snow covered the ice. This setting engulfed my entire field of vision. The northern sun, in it’s lower winter orbit, was using the minute air-borne ice crystals in the minus 40-degree temperature to taint the top of the snowdrifts with a golden hue while creating small dark shadows behind them.

I did not hesitate to relax there. I put my elbows on the windowsill and took it all in. My advantage point, perched high up on the bluffs, offered me a commanding view of the spectacular surroundings. I had to wipe the window again to clear away the mist formed by my breath.

I was standing in the cafeteria building at Echo Bay Mines. I studied the immediate buildings perched precariously on the bluffs overlooking the bay, then moved on to others tucked in the nooks and crannies of it’s slope and finally down to the remainder of the wooden structures sitting squat on the narrow beach below. A series of snow-crusted staircases and walkways connected the buildings together like the arms of an octopus. The buildings, clad white with asbestos shingles and green wood trim, were built in the 1930’s and sported that era’s box style for bunkhouses.

The residents would walk from the top of the bluff to the bottom using the stairs. All they needed was a strong set of legs and good threads on your boots. A worker was scraping and brushing the snow from one of the staircases half way down the slope. He was causing small avalanches of snow to slide out of sight below him. I could see from the rising white mist from his mouth that he was breathing heavy from the exertion of his work.  

Content with my scrutiny of the immediate surroundings, I focused on the far shoreline and followed it along south-westerly until I saw it’s faint outline disappear into the vast expanse that was Great Bear Lake. I continued my search along the horizon until my gaze met the northwest shoreline at Cobalt Island. It’s far point of land defined the mouth of the bay.

The point also marked the finish line for an annual lottery held each Spring by the mine’s personnel. The winner had to guess the date and time of the arrival of the summer season’s first barge. A big powerful tug-boat with it’s barges would steam across the ice-choked Great Bear Lake from Fort Franklin, on its western shore, to deliver much needed supplies. These supplies were essential to maintain the operation of Echo Bay Mines, a high-grade silver producer, situated at Port Radium. An earlier mine, Eldorado, at Port Radium gained notoriety in the 1940’s by being the mine that supplied the pitchblende ore used in the making of uranium for the first atomic bomb. Eldorado was discovered by Gilbert Labine in 1930.  

The bulk of the mine’s supplies of machinery and dry goods were consolidated and shipped via truck from Edmonton, Alberta to Hay River in the North West Territories. The supplies were then loaded on shallow draft barges and pushed by large powerful river going tugs across Great Slave Lake to the MacKenzie, Canada’s longest river. They steamed downstream past Fort Providence, Fort Simpson and Wrigley to Fort Norman. This village was situated at the confluence of the Great Bear River and the MacKenzie River. From there, they left the MacKenzie and continued on the Great Bear River upstream past the rapids to Fort Franklin and finally on to Port Radium.

I cleared the fog from the window with my sleeve again and refocused on the center of the mouth of the bay. I could see a faint ribbon of snow meandering out onto the “Big Lake” and disappear into the distance. My eyes then followed the ribbon as it got closer to my advantage point. I began to make out the two windrows of snow defining the width of a roadway made by a plough. The plough had literally scooped up and tossed the snow thirty feet to the sides of its path as it drove across the ice.

This “roadway” became one of the three methods of getting supplies to the mine. I was looking at it’s most northerly terminus since my gaze along this ribbon of snow ended abruptly 200 feet below me. It disappeared into a long wide stretch of snow-cleared ice shining in the light. I observed a yellow grader and front-end loader, streaming 100-foot long rooster tails of exhaust steam, as they sped around the perimeter. They were busy ploughing snow to widen the boundaries of the cleared ice.

When completed, this strip of ice would become the third method of getting supplies to the mine. It was an ice landing strip for DC-3, Bristol Freighters and C-130 Hercules aircraft hauling freight and personnel for the mine. Smaller ski-equipped planes would also land there even though they could land anywhere on the snow covered ice. The strip was located two hundred yards offshore and stretched out in front of the mine buildings. It was always a “show” to watch the planes take-off and land on the ice once the strip became operational. The swirling snow and the roar of the engines being thrust into reverse announced their comings and goings at all hours during the short days and long nights of winter.

Satisfied with this private moment in time, my mind returned to the message - It was unusual that Dick would try to contact us at this time of day, normally he would talk to us each night on the short-wave radio at an appointed time while we were on the “constructing” the road.

 I glanced outside one final time, registered the weather conditions in my mind, turned and walked back to the table I had vacated just a minute or two before. The others were just getting up from the table having finished their coffee. We decided that all four of us should go to the office where the radio-telephone was located and hear what Dick had to say. Besides, tall, lanky John and the small-framed pilot wanted to talk to Dick about the route.

The office was one building away. We left our parkas and snowsuits hanging in the vestibule of the cafeteria and hurried across the thirty yards of ice-crusted walkway clad only in our “in-door” clothes.

“It’s a bit nippy out there” was the only explanation needed for the ruckus we created as we burst into the Mine’s general office and slammed the door shut. Only two of the five people in the office had looked up from their work to see who had entered. They were obviously used to these types of interruptions. 

We pressed up to the counter rubbing our cold hands together, enquired about the phone and were herded over to the semi private area where the radiotelephone was located. A crackly voiced radiotelephone operator, working out of Fort St John, B.C., came on line. I gave her my request. She sounded liked a sweetheart through all the atmospheric static so I chatted pleasantly with her for a minute while she made the connection to the mine office at Terra.  I asked for Dick. He came on the phone momentarily as he was waiting for the return call.

“We need you guys with the grader and Bombardier over at Terra right away,” Dick instructed. “Billy has gone through the ice and we need to get the truck out and plow a new road,” he continued. After a few minutes of radio- telephone conversation we hung up the phone.

Billy was all right. He was traveling in convoy with two other tractor-trailers when the ice on a small lake gave way under his truck. His tanker-trailer broke through and sank down to the top walkway on the tank. It was the only part still visible. The tractor was pulled down until it was sitting half in and half out of the ice at a 60-degree angle. Black water and broken ice swirled up to the back of the cab. Billy had managed to jump from the cab onto the solid ice. The other two drivers were traveling behind him and witnessed his big adventure. They had stopped quickly with nowhere to go and came to his aid and comfort. He was obviously shaken up but in good spirits.

 “Going through the ice” was a very sober topic of conversation around the people who built and drove on winter ice roads. I heard all the stories of cats, trucks, etc going through the ice and the operators having to swim up to the surface and scramble onto solid ice. I never really discussed the consequences with the other operators. We all silently prepared for it and hoped it would never happen. However the threat was always there whenever we got on the ice. We constantly had to be prepared for instant action. I knew drivers who quit after making one trip saying it’s not worth risking your life for the money; we all had our reasons for doing what we did.                 

Dick’s request for getting the equipment over to Terra was paramount now. The bombardier and grader were an important part of winter ice road making. The bombardier was light and traveled quickly over the snow-covered ice and portages. It was used to scout the best possible route across the ice. Its cab and body looked similar to an oversized Volkswagen Beetle but could comfortably carry more people and equipment. University students who have stuffed themselves into the “Bug” may contest this fact. Propulsion came from a set of tracks on either side and under the body. A steering wheel was connected to a set of big skis mounted under the front of the cab.

Once a route was scouted by the bombardier, the grader would come along and make a pass with its big V-plough to clear a path thus opening the road across the lakes. The grader was quite desirable to have on the ice roads because of its speed and ability to move large amounts of snow from the ice quickly with it’s plough, belly blade and wing blade.

Besides being constant companions as they opened up roads across the virgin ice of the lakes each winter, the bombardier and grader were also there to support each other for safety reasons. The peril of breaking through the ice was constantly on the minds of the men who operated these machines and you always wanted a traveling companion. Trap doors were installed in the roof of the cabs of the heavy equipment for emergency exit. The bombardier sported two – one above the driver and another above the passenger area. The grader had two large doors on either side of the cab thus offering the operator quick exit if he left one open. If you went through the ice you wanted to have a warm refuge nearby to thaw out if necessary – there was nothing else.                           

We discussed Billy’s mishap for a few more minutes then as we were just about to leave the mine office Louie stopped us with his arm.  

“I’m not going to Terra,” he said.

“I’ve been on the road a sixteen days without a good meal, my sleeping bag and personal kit were destroyed in the fire and I need a break,” he continued, “I’m scheduled to go back with John on the plane and I’m going……besides it’s the only plane for a week or more”.

The plane Louie referred to was the ski-equipped Cessna 185 owned by Robinson Trucking and was based in Yellowknife. Gord, the company’s pilot and road foreman, had just flown into Echo Bay with John Dennison after surveying the ice road from the air. The four of us were discussing the alternate routes that the ice road should take while we were eating lunch. John wanted me to plough a route to the east of a small island on our return to Terra - “ to avoid the large pressure ridge that had formed along our northerly route across the big Lake.”

After a minor heated discussion, it was decided that Louie would go back to Yellowknife with John and Gord while I would proceed to Terra Mines by myself, as soon as possible. I was to hook the bombardier to the trailer hitch welded on the back of the 800-gallon tank-trailer, and then both would be hooked to the grader. The grader would normally haul the tank-trailer around behind as it proceeded from lake to lake along the ice road.

It was getting on to 1:00 PM when we broke off our conversation. There was only one and a half hours before the sun would begin to set. The others needed to take-off shortly in the plane if they were to reach Yellowknife before dark; and I needed to get prepared and be on the road before it did set.

I shuffled along the walkway back to the cafeteria, picked up my snowsuit and obligatory baseball cap with the CAT logo embroidered onto the front, and proceeded along to the bunkhouse where I picked up my personal kit and sleeping bag.

“That’s everything,” I said to myself.

 I returned to the cafeteria to pick over a few food supplies left on the serving counter after lunch. The freshly baked cookies and cake were a real treat considering the cheese and crackers and other non-perishable food we usually carried in the cabs of our vehicles. I thanked the cook on the way out.

I stopped in the vestibule to struggle into my snowsuit and tighten the cords on my duffle lined snow boots. I zipped up the front of my suit, pulled on my thick work mitts and gathered up my kit and sleeping bag in one hand. I used my other mitt-covered hand to guide and support myself as I started down the winding set of staircases to the shoreline far below.

Landings were situated at every turn of the stairs and offered a viewpoint of the shore below. Tucked close to the base of the bluffs, the various white and green trimmed buildings were dulled gray from years of dirt and grime associated with a working silver mine. In front of a building with large doors sat the brightly coloured grader. John, Gord and Louie were already there. Louie had just positioned the bombardier behind the tank-trailer and was getting ready for us to attach them together.

 I saw the welder removing his welding cables from the big V-plough attached to the front of the grader – he was replacing the steel blade on the bottom front of the plough. It was prone to have pieces snap off when it came in contact with boulders near the shore. Echo Bay Mine mechanics had also just finished servicing the grader and it sat there with its exhaust stack pushing its white plume of exhaust 50 feet into the still afternoon air.

“All set and ready to go” was the answer when I looked inquisitively at the shop foreman. He had been shooting the breeze with the assembled group of Robinson and Echo Bay employees. I threw my gear into the cab and then did a slow inspection of the grader. The foreman, who I knew from my days at Giant Mines in Yellowknife, came with me to catch up on any stories that I may have heard about his buddies.

The grader was a big Champion 600 painted a bright international orange. Hydraulic levers strategically located on either side of the steering wheel controlled the belly blade directly below the cab. It could change into numerous configurations for grading different material. Another hydraulic lever controlled the side or wing blade hinged on a mount close to the ground on the right side, below and behind the cab. It operated a cable attached to the end of the blade and ran through a pulley attached to a large stanchion mounted at the rear of the grader. This raised and lowered the blade. The remaining lever controlled the up and down movement of the large V-plough mounted to the front frame of the grader. This plough was designed to curl and throw snow from both sides of the grader. The faster the speed, the farther the snow is thrown. All together, it was a very efficient snow mover for the ice road.

Hooking up the tanker and bombardier to the grader only took a minute with Louie’s help and then it was time to go. I leaned down and out the open door of the cab as John came close.

 “Remember to plough the new route to the shore side of the small island,” he said.

“OK John,” I replied.

John Dennison was acting as a consultant on this year’s road. He was with us for the first two weeks of the “road making” until his stomach became so bad that he had to return to Yellowknife to mend himself. Now he was consulting from the air. He had spent years on the ice road with Byers Transport and had a book written about his adventures by Edith Iglauer. I had finished the New Yorker magazine’s shortened version of the story just the past week. It was called Dennison’s Ice Road.

 “See you soon,” I said.

I straightened up and nodded goodbye to the assembled group. I released the clutch and felt two slight jerks as slack was taken up in the hitches that held everything together. I began moving past the Machine Shop, Warehouse, Electrical Shop and other mine buildings situated along the shore. I was heading towards the egress point onto the ice of the bay. This point was smooth and well groomed as it served as the entrance to the newly ploughed airstrip laid out on the bay.

Then onto the airstrip.

“ 1:30 “ I said out-loud, looking at my watch,  “It’s going to take me five hours to get to Terra…… that should make it 6:30,” I calculated.

“I’ll miss a hot supper,” I said, this time under my breath. I didn’t want to be labeled as a “Singing Swede” by people hearing me talk to myself one too many times. The Singing Swede was a legendary figure around Yellowknife. He would wander around the bars and streets mumbling to himself in his heavily accented English whenever he had a drink or two. The locals just characterized him as “bushed”; a phenomem resulting from too much time spent alone out on the land or bush.

“I think that’s what happened to Deuce,” I said chuckling to myself as I slandered one member of the Avery family. For whose in the know, Deuce’s older brother Ron was nicknamed Ace.

Shadows were beginning to lengthen behind the snowdrifts on the bay leading me to glance at the sun.

“Maybe two hours of light if I’m lucky,” I thought. Then the arctic night would fall. Scanning the sky I saw only puffs of small clouds high in the sky. It was clear out so there would be a moon tonight. Luck was with me on this.

“Hope there is a lot of stars too,” I said aloud.

I didn’t have to wish for the other half of the night’s show. The Northern lights had been putting on a spectacular act for the past four nights and would be out again tonight as long as the sky remained clear.

The front–end loader operator, still pushing snow off the strip, gave me a wave as I rolled past his machine. He stopped now and watched my procession. I shifted up one gear to gather momentum before I reached the end of the runway where the ice road and my real work started. Up-shifting again I glanced at the speedometer.

 “Good speed,” I concluded.

Hands off the steering wheel and onto the hydraulic levers, I began to adjust the belly blade. I wanted it close to - but not on the ice; and raked back on the right side to quickly dispel the snow it gathered as I sped along. Also, I didn’t want it to slow me down.

 “That’s good,” I mumbled.

I was twenty yards from the narrow road and it was time to lower the big V-plough to the ice. Two steel runners kept the blade an inch off the ice so it did not require any fine tunings when lowered.

The grader gave a shudder as the big V-plough caught the snow bank on its right side. Snow was being hurled out to the right of the grader with fine snow whisking over top of the plough partly blocking the view of the afternoon sun that was shining low in the western sky. 

“Time to get to work and widen you,” I thought, as I entered the long winding ribbon stretching into the distance. I worked quickly with the steering wheel, to obtain a good ploughing line; and the levers, to ensure no reduction in speed caused by the blade. I glanced around to see the results of my actions. The road has been widened by 50%.

“And this is a good speed for ploughing,” I said satisfied.

“Time for you” I said glancing at the wing blade in it’s upright position. I set it down at an angle of 20 degrees from the horizontal. The blade began to slice the top cleanly off the newly created snow-bank and deposited the flying snow yards away.

The snow on this part of the bay averaged fourteen inches in depth so I could maintain a speed whereby the plough and wing blade were dispersing the plowed snow well out of the way. The deeper the bite into the snow-bank – the slower the speed. It was essential to maintain speed and throw the snow well away. The ideal ice road had a profile of a saucer. This gave the blowing snow no place to accumulate into drifts and eventually fill the road right in.

After making final adjustments I sat down on the seat and took stock of my situation. I ran through my mental checklist:

“Left side door open for safety.”

“Heater on full.”

“Cardboard box with snacks and juice beside me on the seat.”

“Kit and sleeping bag tucked away in the corner of the cab.”

“Axe resting on the floor with the handle wedged between the seat and the cab.”

“Hunting knife strapped to my belt.”

“Lighter and matches in all pockets.”

“Cigarettes, pack in my pocket and one in my mouth.”

“Inflatable doll, damn I left her with Cranna”

I took my arms out of the snowsuit and loosened my snow boots. The heater and the sun made it quite comfortable in the cab, even with the door open. I tied the sleeves around my waist so that the suit could not slip down to my knees when I stood up in the cab….something I did frequently.

I gazed to my right as I motored past the point on Cobalt Island that marked the entrance to Port Radium. Shifting my gaze to the rear I saw the buildings of the mine grow smaller and disappear.

“On the big lake now” I commented to myself. I proceeded south past the entrance to Echo Bay with the small fishing camp nestled on its shore. Past Mystery Island.

My gaze returned to the action in front of me. Fine snow crystals were constantly swirling over the top and edge of the plough and swept past the cab. This obstructed nearly half of my forward view but I did not adjust any controls. The sun was shining through this man-made miniature storm and caused a small rainbow all around me. It was a beautiful sight, and the neat thing about it, I could change it with a tug of the steering wheel or a reduction of speed. On an impulse, I fumbled for my kit stashed in the corner, opened it and retrieved my camera. With one hand on the wheel and the other with the camera I clicked a picture of what I had created.

 “Oh, the things people do when they are bored or need to be amused,” I said.

I jerked up suddenly, startled by the loud roar from the engine of the plane as it screamed over me from behind. Flying at 50 feet, Mr. Gordon Weatherby, the company pilot, my foreman and family acquaintance had surprised me completely. There was nothing I could do in return so I just waved as he, John and Louie made a second pass waggling the wings of the Cessna. Then they were off to the south heading directly to Yellowknife leaving me alone again with my thoughts in my solitude.

As I watched the plane get smaller and smaller in the sky my mind wandered back to the time four days ago when Gordie and I were flying the ice-road. We came across a small group of a thirty or so caribou stretching out and traveling down the length of a lake. We could see a half dozen wolves following them at what seemed to be no more than a couple hundred yards……but keeping their distance. Circling back and swooping down low between the hills on either side of the lake, we buzzed over top of them from behind. The wolves, spooked, headed for the bush and trees along the shore at the run while the caribou trotted off down the lake.

I then cast an eye at the trees, level with our line of sight, realizing that they were not trees at all………..they were caribou, thousands of them. They were scattered all over the hills for miles. We were flying over a herd of 75,000 to 100,000 caribou whose annual migration took them on a route south of Great Bear Lake to their wintering grounds east of Great Slave Lake. It was hard to believe the scale and magnitude of the scene below. It was like the Serengeti in Northern Canada.  

There was still some time before I had to veer off the existing road to plough between the shoreline and the small island John Denison had described to me. Things were running smoothly. I made the occasional minor adjustment to the blades with the control levers as I sat in the warmth of the sun-drenched cab of the grader.  I lit a cigarette and let my thoughts replace the steady drone of the engine. These thoughts wandered back to the places and things we saw and the incidents that occurred during the past month…….

……Travelling to Rae-Edso on the MacKenzie Highway, located 60 plus miles west of Yellowknife N.W.T. - where operators with their equipment converged at the beginning of January. A storage area and parking lot, called Fort Byers, marked the start of the ice-road, which then wound northerly utilizing a series of lakes to minimize the number of long portages that would otherwise be necessary.

Over the shallow Marian Lake - where we passed Dave Lorenzen’s crew with his A-frame truck trying to extricate a front-end loader from the ice. It sank up to its cab when its operator attempted to plough an ice road into the local hydro providers camp at Snare River. 

Through other parts of Marian Lake - where the grader would break through overflow ice and end up on more solid ice underneath; and me with my heart in my throat.

Past the junction to Lac La Martre – where government road crews would push a winter road thirty miles to the village on the lake’s southern shore.

Across Snare River where the foundations of the old bridge sat in testimony to an earlier time and where the front wheel of the grader had snapped completely off after hitting a large pot-hole along the bank of a stream near the bridge. Metal is very brittle at minus 40 degrees.

Along the old Rayrock Mine road – where equipment would slide off it’s narrow and raised roadbed. The road was built using crushed waste rock from the mine. It went from the mine towards the Snare River dam. One driver, traveling too fast with a full trailer load, missed a turn and made his own road into the “Tullies”. He was so far in, you had to pack a lunch to go visit him. The funny thing was - he drove cab in Yellowknife. He never got me as a passenger after that.

Past Rayrock Mine - where you could still see the old bunkhouses, mill and other buildings perched on the hillside in the distance. Numerous company houses were transported from Rayrock after it shut down and used to house people in Yellowknife and elsewhere. 

Through the Dene village of Rae Lakes - where we spent a half day packing the snow on the small airstrip under the watchful eyes of all the village’s children. Jonsie on the skidder, Thompson on the cat and myself on the grader. Up and down, back and forth along the runway.

Up the long narrow Squirrel Hill portage - where numerous tractor-trailers, throughout the course of the season, would spin out and then “jack-knife” when backing down the hill, thus blocking the road for all other trucks.

Across the hard packed snow trails – where thousands of Caribou would intersect the road on their migration southward.

Past heaps of skinned and quartered caribou carcasses waiting to be picked up by passing trucks and transported to Rae Lakes.

Across Hottah Lake – where you could still see the remains of a Twin Otter aircraft. It sank through the ice and had to be abandoned. They retrieved the engines and instruments at a later time.

Through a prospector’s camp – where an irate, swearing prospector, jumping up and down beside the road, watched us as we trespassed through his mineral claim. He was worried that his claim would be made public. He got even madder when he recognized me from Yellowknife.

Past the junction to Terra Mines on the Camsell River and where we began a new portage.

Down Yen Lake hill where we forged a new portage onto Conjuror Bay and then on to Echo Bay Mines at Port Radium on Great Bear Lake.

……….A distance of more than 320 miles through Canada’s sub-arctic land of stubby trees, muskeg and Precambrian rock.

The small island was getting large in the windscreen now. I decided to bring the big grader to a halt.

“This is a good place as any to start,” I said out-loud.

“Time to take a break, write my name in the snow and check out the equipment trailing behind me,” I said under my breath, as I walked around in the cold of the late afternoon under the failing daylight.

Equipment checked, I took in my surroundings. The vast expanse of the McTavish Arm of Great Bear Lake lay all around me except to the southwest where the island and shoreline stood highlighted in the setting sun. The sky was starting to turn orange and pink near the horizon.

“Eerie feeling” I said as I briefly shivered, realizing that no one was around for miles and miles.

I concentrated on the task at hand and picked a prominent hill on the distant shoreline as my direction to steer. I laid out a route in my mind that would intersect with the existing road again approximately 6 to 7 miles south.

The sky was turning full orange and pink.

“No problem – Hire North,” I said, mimicking the local expression that was frequently used lately around Yellowknife as I climbed back into the grader.

Hire North was an organization set up by the government of the N.W.T with the mandate to hire and train local people. Its purpose was to construct a winter route from Fort Liard up through the MacKenzie Valley to Inuvik. The Hire North workers would hit town on paydays and head for the bars. To assure service from the bar maids and bartenders they would say “No problem – Hire North” signifying they worked for Hire North and everything was OK because they had money in their pocket and they had no problem paying for their booze.

I got rolling again. I went through the gear changes to gain speed and then made plough and belly blade adjustments while leaving the wing blade up. I steered the big grader left through the snow bank, with a big puff of snow, onto the undisturbed snow covered ice.  Snow was now flung from both sides of the V-plough and arched further through the air as I picked up speed.

”Looking good,” I said as I settled into a routine of minor adjustments to the speed and watched as the sun set around me.

Normally, when ploughing a new road, the operator would drop off the tanker-trailer at one end of a lake, or starting point, and return to it as he widened the road on successive runs across the lake. However, since I was not going to return to widen this route, I continued towing the tanker-trailer behind me with the bombardier carrying up the rear as caboose.

I glanced at the control panel and flipped three toggle switches to the “on” position. The grader and the surrounding area were immediately bathed in bright light. Headlights mounted on the high point of the cab lit up the growing darkness ahead of the plough. Floodlights, at the base of the cab, lit up the belly blade and the front of the grader and another lit the right side of the cab and illuminated the wing blade. This bubble of light was my warm comfortable universe as my little caravan cut through the pending night on the snow covered ice of Great Bear Lake.

I gazed past the perimeter of light to regain my reference point, the hill on the shoreline. I could still make it out in the twilight that preceded the rising moon. The stars were just beginning to shine as the pink, orange and blue of the evening sky slowly turned to black.

Suddenly, the grader’s engine began to lug causing me to tense up and refocus my attention on my immediate surroundings. I didn’t want any engine problems in the middle of nowhere. I downshifted the transmission but this did not cure the situation. I could see that the belly blade was pushing more snow than normal. Glancing at the plough did not tell me anything. The grader was rapidly slowing down and I was losing my ploughing momentum.“Shit,” I grumbled, with a little bit of concern thrown in for good measure...............

PHOTOS:

Ploughing the Ice road

Snow mist from V-Plough causing mini rainbow

Grader ploughing Ice road after storm

Grader, Bombardier, Brian on Marian Lake

Ploughing after storm near Conjour Bay on Great Bear Lake

Widening Ice road to Echo Bay Mines at Port Radium

Silhouettes in the Snow (continued) - Part 2

............Now at a stop, I looked around at all the controls, levers and blades to determine the cause of my unwanted and un-scheduled stop. Seeing nothing from the inside of the cab, I zipped up my snowsuit and jumped to the ice from the cab. It seemed to be a lot colder but still pleasant if dressed appropriately. There was no wind. I walked around my little ensemble. The crust of the snow held my weight and it became obvious what had happened. The V-plough, or more specifically the runners underneath, ran up onto the hard crust of wind-swept snow causing fifteen inches of snow to get behind the plough. The belly blade could not handle pushing that volume of snow to the side thus the grader, bogged down by the weight, ground to a halt.

“OK,” I sighed, relieved that it was nothing mechanical, “Lets get going,”

I’ve been there – done that. It was normally fairly easy to get myself out of these hang-ups. Back up along my path until I reach a just cleared stretch of roadway and start again. “No problem”. I jumped up into the cab, put the transmission in reverse and let out the clutch and inched backwards for a foot before the rear wheels began to spin on the ice and snow. Rocking the grader back and forth, I could not get a runway long enough to gather momentum.

“I now know why a grader carries a snow shovel,” I said facetiously, swinging out of the cab and grabbing the snow shovel hanging on the back of the cab. I had two problem areas, the snow behind the grader wheels and snow behind the tanker wheels. Shoveling a path for the wheels took fifteen minutes and raised a sweat inside my snowsuit despite the minus 45 degrees temperature outside it.

I backed up along the pathway after securing the shovel to the back of the cab. I got ten feet before I noticed that the bombardier was veering off to the left of the roadway. Being a tracked vehicle it had no problem getting over the snow-bank and off the road.

 “That’s no good,” I mumbled.

I needed cleared ice to put my blades down again. I went forward to straighten the bombardier. After two more attempts with similar results I conceded that I had to do what I didn’t want to do – unhook something. I didn’t know if I should un-hook the bombardier and try again or unhook the tanker-trailer and bombardier, leaving both.

I pulled the pin on the tanker-trailer. The grader was free to travel along the runway created by the wheels. I soon had enough of a path to put the plough down and then the belly blade. I circled back and was able to make passes in front of the tanker-trailer to clear the snow away. Then with one final large circle, I intersected the roadway a hundred yards behind the stranded equipment and proceeded closely past them and intersected the area I had just cleared. I then backed up to the tanker-trailer judging the distance to hook-up; easy when there were two people, but not tonight. I finally got the equipment hooked together again after numerous jumps in and out of the cab.

“I sure as shit don’t want to do that again,” I said, summarizing my feelings about the last hour. I had just settled back on the seat with my snowsuit tied around my waist. The heat of the cab was drying the sweat in my clothes as the grader ploughed towards the distant hills. The hills were well defined in the clear night sky and the moon had risen while I was getting un-stuck. The island was now off to my right and slightly behind.

To say that I was irate when the grader got stuck for the second time was an under-statement. I was paying a lot of attention to the plough as I proceeded, but it is hard to tell when it began to ride up on the hard snow crust. It’s when your belly blade can’t handle the snow that you realize what happening but then it’s too late. I was just past the island and was about to turn 20 degrees away from my reference hill, heading farther out onto the big lake to where I would intersect the original road.

This dig-out episode took another hour out of my schedule. I went through the same digging and jockeying around that I did previously. This time there was a lot more interjectory words and expressions, frequently profane, drifting through the air. 

I finally made the 20-degree turn. Looking past the lights of the grader, I could see the distant horizon of the lake bathed in the light of the moon with the stars twinkling brightly.

“Awesome,” I slowed the grader to a stop and turned off the lights to take it all in.

The vast expanse of snow-covered lake was now illuminated with a blue-gray hue with black shadows caused by the drifts. My emotions began playing with me as I got out onto the ice and silently observed the lonely desolation that was spread out in front of me. The wind had created snowdrifts that looked like waves on an angry ocean. Whiffs of wind now swirled loose snow over and around the drifts like a desert’s dunes. I stood there quietly for minutes before I finally turned and looked at the dark shapes of the equipment. The bombardier sat idling in the cold evening with its exhaust rising straight up into the night air despite the swirling wind. It was then I thought that it would be nice to have someone riding shotgun for me.

Back in the cab, I made a small meal of crackers and cheese. I washed it down with milk I had brought in from the cold storage box mounted on the rear bumper. It had thawed out in the heat of the cab. The quart of milk would easily be consumed before the night was out.  

They say things happen in groups of three. Tonight they were right.

“Stuck again!! How many times is this going to happen?” I said to myself in frustration.

 “Where in the hell is the road and when am I going to hit it?” I continued out loud.

I sat looking at my watch. It was 9:30. I had been ploughing for thirty minutes since I turned past the island. The moon was still shining brightly. I looked back along my route and saw the long straight ribbon of snow-banks diminish in clarity toward the vague outline of the island.

“Should I be ploughing at 30 degrees to reach the road quicker?” “Maybe I am just paralleling the other road,” I quizzed myself.

This question was buzzing in my head as I zipped up my snowsuit and prepared for another bout of shoveling snow from between the wheels of the grader and tanker-trailer. As I was about to unhook the grader from my train I had an idea, “Why not take the bombardier and look for the road; it’s easy to unhook from the tank-trailer”.

The decision was easy to make. The only question being, “Should I go now or after I have dug the equipment out?”

“After,” I concluded, knowing that the hard work had to be done now.

I was becoming an expert at digging out the grader and tank-trailer. This time I unhooked the bombardier and moved it away from the rest. Using the same techniques as before, I cleared a runway behind and in front of all the wheels and then rocked the grader along the runway. I freed the grader from the deep snow. Circling back, with the plough down, I cleared the snow from around the tanker/trailer with the big wing-blade. Big crusts of ploughed snow formed the snow-banks. The hooking up of the Tanker/trailer and the grader was again a major chore. It was normally a two-man job; one man to guide the operator and hold the 80-pound tongue horizontal above the ground while the operator backed the grader and its hitch to the reinforced hole at the front of the tongue. The second man would then just slip the pin through the hole and the job was done.

Finally finished, I sat on the belly blade with the front of my snowsuit open to the frigid outside air. As I took my baseball cap off I looked at my shadow formed from the floodlights mounted on the cab. Shimmers of heat, in the form of steam, rose off my sweat-soaked head and chest and disappeared into the air.

“What am I doing here by myself?” I asked myself rhetorically. It was the only question my mind could conjure up at this point.

Then it was time to act on my idea. ‘After’ had turned into ‘now’. I determined my bearings and decided my route. I then walked over to the Bombardier sitting 50 feet away with its engine idling steam into the air.

I slid into the driver’s seat and shut the door. I was immediately hit by the stench of oil and diesel fuel. It permeated from the compartment at the back of the machine where the engine sat rocking on its mounts. The driver and passenger seats were separated from the engine compartment by a cargo area the width of the cab and 5 feet in length. The flimsy bulkhead did not keep the sounds and smells of the engine from the passenger area but it did allow heat from the engine to fill the cabin. Luckily the driver’s window could be rolled down for fresh air. I reached up, unlatched the emergency hatch and flung it back on its hinges as I cranked the window down two inches.

“Lets go find that f**king road,” I said.

With a lurch of the tracks and a roar from the engine I was off. The skis glided easily over the snowdrifts and mounds caused by the wind blowing across the ice. I worked my way through the direct link gears of the transmission until I was traveling 30 miles an hour. I had gone maybe a mile and a half when I began to make out faint shadows ahead of me. Gearing down, I proceeded slowly until the headlights shone on an obstruction in front of me. I stopped the bombardier and then stepped out. I saw a massive wall of ice and snow blocking my way. It stretched into the darkness in both directions from where I stood.

“Bloody hell – I just had to run smack dab into the side of a pressure ridge,” I smirked incredulously.

“What now?” I mumbled.

I walked away from the ridge, turned around and looked left and right to understand the magnitude. I couldn’t spot any difference in the height of it in either direction. I then approached the ridge to assess it more closely. Massive chunks of ice were heaved up onto each other to a height approximately ten feet. I did not know if it was fresh or not.

“Why would John send me this way if he saw a pressure ridge from the air?” I thought.

”Maybe it is new,” I continued, ”Well, I will just have to find a way around it.

I settled back into the bombardier and roared off towards the shore. A mile along, I came to a spot where I could cross the pressure ridge with care. I had to be careful not to damage the skis or throw a track off my machine.             

I crossed the ridge and then headed backed away from the shore towards where I thought the road must be. Ten minutes later I came across a second pressure ridge, as tall as the first. Without wasting time I swung the bombardier shoreward again and eventually came upon an opening through this pressure ridge. Again I slowly lumbered the machine over the crest to the solid ice on the other side. Heading away from shore once more, I paralleled the pressure ridge for a while and then swung southerly.

“The road has to be around here somewhere,” I thought.

I figured I had gone another two miles when I saw a faint line in the distance and I was heading right for it.

“I should intersect it soon,” I mumbled happily.

Ten minutes later I was standing on the snow-bank of the original road. To say I was relieved goes without question.

“Now, get back to the grader and plough a road back to this spot following the bombardier tracks as a path,” I said out-loud as I looked at my watch.

11:30, I’d better hurry up,” I said as I got into the bombardier.

I had traveled 200 yards when the engine of the bombardier began to sputter and then stopped. I sat there in dead silence with only the light of the moon and stars to comfort me. The only movement was my head slowly shaking from side to side in disbelief.

“Out of fuel I bet!” I broke the silence two minutes later, “Who said things only happen in threes.”

I knew there was an auxiliary fuel tank in the bombardier. I found the valve in the engine compartment and switched the lever from Main to Auxiliary. I then rummaged around the sparse toolbox, found a crescent wrench and began loosening the nuts holding the fuel lines to the injectors on the engine.

To re-start a diesel engine I had to bleed the fuel lines. When the engine cranks over, the fuel pump forces fuel through the lines to the engine while dispelling any air in the lines via the loose nuts at the injectors. When the engine restarts, I could then tighten the injector line nuts.

The nuts loose, I returned to the cab to crank the engine over. I reached in to the ignition key on the dash and turned it. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing.

“Not even a f**king click” I exclaimed, “Murphy’s Law was working overtime tonight - What could go wrong, would go wrong.”

It was not uncommon to have dead batteries in these vehicles. The equipment is run 24 hours a day on the ice road. Consequently, the batteries are constantly being charged. Sooner or later, if not checked regularly and often, the battery water can boil off from this over-charging, thus no juice to crank the engine.

 Having said that - The rule of thumb is – you leave the equipment running all the time. If you shut a vehicle off it may not start. Vehicles shut off for any length of time in these temperatures freeze solid. There are no garages on this road.

To confirm my worst fear, I checked and cleaned the battery posts and cables but to no avail.

“Why me?”  I looked up as if to get an answer.

Not getting one I continued my skyward gaze because tonight’s show had caught my attention. The stars and moon were still there, however the moon had moved off the main stage in the sky and was being replaced by the slithering snake of spectrum like lights, shimmering silently across the starry heavens. The Northern Lights had begun and would go on for hours. They would vary in their intensity and colours. Tonight they were starting off good and strong. Red, green, blue and white shafts of connected light streaking across the sky.

As a child, growing up at Giant Mines near Yellowknife, I would go out to skate on the lake in front of our house. Many nights I would plop backwards into the snow and lay there, making snow angels and watching the northern light’s performance. Nature at its best. They were unbelievably beautiful with the star filled heavens as their backdrop. I rarely missed these shows as a child. 

It was under this display that I began to walk towards the grader, its lights glowing in the distance. I estimated that it was 3 miles to the grader, as the crow flies. I chose a straight line to the grader rather than following the bombardier tracks because that way was probably twice the distance and I wasn’t in the mood for a long walk. I was shuffling my feet on the crusty snow thinking I could then follow my footprints back along this route with the grader and find the bombardier. I could hear the snow crunch under my feet as I walked.

“Cold and crisp …with no wind”. I said thankfully. “It must be well below minus 40”.

Experience had taught me that when it was really cold and clear, it was not windy. When it was warmer, lets say minus 25, there was often wind. Nothing worse than walking in –25 degrees with a 20-mile per hour wind. The wind can cut right through you like a knife.

I had the hood up on my snowsuit with my boots securely laced for walking. I would have preferred a light pair of work moccasins for the walk, however they were prone to getting wet when I got in and out of warm places like a grader. I had mitts on over top of my gloves so I felt completely warm.

Warm, however, shivers were now creeping down my spine. I was standing in front of the second pressure ridge I had encountered in the bombardier. The churned-up chunks of ice sat eerily piled upon each other forming a wall extending in either direction from my location. The light from the moon, stars and the northern lights cast shadows among the chunks; giving the ridge an appearance of a formidable barrier. A feeling of complete desolation added to the ambiance surrounding my predicament.

I realized that I was shivering because of what I was about to do. It was my intention to scramble up and across this barrier to the other side.

My heart was pounding as I reached the crown of the pressure ridge. I had carefully picked my footsteps from chunk to chunk upward to where I was now. A loose chunk of ice had shifted, causing me to pitch forward onto my knees. I continued and approached the top on my hands and knees. I looked over the edge and down into a dark crevasse of broken and shattered ice. I could not see the bottom in the dark.

“Was it open water or was it frozen over?” I asked myself. “If I slipped and fell into water…..” I stopped in mid sentence; I didn’t want to think of the consequences.

I looked across to the top of the other side – two and a half feet away. “Were the top chunks of ice solid, or just sitting there balancing on the one below it?”

“For that matter, how solid was the block that was now supporting my weight?” I questioned.

What a defining moment in my life. To continue with these uncertainties racing through my mind or to turn around and follow a safer path. 

I slowly stood up on the block of ice. It was solid. Taking a deep breath of air, I swung my right foot cautiously out over the crevasse and onto a block of ice on the other side. I was straddling the crevasse. It seemed solid. After what felt like an eternity I shifted my weight to the far side and swung my left foot across the crevasse. The momentum of my shifting weight caused me to lose my balance on the block and I couldn’t stop myself from slipping forward. I literally bounced, slid and rolled off the chunks of ice to the bottom of the ridge. In my mind it seemed like twenty feet to the bottom…at least.

 I lay there gasping for breath. I could feel the pounding of my heart pulse through my body so I lay there while it slowly subsided. This allowed me time to gather my composure.

“Did I break any bones?” I questioned myself, “ Am I hurt anywhere?”

It turned out that the snowsuit and layers of clothes under the suit had softened the blows of falling and sliding down the chunks.

I stood up, stretched my arms and legs to work out the aches from my shoulder and hip. I then looked indigently at the snow stuck to my snowsuit and began brushing it off thus erasing any evidence of my unplanned tumble.

I exclaimed, with a false sense of bravado, “One ridge down – one more ridge to go”.

It took me twenty minutes to reach the second pressure ridge. I had spent my time on-route convincing myself that this ridge was going to be easier to cross, thinking out loud “once you have crossed one you have crossed them all”.

Wrong. The crown of this ridge was covered with a layer of snow.

“When did it last snow?” I asked myself.  “Its been nice for the last three days so…”

I concluded that the ridge had been around for at least three or four days so there shouldn’t be any open water underneath. My next concern was about a snow bridge. Was the snow covering chunks of ice that would collapse if any weight was placed on them?

I picked my route and climbed slowly up the side of this ridge. My head came level with the crown of the ridge and I saw the lights of the grader shining like a beacon in the distance. If I got over this I’d be home free. I judged the distance to the grader to be a mile and a half at most.

“Cra-ack,” the sound exploded around me .The noise was like a rifle shot reverberating through the air and rumbling off into the distance. I’ve heard the sound of ice cracking and breaking many times before. As an Equipment operator on an ice road, I listened constantly for this sound, since it translated into weak ice that could break if driven over. This time it took on special significance… I was on top of it …and I wasted no time.

In a flash, I was off - scrambling on all fours across the crown of the pressure ridge, snow scattering everywhere, over the jagged chunks of ice of the far side of the ridge and downwards to the bottom and the safety of solid ice.

“That sound scared the living shit right out of me,” I exclaimed, “it seemed to have originated right underneath me.”

Pressure ridges are formed when the wind blows against the snow and ice over large areas of the lake. This friction causes pressure to be applied on weak ice miles away which then cracks and buckles at weak points. This may extend for miles in a jagged line. The wind just pushes and the ice just builds up on top of itself in an inverted V. (Inversely, large open creaks in the ice are also the results of a pressure ridge being formed, but freeze over, thus soon vanish when snowed upon.) They bend, twist, crack and, in general, change throughout their seasonal life.       

“What a f*ckingggg rush.” I proclaimed to all who could hear, “I sure don’t want to do that again…ever.”

 For the second time I was again lying on my back waiting for my heart to slow down and the pounding in my head to stop. I picked myself up realizing that I had just gone through a couple of my better adrenalin rushes.

“Its as though they are becoming pretty common on this job,” I reflected.

As I stood there, I glanced at my silhouette in the snow, to ground myself in reality. Its gray-black form was captured by the moon and stars on a sea of blue tinged snow. With a big smile I looked up and thanked him for watching over me. In answer, the Northern lights, still shimmering in their overhead dance, seemed to dip right down to the snow covered lake and then rise.

A light breeze whispered past my hood distracting my thoughts. I looked around and saw loose snow swirling off the crown of the recently conquered pressure ridge. This increased my feeling of desolation and prompted me into action. I continued my trek towards the grader in the distance; a beacon of warmth and security on a frozen sea of ice and snow. There was no sound in the night, except for the crunch of the snow under my feet and the steady exertion of my breathing, both magnified in my ears by the funnel shape of my fur-lined hood.

I stopped and looked around every couple of minutes to assure myself that nothing was happening around me - the hood had cut off my peripheral vision so it was like walking with blinders on. It was as if I didn’t want a monster to surprise me and eat me all up. 

Twenty-five minutes of walking, turning and glancing upwards got me back to the grader. It sat with its lights blazing and exhaust still streaming straight up into the darkened sky. I hauled myself in the warm cab and slumped into the seat. The time was now 1:00 A.M. I had been on the road for nearly 12 hours.

“No going back after all that,” I explained to myself, “I need to get back to the bombardier and then get motoring to Terra Mines.”

“So much for a nice short cut around the island,” I continued sarcastically.      

I swung the grader and tank-trailer shoreward and followed the bombardier tracks.  As I picked up speed snow swirled around the grader as the plough cleaved the snow from in front. I was looking for a place to cross the pressure ridge. I barely had time to get comfortable when I saw a gap in the height of the ridge. It had dipped low enough for me to slow down and take a closer look. I decided that I would attempt to cross it there.

 This was a first for me. Never have I attempted to cross a pressure ridge in a grader, by myself, or otherwise. I nudged the V-plough up to the base of the ridge. A few chunks of ice moved. I backed up, and then nudged forward again. After numerous nudges I was nearing the center of the ridge. I was eagerly watching for water wetting the ice or holes in the ice. The ice remained dry as I continued my nudges through the ridge. At it’s mid point I estimated that the pressure ridge was eight feet high and thirty feet wide. I could now see the “good” solid ice on either side of the ice that had broken and forced upward to form the ridge. The grader blade had taken the smaller ice chunks and filled them into the main crack, which had frozen over at water level.

I was through and clear. I looked back briefly to see my handy-work. Not the best passage through the ice but it was a start if others wanted to expand the opening.

I proceeded to the second pressure ridge and repeated the nudging procedure again. This time I saw some water seepage in the snow - but no hole - near the middle of this ridge. I got down from the grader and experimented with the shovel as a probe. There was not enough seepage to stop me for long. I continued to push through.

Finally, content that the openings through the ridges were clean enough for other vehicles, I departed the area in search of the tracks that would lead me to the bombardier. I proceeded parallel to the pressure ridge and noted that the height of it averaged around eight to ten feet.

 “It sure seems a lot higher when you are scampering over the top on all fours,” I casually murmured.

I got back on track and finally spotted the dark blue bombardier in the distance squatting on the snow with the original road behind it. I made a couple of passes in front of the bombardier with the wing blade down, then positioned the back of tanker-trailer in front of it and backed up in order to hook up the dead machine. The hook up took ten minutes of jumping in and out of the grader and jockeying the tongue and hitch together. Clunk – pin in the hitch. Not finished, I lowered the plough and belly blade and proceeded to intersect the ice road two hundred yards away with a whoosh as the V-plough cut through it’s snow-bank.

“Now I can stop for a snack,” I ordered myself.

The milk was long gone so I had a feast of crackers, cheese-whiz out of the squirt tubes and apple juice from its cardboard container. I topped the gourmet meal off by leaning back in my seat, putting my feet up on the dash and contemplated my situation with Mr. Export-A.

“It should be clear going now,” I thought, “just run down the lake with the wing blade out.”

 “I should hit the Conjuror Bay-Yen Lake portage around three,” I added.

The fact was, in terms of distance, I had only completed a fifth of my journey. I had to get my ass into gear and get going..................

PHOTOS:

Open water at long and large crack in the ice

Driving alongside a small Pressure Ridge

Skidder pulling a drag on Rae Lakes

Silhouettes in the Snow (continued)

Part 3  

.................The ice-road was heading southwest, parallel to the shore. Off to the left, out of the range of the grader lights, I could make out the silhouette of the shoreline with the sky as it’s backdrop and the snow on the lake as it’s footlights. The Northern lights had disappeared leaving the starry sky and the moon to illuminate the landscape. I judged that I was anywhere from two to four miles from shore as I motored past it’s undulations.

I had my blades set so as not to impede my speed. The plough was throwing the snow away from the right side, past the cab and into the darkness behind me. I was comfortable in the cab with the heater blasting warm air.

The road finally started to make a wide slow turn to the left, away from the open lake. With the turn completed I was now heading south, directly for the shore. The shoreline began to fill my vision and I could make out the bluffs of granite quickly converging on me. The bluffs guarded either side of an entrance to a long narrow channel and were funneling me and my caravan to its mouth. The “Narrows” that separated the mainland from Richardson Island, was no wider than a quarter of a mile at this point and would stay at that width until it eventually opened up onto Conjuror Bay five miles in the distance. I could make out stubby pine trees perched on the nooks and crannies of the steep slopes and the crest of the bluffs five hundred feet above.

 I proceeded through the throat of the narrows and immediately noticed the light from the night sky dim. The high bluffs were blocking it. Other than a narrow strip of stars shining above and outlining the top of the bluffs, the only light was produced by the grader; the headlights shining out over the plough and the belly-blade lights shining on the white snow-covered ice directly underneath me. I immediately got the feeling of speeding through a tunnel. All of my senses were concentrated on the small universe of the lit roadway with its white snow-banks whizzing by in the night. It was like running along a path on a dark night with only a flashlight to show the next step.

I began to relax after adjusting man and machine to this new environment. The cab was warm, the engine was purring softly behind me and I was contemplating a cigarette.

Suddenly, everything went black. There was nothing. Everything ceased…a dark empty void surrounded me.

My whole being tensed in anticipation of a cold reality.

“I’ve run into open water,” my mind screamed in alarm.

 All other sounds and sensations from in and around me ceased.

Gone was the white snow-covered roadway. Gone were the white snow-banks. Gone was the white snow curling in front of the belly blade. There was nothing. All was gone.  

The road was replaced by the deep dark depths of the watery narrows. The belly-blade lights probed the depths for the bottom, the dark depths that would surely be my grave.

“I don’t have a hope.” I screamed aloud.

“If I could get out of the grader and back onto the ice,” I thought desperately, knowing instinctively that it was not to be. The desperate task of getting out of the sinking grader and drag myself onto solid ice was possible, but it would take me too long to scramble to shore in wet clothes, gather wood without an axe and get a fire going before I succumbed to the cold arctic night.

“If only there was an operator for the bombardier…” I wished leaving the rest unsaid.

After what seemed an eternity, sights and sounds began to seep back into my conscious. Engine noise slowly replaced the high pitch alarm in my head. Small puffs of white began to flash by my peripheral vision. Realization came to me in slow motion as the uncontrolled grader slowly coasted to a stop – I was on solid ice.

All of my senses began to return. The pounding pressure in my head caused by shock and anxiety began to subside. I slumped forward on the seat in mental exhaustion.

The wind had removed all snow from the surface of the ice polishing it like a mirror. Sitting there I could see the belly blade lights shine right through the ice and down into the dark depths of the channel. It was as if the grader and I were just floating on water.

“I half expect to see one of those famous fifty pound lake trout, that Bill Heittrick used to brag about, come swimming by,” I joked lamely about one of my friends who had fished here while working as a "fishing guide" on Great Bear.

“He would probably say sixty pounds though,” I added trying to keep my mind off this latest little adventure.

 Positioned on a north-westerly axis, the wind would come whipping across the large expanse of the big lake, howl down this narrow channel and simply pick all the snow from the ice leaving it as clean as my mother’s kitchen floor. Clean as a gun barrel.

“Can’t name it that,” I thought, “but maybe it should be called ‘Scared Shitless Again Narrows’ because it damn near did……. give me a heart attack.”

Too distracted to drive, I decided to get out and get some fresh air. I literally poured myself out of the cab onto the ice, shuffled away from the grader on wobbly legs and gasped huge breaths of frigid air. My mind and body slowly returned to normal as the pounding completely subsided.

 I had walked out of the range of the engine and its noise was replaced by the haunting sound of a wolf calling his mate…or pack. The howls reverberated from the rocky sides of the narrows and became the inspiration for me to hotfoot it back to the warmth and safety of the grader cab.

“Warm and safe in the cab – a few minutes ago I thought it would be my coffin” “I must be feeling better now,” I muttered again.

Cautiously, I rolled down the remainder of the channel. Snow began to reappear in clumps and soon after the belly blade was skimming it to the side. It took me only a couple of minutes to pick up the road again. I intersected it as it swung to the southwest at the top end of Conjuror Bay. The moon was hidden behind the hills but the stars were still twinkling brightly. I set my grader controls, looked behind me, shuddered from the experience that was now also behind me and accelerated down the ice of this land-locked bay with it’s numerous islands poking into the night sky.

I felt uneasy about the portage from Conjuror Bay over to Yen Lake. It was a new portage, and although it was not as steep as the old one, it was still challenging. The road surface had been hurriedly built a week ago and was quite rough. It did not have the years of repetitive use and maintenance work to smooth it out like the other portages. It had mounds and dips, potholes, sharp rocks, tree stumps and willow shoots that could present problems to the unwary operator. To top it all off, a small underground stream had refused to freeze over in the cold temperature and was trickling a stream of water into the depressions of muskeg under the roadway. I could get bogged down if I wasn’t careful.

I was at the base of this mile long up-hill portage. Louie had told me that the elevation change from the lake to the top was over five hundred feet. This added to my apprehension.

“Well, here goes,” I said not knowing how the tank-trailer and the bombardier would tow up this hill.

The grader chewed up two sections of the portage. A small rise with a dip in it half way up the hill had not frozen over and the rear wheels of the grader sank deep into the snow. They began to chatter as they found traction on the dirt and rocks below.

”It’s like pulling an anchor up hill,” I exclaimed to myself, glancing back at my train.

Regaining traction out of the dip, I fought the portage upwards to another soft spot, where ten minutes of rocking back and forth had created a runway good enough to gather momentum and lurch free of the mud and slush that had impeded my progress. I did not stop when I reached the crest of the hill but continued bouncing along to the north end of Yen Lake.

I stopped when I got on the ice of Yen Lake. I jumped out of the grader and did an inspection of my ensemble. Everything was covered with mud and ice. The bombardier got the most of it. It sat there last in line looking more like a muddy block of ice with skis poking out the front than a man-made machine.

“Nothing broken after that adventure,” I summarized to myself. “More work will have to be done on this portage or the tractor-trailers will have lots of problems”

That inspection done, I walked over to a large structure whose dark outline I had glimpsed in my lights when I arrived at Yen Lake. The structure was squatting at the shoreline. I could now make out the charred remains of “my home” that had burned down four days ago.

“Home” was a twenty-foot long by eight foot wide plywood building mounted on a deck. It was suspended off the ground by four massive skis used for sliding the contraption across the ice and snow. We had pulled it along with us from “Fort Byers” at the start of the winter road. We were using it to eat and sleep in while we were constructing the road.

”I shed no tears seeing it sitting here burnt down to the scorched deck,” I muttered to anybody who could hear.

It was a relic from a by-gone era. It was used on cat-trains crossing Great Slave Lake in the 1930’s and 40’s. It could sleep six people in a pinch. The storage boxes on the floor used for food supplies, acted as seats at meal times. The source of heat was an oil heater with its chimney poking out the roof.  Bunk beds were bolted to the walls. It did not have a fridge so the food was either canned or frozen. Frozen food, mainly TV dinners, were stored in a food locker outside on the deck. Water came from a hole drilled in the ice of the lake where we parked for the night.

“Home” did not have modern toilet facilities, so you had to be sure when you needed to go. More specifically, the facilities were minus forty degrees, open aired, twinkling stars for a roof and a snow-bank for a seat. No contemplating life, reading a magazine or sitting around out there. Needless to say, baths and showers were non-existent. This was all part of the job and one got used to it.

 If you wanted privacy or take a nap, you could always go and nap in the cabs of our constantly running equipment. I spent many a night lying on the front bench seat of the 4 by 4 Ford truck with my head out the windows. Looking at the stars and northern lights, while listening to music fade in and out on the truck’s radio tuned into Edmonton’s CHED radio station, was my typical evening entertainment.

I did not know the full story on how it burned down. I had left for Yellowknife with Jim McAvoy in his Cessna 185 the day before it burned. Jim was delivering needed parts to our crew then returning to Yellownife empty, so I hitched a ride. I had returned via Echo Bay Mines a day before this little adventure started. The break was enough time for a badly needed shower and two days with my girlfriend. The crew speculated that the oil line for the heater was not completely turned off and burning oil spilled all over the floor when they started to pull it to that night’s new location. Whatever the cause, there it sat, burned to the deck-line, when they returned from their work assignments of the day.

Echo Bay was forty-five miles away down the portage and across the ice of Great Bear from this location. Terra Mines was eighteen miles to the east, so Louie and Johnnie Soldat, with the grader and bombardier, proceeded to Echo Bay. Nick Jones, Dave Thompson and the rest of the crew struck off towards Terra Mines making another new portage with the D-6 cat, skidder, FWD and Bug. I don’t think they shed any tears over the demise of their “home” either.

Inspection and reminiscing complete, I motored over to the T – junction in the middle of Yen Lake. The easterly spur road was to guide me over a number of small lakes and portages to Terra. Terra Mines, a silver producer, was located on the Camsell River just south of Great Bear Lake. I could visualize Terra in my mind. I had spent six months there, working underground, four years earlier.

Robinson Trucking had the contract to haul fuel and supplies into Terra and haul out silver concentrate from their mill.

I turned east and traveled about a half a mile before I reached shore. I raised the plough and blades as I started over the rough, newly constructed portage. Boulders and gravel were exposed at various spots as well as willow branches poking out from the snow roadway.

 “A lot more work has to be done on this route too,” I said as I bumped along.

Portages are improved by drawing in as much snow as you could get from the banks and packing it down with a drag pulled behind the skidder and other motorized equipment. The snow would then freeze like ice and provide a good hard topping for the road. A good portage had lots of snow and ice on it so as to protect the tires of the tractor-trailers from punctures. Protruding rocks and willows would act like spears and nails.

The plough in the “up” position limited my forward vision. It was “ok” on straight stretches but was hampered when going around corners and seeing the road close to the grader. I proceeded over a series of small sloughs and portages winding closer and closer to Terra.

“Where is Billy’s truck?” I said, “I should be coming up to it soon.”

“Wham.” I heard the loud retort and felt the grader give a violent shudder. It seemed to jump straight up in the air and then came crashing down in a bone jarring halt. I was flung forward into the steering wheel and then fell to the side of the cab. I regained my feet and stood in the cab rubbing my sore shoulder and looking at the controls of the grader. The engine was not running. The sudden stop had stalled the engine.

“You had better f*cking start” was my only statement regarding this new situation.

 I put the transmission in neutral and turned the ignition on. The engine started with a roar and I monitored the gauges to see if everything was operating normally. Satisfied that it was, I jumped out of the cab to see what caused my unscheduled stop. I inspected the belly blade – ok, walked to the plough – ok, walked around the right side to the wing blade…

 “Opps!!!!!” I exclaimed.

The wing blade was dangling by its cable from the pulley attached on the high stanchion mounted on the rear bumper. Looking down along the length of the blade I could see that it was detached from its hinge mount at the base of the grader. I knelt down and saw that the metal of the hinge joint was twisted and sheared off. Looking around the ground, I saw the outcrop of rock sticking out of the snow with a gouge mark along its side and top. The telltale marks now sported the nice orange colour from the grader. I stood up and surveyed the portage. I was going around a corner at a narrow section of road. The plough and belly blade had cleared the obstacle however the base of the wing blade had caught it square on. It was one of those things.

“Well, if it didn’t get the wing blade, it would have probably ripped a ski off the front of the bombardier,” I said, trying to make light of the present predicament.

“Can’t drive like this,” I said, swinging the blade back and forth like a pendulum attached to the top pulley mount. Any sideway movement would cause it to come crashing into the side of the grader. A quick search of the assembled equipment produced a chain normally used to pull things out of ditches, etc. Using a rope to cinch the base of the blade close to the hinge mount, I secured the two components together with three wraps of the chain and hooked the end into a suitable link.

I maneuvered the tank-trailer and bombardier past the rock out-crop, without further incident, and set off again with an eye on my repair job. It seemed to be secured well enough for the movement along the portage. I settled back in the warmth of the cab and thought of Terra Mines.

It was four years earlier when, as a twenty-four year old, I hired on at Terra Mines as a miner. It was a six-month contract to work underground and live at the 60 man mining camp. No women and no booze. The exception was Wednesday nights. You could get up to four (4) open bottles of beer, which you had to consume in the recreation room. The only other form of mass entertainment was a weekly movie night. A movie was shown on a bare white wall by a 16 mm Bell and Howell projector. That was “if” the weekly supply plane could make it in from Yellowknife.

The going was slow and un-eventful. The portage was flat and smooth. Sparse trees and shrubs poked out of the snow all around me. The tops of rock outcrops were blown clear of snow. Again my mind went back four years….

……I heard that a couple of friends, Daren Cranna and Leo Lachowski, were working at a small start-up mine down the Camsell River. It was approximately twenty miles from Terra. It turned out that they were driving a tunnel into the side of a hill for a small operation situated right on the shore of the river.

For something different to do, I decided to go down the river to visit them. So, on a long summer evening, after work, I filled up two – five gallon tanks with gas; that powered a ten horsepower kicker; that was attached to a 14-foot aluminum boat; and off I went.

I had to be back with the boat before morning. It belonged to the Exploration department and they needed it first thing to go stake some claims around Terra.

I did surprise my two friends, Daren and Leo. We spent a couple of hours swapping stories of our different adventures over a bottle of scotch that one of them produced from his kit.

Then I had to go back to Terra. That is when the river surprised me………the weather had changed…….  

My mind snapped back to the present as I suddenly saw numerous yellow and red lights down the lake, maybe a mile away. I had just come off a portage onto a small lake and was proceeding around a point of land. My spirits rose as I got near the source. I had finally made it. I stopped the grader well away from the first set of lights, glanced at my watch and saw that it was 5:30 am.

I started walking towards the running and parking lights of the trailer attached to a blue Mack tractor. Its exhaust stack was pumping out a long stream of mist high into the night sky. The sky had darkened considerably from earlier on. The northern lights were no longer visible and the moon had long since departed. I could now make out another two tractor/trailers parked close by, each with their running lights on and exhaust streaming straight up.

I got to the cab of the truck and banged on the door. No sound or movement. I opened the door. Deserted. Not sure what to expect, I walked over to the other trucks and one by one I opened the doors of each truck just to find that they were also deserted. Three tractor-trailers sitting in the middle of a small lake, in the middle of the night, roughly ten miles from Terra. Weird. No – Eerie was more like it.

Realization quickly came to me. The road was blocked ahead.

“This must be where Billy went through the ice,” I speculated aloud.

 I began to walk down the road ahead of the first parked truck. I felt myself tense up in apprehension of the unknown. One hundred yards along I could make out a dark blotch in the snow and ice of the road. I approached cautiously as I slowly began making out details. A tractor and tanker frozen solid in the ice.

Bill Warren was hauling a full load of 8000 gallons of diesel fuel in his tanker. The ice just simply gave way underneath him and the tanker sank straight down leaving less than a foot showing above the ice. The tractor sat as if it was trying to pull itself and the tanker out of this hole. Its two front wheels were sitting comfortably on the ice with the engine and cab above, however the remainder of the tractor sat at a 60 - 65 degree angle to the ice. The rear set of tandem wheels, fifth wheel and frame were completely submerged. The back of the cab was at ice level.

“That’s why you travel in pairs or convoys,” I mumbled to myself.

I looked around but couldn’t see the condition of the ice. I walked slowly back past the deserted trucks to the grader contemplating my choices.

“Can’t wait here with a broken wing blade and a frozen solid bombardier.”

“I have to get this equipment into Terra.”

“Is the rest of the ice weak and rotten or was it just this one spot?” I wondered.

I walked around the sorry mess of equipment under my care wondering if anything else could happen tonight. I was tired, sore….. and hungry.

 “I’d love to have a cup of coffee right about now,” I wished.

Mind made up, I engaged the clutch and the grader moved slowly forward. I set the V-plough on the ice and steered off the road towards the shoreline, one hundred yards away. I figured that I’d stay as far away from the accident as possible, which meant that I would hug the shoreline.

At slow speed I circumvented the “bad” area at a crawl. The grader door was wide open. My snowsuit was on and done up. My heart was in my mouth. I reached shallow water without incident. I could see frozen bull rush weeds along the shoreline so I traversed through these past the equipment sitting in and on the ice at the middle of the lake.

My concern, about bashing the plough into a boulder poking out of the ice in the shallow water along the shore, was alleviated when I reached a small point of land and decided to swing back out to the center of the lake and re-join the existing road. I relaxed only after reaching the “dry” land of the next portage.

“Well, that’s it for Billy Bishop’s Bath”

My watch read 6:30 when I spotted bright lights in the distance. Terra. As I got closer I could make out the large tin clad building which housed the mill and machine shop. Five minutes later I was parked in front of the building’s large doors.

The night watchman was the only person around. He gave me directions to where Robinson’s personnel were billeted, so with sleeping bag and kit in hand, I walked over to the doublewide Atco trailer being used as a bunkhouse. Passing the washroom I saw two guys washing up and getting ready to start their day. I poked my head through the doorway and said  “Hi” to Nick Jones.

“Hi,” he said, “What took you so long?”

            I just gave him a blank look and, as my mind raced over the past twenty hours, I just shrugged my shoulders.

 I knew that it would have to be a pretty tall tale to keep the interest of Nick or others who have “been there – done that.” Maybe I’ll tell him another time when it wasn’t so fresh in my mind.

“Where can I sleep?” I asked.

He showed me where four beds were placed in a large room. Someone was still snoring in one but stopped as we entered.

“Thanks” I said after he showed me which spare bed to take, “I’m going to crash for a bit”

“By the way, will you be seeing Dick at breakfast?” I asked Nick as I crashed onto the bed.

“Yes” he said, putting on his parka.

“Could you tell him that his bombardier is here,” I said.

 I quickly rolled over to hide a big smile that broke out on my face. I had just I visualized the expression on Dick’s face when he saw the block of ice and mud called a bombardier.

 I went to sleep knowing everything was all right. A job well done…given the circumstances.

PHOTOS:

Dave Thompson (l), John Dennison (r) MacKenzie beside bunkhouse - Jan'75

Brian McLeod sunbathing on wolf skin rug

Burned out Bunkhouse

Hauling Fuel drums on Great Bear Lake (Note bare ice around and under truck)