Ice Road to Nowhere

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:59:35 GMT

Ice Road To Nowhere

The air in the dark cab was thick with cigarette smoke as I sat shooting the breeze with Nick. It was well past midnight and we were filling in time with small talk while waiting at our rendezvous point. We were comfortable as the truck’s heater circulated warm air around our feet; the small fan, mounted on the dash, was barely keeping the windshield clear of the frost that otherwise would have formed from the minus forty degree temperature outside. I sat up while rolling down my side window and flicked my cigarette butt out into the snow. A blast of the frigid air swept past me refreshing the cab as I squinted to survey the black outline of Nick’s tractor-trailer. It was sitting a few yards from mine; it’s parking lights sparkling in the cold night’s air. I could see the white mist of exhaust stream steadily upwards from the tractor’s exhaust stack and disappear into the cold night’s air.

“You’re still running” I remarked to Nick as I turned back and looked down at my fuel gauges. I wanted to see how much fuel I had left in my tanks. The needle was on empty.

“That convoy had better show up pretty quick or there will be more than one of us running out of fuel”, I continued, “ I’ll be lucky to keep this truck going for another hour”.

There were six tractor-trailers and drivers waiting in their parked trucks at the north end of Hottah Lake. Five of us were in the same condition…..very low on fuel, while one truck was already out. Buddy had to tow that tractor-trailer behind his own for the last twenty miles to reach this point. Billy, the very cold driver, was now sitting in Buddy’s cab after steering his cold dead truck through the swirling snow kicked up in front of him by Buddy’s truck.

We sat at a junction on the lake that met with the “main” ice road. The main road wound it’s way northward from Rae-Edzo, sixty miles northwest of Yellowknife, across numerous large lakes and land portages, to Echo Bay Mines at Port Radium on the east shore of Great Bear Lake.

We were waiting at the junction to rendezvous with a northbound convoy made up of three tractor-trailers and two tankers traveling together from Yellowknife. It is probably better to say that we were sleeping at the junction since we had just completed a long exhaustive round trip on a road that didn’t exist four days ago and we were all pretty tired. I had managed to get three hours sleep before the two seats I was stretched across became intolerable to my back and I woke up. I had looked across to find Nick awake in his truck.

In any case, we were waiting to “borrow” some of the diesel fuel that the tankers were carrying up to Echo Bay. We would transfer it into our truck’s saddle tanks so we could complete our final southward run of eighteen to twenty four hours into Yellowknife.

“I reckon the trucks will be here within two hours” Nick replied, “if not, Bill’s truck will be frozen solid and we will never get it going without tarps and heaters”.

“I sure hope so,” I said looking out my windshield into the dark night. I studied the area where I knew they would be coming from but could not see any gleam of headlights. Bell Island was blocking any lights coming from the south and there was no glow in the night sky.

“This is going to be a another one of those memorable trips” I said causally and got a “yup” from Nick as I got comfortable again. I leaned my head back and thought about it’s start three and a half days ago…………...

………..Four tractor trailers, returning empty from Echo Bay Mines at Port Radium, and two other trucks, returning from Terra Mines, just south of Conjuror Bay on the Camsell River, met at this junction at the north end of Hottah Lake after making a two day northward run to drop off mine supplies.

We were told to rendezvous here for a “special” job. The job, it turned out, was to move a British Petroleum (BP) oil exploration rig from its drill location on a peninsula on the northwest shore of Great Bear Lake out to Yellowknife. To do that, we had to “push” a 280-mile long ice road to the rig site. An ice road to nowhere, on a road that didn’t exist.

The job was originally contracted out to an “oil patch” trucking outfit operating out of Alberta. They were using an American outfit, with new radar technology, to check the ice thickness as they proceeded across the ice. I think it was their intention to push straight across the main lake to the drill site. For whatever reason, be it the radar didn’t work or the number of large pressure ridges they encountered, they decided to pass the work over to Robinson Trucking, headquartered in Yellowknife, North West Territories.

I was working for Robinson Trucking and we had just finished “pushing” the ice road into Echo Bay and Terra two weeks ago. We were now hauling tractor-trailer loads of mine supplies and fuel into each mine. We would normally haul silver concentrate from the mines in palletized wooden boxes on the return trip. A round trip was scheduled to take four days however circumstances involving minus forty degrees Celsius temperatures, snowstorms, equipment breakdown and equipment going through the ice frequently altered this schedule.

The “oil patch” crew had pushed a rough portage from our main ice road at the north end of Hottah Lake over to Great Bear Lake. From there they tried to make a bee-line across the lake to the rig. It didn’t work.

Our “plan” for this ragtag collection of trucks was to travel from Hottah Lake to McVicar Arm on Great Bear Lake via the same route across the numerous small lakes and portages. Unlike the other outfit, we would then “push” a road southwest down to the bottom of McVicar Arm, across the flat narrow waist of the peninsula onto Keith Arm and then head west to Fort Franklin (Deline). From there we would head north up Keith Arm, past Russel Bay, into Deerpass Bay and onwards to the Scented Grass Hills up its northern shores.

So there we were, assembled at the junction and ready to go. Matthew King, driving the “cab over” tractor,equipped with it’s 6 wheel drive and V-plough mounted on the front, and his empty “high-boy” trailer, started the show rolling, I swung in behind him in my Kenworth pulling a high-boy. Stan B. in "Ira" the Hayes with a drop down trailer came third, followed by Buddy Mercredi with another drop-down, then Bill Warren in his “cab-over” and finally Nick Jones who took up the tail-end Charlie position in his big black Mack.

The drive across the portage to McVicar Arm was rough. The portage, being new, lacked the smoothness of a portage used year after year. Willow shoots sticking out of the snow caused havoc with our tires, the snow was not packed down to fill in the holes, and sections of it were blown in and obliterated by the wind. We couldn’t tell where the road was as we crossed some of the small lakes. It was a good thing we were traversing this part in daylight and Matthew could see the portages “hop-scotching” from small slough to slough or continuing over to the next small lake.

It was on this leg that we literally came crashing through the backyard of a prospector’s camp. The prospector was not too happy with us; as a matter of fact he was downright irate that we had invaded his mineral claim with our road. It took fifteen minutes to calm him down and let us to be on our way again. The funny thing about it was I knew the guy from Yellowknife. We both worked at Giant Mines at the same time and on the same shift. He had recognized me and called me over.

“Don’t you tell anyone that you came across me up here,” he said, making me swear not to tell anyone where he was at in fear that everybody would race up here to lay claims. He really thought he had struck the mother of all mother-lodes.

We reached McVicar Arm after dark. All of us were happy to be across that portage. Collectively, we had seven flat tires and tires were a pain in the ass to change at minus forty. You were lucky if you had Dayton rims - only five nuts to un-tighten and tighten. Bud rims on the other hand had eighteen nuts. Each truck normally traveled with two spares so we were still in good shape but we had a long way to go – no tire repair shops on this road.

The moon was out and the visibility was good so after a short break we headed south down the Arm. Time became irrelevant as the truck’s odometer clicked off the miles. Matthew had his plough down and making a good twenty to thirty miles an hour. I would get the occasional shower of fine-grained snow as the distance between our trucks narrowed due to the slower going when he encountered deeper snow-drifts. Everybody had to be careful and keep a safe distance from each other. You can get mesmerized by the flickering tail-lights of the truck ahead of you.

It was well into the evening when we got to the bottom of McVicar Arm and swung onto the flat portage that traversed the narrow waist of the peninsula. The snow was packed down hard all along our route. We stopped for a rest break and it became evident why the ground was packed so hard. We were on an old portage trail used by the locals to get to over to the Hottah Lake area. Thousands of caribou had been spotted there recently as they grazed their way through the area on-route to their wintering grounds.

We were motoring along this portage when Matthew in the plough truck stopped. I parked just behind him as the other trucks rolled up behind me. I zipped up my snowsuit and walked to the front of the plough where Mathew was standing. We stared into the darkness at numerous lights approaching us fast from head on.

“I don’t have a clue what they are,” he said, “but we will soon find out ‘cause they are getting bigger and bigger.” As the lights became larger we started to hear high pitched engine noises. We finally could make out what they were. A bombardier, with the “Government of the NWT” crests plastered all over it, screeched to a halt beside the six of us. Out popped the driver in his fur hat and government parka asking us if we had seen any caribou. As we were talking, snowmobile after snowmobile sped up and stopped behind the bombardier. I made a rough count of at least twenty machines each pulling a sled full of supplies.

Ah, what the hell, a pow-wow in the middle of the night in the middle of no-where, I said.

We learned that this hunting party, with the game warden in charge, was on-route from Fort Franklin to the south Hottah Lake area to get their yearly supply of caribou meat. Hottah Lake was at the western fringe of the caribou feeding range during their winter migration and the herd was reported to be in the vicinity. I had seen the results of their efforts last winter when I drove past piles upon piles of skinned and quartered carcasses heaped six feet high beside the ice road. The hunters had to work fast after they shot each caribou. With bare hands and a sharp knife they would skin and quarter the animal while it was still warm. When their bare hands became cold, they would stick them into the warm guts to warm them up and then continue until the job was done. The edible organs were separated from the guts before everything froze. The frozen carcasses, hundreds of them, were then collected and heaped into piles ready for transport. This is the way of life for the people of Fort Franklin (Deline) and Rae Lakes area.

We motored on. Night was over and the dawn’s early light found us pointed directly west towards Fort Franklin with Manitou Island behind us. The snow on the bottom of Keith Arm was deeper than we had encountered so far. I could see that Matthew’s truck was really labouring as it tried to push the snow away with the plough. Finally after being slowed to a stop Matthew came trudging back to my Kenworth.

“I’m having too much trouble maintaining a good speed to plough,” he said, “I need your help. Once I get going, can you come up behind me and push?” “With luck the weight and momentum of the two empty tractor trailers will be enough to keep us going until we get through this deep snow.”

“Sure,” I said, as we walked to the front of my truck, “My front bumper is not just for show.” My bumper, custom made, was a heavy duty eight inch “heavy walled” pipe stretched across the front of the truck Three inch heavy walled pipe made up a grill to protect the front end/radiator of the truck. Robinson had bought the truck in Alberta where it was being used in the oil patch. The upper part of my bumper was at the same level as the back end of Matthew’s high-boy trailer so we couldn’t ask for anything better.

“Let’s try for twenty to twenty-five mph and see what happens – I’ll give you up and down hand signals.”

“OK,” I said.

I made my first contact with Matthew’s truck at around fifteen mph. We jostled around for a couple of minutes as we found compatible gears that kept us pushing steadily at twenty-five mph. There we were, on virgin ice, driving in tandem not knowing what was ahead of us. Not knowing how thick the ice was or if the snow hid any cracks. A combined weight of over 80,000 pounds. Crazy.

We were making good progress, I began to relax and think that we may just be able to pull this thing off and get over to Fort Franklin.

“Oops, spoke too soon,” I said as I glanced in my rear-view mirror. Stan’s "Ira" the Hayes truck was rapidly closing the gap between my trailer and his bumper. “What the hell is he doing? I said rhetorically. I braced myself as he slammed into the back of my tractor-trailer. I felt a surge in speed as Stan poured the coals to it. My speedometer was at thirty-five mph and I could see Matthew waving his arm frantically signaling a stop. By that time I was just coasting and waving to Stan to back off. Stan finally backed off after what seemed an eternity and we rolled to a stop.

Matthew was out of his cab in a flash, raced past me with a wicked look on his face and headed for Stan. I jumped out of my truck and reached them in time to stop anything physical. The conversation was very heated for the next ten minutes. Matt and I racked Stan over the coals for pulling that stunt. Not only was Stan doing something that he wasn’t asked to do, he had put Matthew in danger by forcing him to speed across the ice at thirty-five miles per hour with his plough down. If the plough hit an uneven crack or ridge in the ice the truck would violently stop and he, the driver, would continue going – through the window with disastrous results; a scarred up face would be the least of the damage.

That aside, we were doing something extremely dangerous already and we didn’t want Stan make it even more dangerous.

As we walked back to our trucks Matt said “Let’s try that again, we had a good speed and my truck wasn’t labouring.” Within minutes we jostled again and then settled down at a steady pace traversing the ice in tandem. We had gone no further than five miles when I noticed Stan roaring up behind me again, intent on giving us a push.

“Not this time,” I said out loud, as I backed off on the gas and coasted to let a twenty-foot gap open up between Matt and myself. The Hayes continued on and crashed into the back of my trailer. It gave me a jolt and then I felt another surge of speed as Stan pushed me forward again and crashed me into the back of Matt’s trailer. A small gap appeared in front of me so I took this opportunity and steered my truck into the snow bank on the right side as Stan continued to push. We lost speed fast as we paralleled the road Matt was making. At the last moment, before I lost all my forward momentum in the deep snow, I cranked my steering wheel to the left and nosed my truck and trailer back onto the road. Stan and his Hayes didn’t quite make it. He did not have the momentum to go through the bank again; so there he sat cooling off in the snow bank.

Stan and the Hayes became "tail-end Charlie" as the other tractor-trailers moved passed him. We couldn’t leave him there, even though Matt and I would have left him there with a shovel, so Nick threw him a chain and pulled him out. He was now out of sight and out of mind on the single tract road.

On we went, working our way westward into the setting sun at two o’clock in the afternoon. At one point, we paralleled a small pressure ridge for about five miles. Chunks of ice had been tumbled and tossed upon each other from the force of the main ice. The ridge reached a height of eight feet in spots however the majority of it was considered small at just four feet where it widened out into rough broken ice.

There were no significant landmarks or hills to tell us how far we had traveled so it was well into the evening before I saw lights twinkling on the distant horizon; it had to be Fort Franklin. That sight gave me a rush of warmth and security, in the sense, that help was close at hand in case of an emergency. The lights didn’t seem any closer after an hour of apprehensive driving. Distances were deceptive over water so I figured the same must be true over frozen water. After what seemed like another hour I could make out two sets of lights, and as we got closer, I could tell that one set was out on the ice - five miles from the mouth of the bay where the village sat. Matthew finally rolled to a stop just short of three vehicles parked around the ice. I could make out a large dark fissure in the ice. It was ten feet wide and stretched across our path with both ends disappearing into the cold dark night. It was now frozen over again. A crew of men with equipment had just laid a wooden “bridge” across the fissure using twelve-inch by twelve-inch by twelve-foot long timber. They were now flooding the surface of the ice to increase the thickness and strengthen it while holding everything in place.

“Another night on ice,” I mumbled as we finished getting the lowdown from the work foreman. We were just told that the “bridge” was still too weak to hold the weight of a truck crossing over it; we had no choice but to camp out and try in the morning. Camping out meant getting a quart of frozen milk from a small storage box secured outside behind my cab. The coffee in the thermos was long gone so supper or breakfast, or whatever, consisted of cheese spread squeezed onto crackers, spam and a chocolate bar washed down with cold milk. For dessert I wandered over to Matt’s truck and sat having a smoke and discussing the day’s events.

Back at the truck I laid my sleeping bag across the two seats in the cab. The space between the seats was where I stored my food and personal gear in a small box; the top acted as a bench where I could lay down my coat to act as a mattress. I set the idle on the truck to have the engine run at nine hundred rpm, cracked the two side windows open an inch, kicked my boots off, and threw the top half of my sleeping bag over my fully clothed body. I was asleep in minutes. Other than a few quick power naps when we made stops for food, repairs, etc we had been at it for more than forty-three hours.

I woke up to the sound of a truck moving as the driver went through the auxiliary gears in low. It was bright outside. I sat up, looked at my watch and saw that it was 10:00 AM and the sun had just risen. Matthew had positioned his truck in front of the bridge. The work crew from Fort Franklin had formed a crowd beside the bridge to observe his progress. I sat there holding my breath as the plough truck inched across the “bridge”. I looked in my mirrors and saw Buddy swing his truck past me to the approach. Matthew’s trailer was just clearing the structure when the observers swarmed to see how it had held up. They banged each other on the back so I assumed everything was “good to go.”

I slipped on my boots, rolled up my sleeping bag, jumped out of the cab, wrote my name in the snow, did a quick inspection of my tractor-trailer, kicked the tires, and looked to see that the remaining drivers were going through the same motions. I jumped back in the cab, put the transmission’s main gear in first and the auxiliary in low and released the clutch. The Kenworth’s engine quickly reached twenty-one hundred rpm before I shifted the auxiliary into mid range and then into high range. I steered for the “bridge” and saw the observers waving me forward. I geared down to cross. I had the window open with my head sticking out as I looked down at the timber and back along the length of my truck and trailer. I could hear the timber and ice crackling from the stress of the weight put on it but again the bridge held. I motored over to the other two trucks, rolled to a stop and prepared my breakfast - a picnic on a beautiful day with the sun streaming into the cab. I chose to dine with cheese spread on crackers and spam again. I washed the feast down with a fruit cup and warm milk I had left in the cab. The remainder of the trucks got across the fissure by this time, and we were all getting ready to continue on our trip.

The run up the west side of Keith Arm was un-eventful. An ice road had been ploughed from Fort Franklin to the rig site by the oil-rig company so we were able to hot-foot it along at a comfortable speed; comforted in knowing that there was not going to be any surprises on-route. Matt had to plough numerous spots where the wind had blown in the road with snow but that didn’t really slow our overall progress. We traveled northward past Russel Bay and then motored past the headlands guarding the wide mouth of Deerpass Bay. It was at this point we could see the Scented Grass Hills, our final destination, far in the distance on the bay’s north shore. One final portage from the bay to the site and we will have completed the 280 mile trip in minus forty degrees temperature on a road that didn’t exist two days ago and would cease to exist in a winter’s savage storm.

The final portage was a nightmare. Billy in his “cab over “ tractor was being bounced through the roof as his front wheels dropped into each pothole along the route. The rest of us were not fairing much better as we had to crawl along up the steep hills, slipping and sliding, backing up, taking runs at the hills. Our tires were taking a beating and I had to stop a change a flat tire with my last spare.

It was late afternoon when I pulled into the clearing where the oilrig was located. Loads were stacked all around waiting to be picked up and transported away. A rig worker came over to my truck, directed me where to park and then informed me that hot coffee was on the stove in the kitchen building. I scooted into the kitchen and sat down with Matthew and Buddy. Their trailers were being loaded and they would be ready to leave as soon as they secured the load. There was no reason to hang around this camp since this was the only “living quarters” building left open. The regular sleeping quarters, Atco trailers, were boarded up ready to be skidded onto the deck of the “drop down” trailers with the tractor’s winch. I went outside in time to see Matthew and Buddy head out down the road. They would wait for the rest of us back on the ice as Matthew had the only plough. I wandered over to watch the loader operator and his helper begin to load my trailer with “drill steel”. Each was six inches in diameter and 2 times 20 or forty feet in length, which was five feet shorter than the length of the trailer. The trailer took on eighty thousand pounds of steel so my total weight of truck and trailer was close to one hundred twenty thousand pounds; a fast trip to the bottom if the ice was rotten. I “belly-wrapped” the steel to the trailer with all my chains and “boomers” cinches. I didn’t want this load to shift or break loose.

“Don’t stop suddenly,” said the helper with a sly smile as we finished. He headed off to the kitchen as I walked around my truck giving everything a close inspection. “Stopping suddenly” could be detrimental to your health if your load of steel, or even one, shot forward from momentum if tractor and trailer suddenly stopped; and I had to get off the Scented Grass Hills with the load pushing me and NO trailer brakes to slow me down the steep hills.

Many drivers on the ice road didn’t like hooking up their air to the trailer’s air brake system. The condensation from the air compressor can freeze the air lines thus the brakes wouldn’t release. In other cases when you left your trailer brakes on, while parked, the brakes would freeze and wouldn’t release. The consequences were eight trailer wheels being dragged over the ice. Alcohol in the air-lines, a heavy sledgehammer to the brake drums and a lot of sweat were needed to rectify the situation.

Billy was ready to go so we teamed up to head out. The drive back down the Scented Grass Hills was akin to a roller coaster ride. The tractor brakes and engine were not enough to slow the truck down. The engine would come close to “over-revving” so I would have to up-shift each time this happened and with each up-shift my speed would increase. The weight of the trailer load was pushing against the tractor so I would have to keep the load behind me by releasing the tractor brakes. If you didn’t release the brakes the load “would get ahead of you” and push the back-end of the tractor aside causing your rig to “jack-knife”.

“That happened to Gerry last year on Squirrel Hill”, I said to myself, “he blocked the hill completely.” We were traveling together heading south. When he didn’t show up at the bottom of the hill I had to drop my trailer off on the ice and “back up” my tractor up the hill for half a mile. We rigged a chain from the back of my tractor to the front of his tractor and after numerous attempts managed to swing him around so he was facing down hill again. It was a nice day so that made things easier - it could have been dark with the wind howling.

Any way, just like a roller coaster; there were also level stretches and even small up-hills where I could gear down and get prepared for the next steep decline. This went on for the ten miles of “pothole ridden” portage that shook everything on the truck, all the way down the Hills to Deerpass Bay. It was well into the evening when I met up with the other two trucks. Now sit and wait for the last two to come from the rig site.

We were on our way again, heading home in the middle of the night – six fully loaded tractor-trailers running fast down Keith Arm with the white exhaust streaming from our stacks like long banners rippling in the wind. The night was clear and very cold. The light from the moon and stars gave the surrounding ice terrain an eerie blue hue. I could make out the red trailer lights of the truck in front of me on the occasions when the flying snow from the trailer wheels was blown away from by crosswinds; and by looking in my mirrors I could also see the blurry headlights of the truck behind me through the snow blizzard I was kicking up with my wheels. We had to be careful to keep our distance from each other.

We were being entertained by the Northern Lights again. The red, green, blue, white and yellow sliver streaks of the “lights” shimmered their way across the sky like translucent snakes undulating from the horizon and passing overhead. When overhead, I felt I could reach up and touch them. Beautiful to behold and fascinating to watch, I wished everyone in the world could see this spectacle.

The time went by fast, we reached the “wooden bridge’ outside Fort Franklin well past midnight. We could see the lights of the village shining in the distance, however there was no reason for us go there so we camped out on the ice again.

We were well on our way before the sun rose. Matthew had the plough down again widening his inbound path without slowing us down. Across the ice at the bottom of Keith Arm and over the portage to McVicar Arm, then northward towards the final portage back to Hottah Lake. The day was cloudy but nice.

The ice “exploded” directly in front of me. I was motoring along at roughly thirty miles per hour, keeping a spacing of one hundred fifty yards from the loaded tractor-trailer ahead of me, when it happened. It was the weight of that truck that caused a chunk of ice, best described as a thirty inch by thirty inch by thirty inch “ice cube”, to explode upward out of the roadway on a geyser of water that reached fifteen feet in the air. The ice cube came crashing down as the geyser lost its pressure. After the initial shock I tried to stop but realized that I would not be able to in time. I did decide very quickly to crank the steering wheel and crash through the snow bank out on the un-ploughed ice. I was able to maintain my forward momentum through the one-foot deep snow by gearing down and motoring on in a wide arc until I thought it was safe to barge back through the snow bank onto the road again. I stopped just short of the trucks ahead of me that had stopped when I veered off the road.

I stayed in the cab of the truck until I was able to gather my wits. It was a little traumatic to see the ice and water explode just in front of me and not know what else may happen. In the meantime, the three trucks behind me had stopped where I veered off the road and the drivers went to see the hole in the ice with the lake water still oozing from it. They decided to follow my trail blazing and made their detour in my tracks.

I was somewhat relaxed and back to normal after we had a break for food and relaxation. Then, northward again, up the long McVicar Arm and finally onto the portage to Hottah Lake. The portage was as rough as we left it but the weight of our loads eased the bouncing around in our cabs. I had to stop on-route to find that I had another flat tire. I had no remaining spares so I had to take the flat off and proceed with seven tires on the trailer. By the time I caught up to the rest of the trucks I could see that Buddy was towing Billy’s tractor-trailer. I guessed he was out of fuel since he had voiced a concern about being low on fuel when we last stopped. The portage was flat so they were making a good pace over the rough road. I looked down at my fuel gauge and saw that I should have enough to get to our rendezvous on Hottah Lake. No sign of the prospector’s camp, he must have moved off the road back into the “bush”. We pushed on over the portage, then onto the ice of Hottah Lake and finally to the junction. A round trip of 560 miles in three and one half days………………..

“I see lights,” Nick exclaimed, “They should be here in fifteen minutes,” The words brought me back to the present - sitting in the truck waiting for the convoy to meet us at the junction. Nick slipped into his parka, jumped out of the cab and went to wake the others up. I stared at the moving lights in the distance while I poked my arms into my snowsuit and got ready to go out into the cold night.

We all knew each other so the “hellos” and “what’s new” and the “stories” took fifteen minutes to dispense with. We stood around in the headlights of the lead truck shuffling and stomping on the ice under our feet to stay warm. Then down to business. There were no electric or manual pumps on any of the trucks. The only way we could transfer diesel fuel was to crack the main outlet valve at the bottom of the tanker and let the fuel gush into a couple of five gallon pails that someone had luckily came up with. It was a sloppy job with diesel splashing all over. My mitts were soaked through which didn’t help the insulation value. It took a while dispensing the fuel. Each truck needed forty gallons poured through a four-inch filler hole and that meant fourteen pail loads at three gallons a pail. The tips of my fingers felt frozen solid by the time I finished. I threw the fuel soaked mitts away and looked down at my snowsuit to see fuel splashes all over them. They would have to be cleaned to get rid of the smell but hopefully retain their insulation quality. I decided to leave them on and endure the smell in the cab.

Knowing that the road was clear to the south and there was no threat of being snowed in, we felt that we were no longer dependent on the plough truck to lead us. The plough trucks would normally travel at a slower speed than what the regular trucks would like to travel at so we discussed any potential problems on the road with the northbound crew and decided to go ahead of the plough truck in pairs. Stan and his Hayes ended up in front of me so off we went. The plan was to stop at Malfait Lake where the company had set up an “Atco” trailer to serve as a “half-way” rest stop and kitchen. If we were feeling OK, we would then push on through to Yellowknife.

The muffled sound of the engine droning steadily along at 1800 rpm was relaxing as I drove down Hottah Lake. I began to reminisce back to a time last year when I and another driver, Billy Warren, eventually got past our plough truck as we were heading north on Hottah with loads for Echo Bay. We had just passed a southbound convoy. Those drivers told us the road ahead was in good shape and it was clear sailing. The day was nice and sunny and I was leading at a speed of roughly thirty-five miles per hour. I must have been sight seeing because when I looked at the side of the road I noticed a large crack running parallel to the road. How long it had been there I didn’t know but it was paralleling the road as far as I could see.

After the initial act of puckering, I slowed the truck and frantically waved to the other driver to slow down and pointed to the crack. I kept the tractor-trailer rolling in first gear as I scrambled into my snowsuit, opened the driver’s door and prepared to jump from the truck in an instant. I put one foot on the running board with my body half out of the cab and steered with my right hand. My heart was pounding as we crawled along the ice. The other truck had backed off from mine but was still crawling along also. The crack disappeared finally under the snow-bank a half-mile up the road and I began to relax and increase the speed slightly. When I was confident we were past the danger I stopped and thanked the ice gods with my traveling companion. Hottah Lake was a large lake and it had a few surprises.

I chuckled about the experience as I returned to the present with the warmth of the cab to comfort me on this cold night.

The Hayes started to act up on Stairs Bay and it shuddered to a stop as we got to the beginning of the portage over to Beaverlodge Lake. The engine would not start no matter what we did. We figured snow or some other contaminant must have got into the fuel as we were re-fuelling at Hottah. The next best thing was to tow him to “half-way” camp and try to get it running there, assuming they had parts and supplies. We didn’t want the truck to freeze up. I swung around him, and then backed up to chain him to the back of my trailer. I started towing the Hayes off the ice onto the portage while Stan steered from the cold cab. I managed the small dips and knolls without any trouble. We finally made it onto Beaverlodge Lake were I was able to pick up speed. The portage over to Malfait Lake was a different story. The incline off the ice onto the portage was too steep and long for me to pull both my loaded truck and Stan’s dead tractor and trailer. I would get two thirds of the way up before I would spin out. We coasted back down and tried again but to no avail. We coasted back again. Stan and I discussed the situation and we decided to leave the Hayes on the ice. He would ride with me over to the “half-way” camp. Hopefully he could return with fuel filters and fuel line de-icier before his truck froze up solid.

Off we went bouncing over the portage and onto Malfait Lake. We lit up a couple of smokes and were motoring along when out of the corner of my eye I noticed the glowing ember of Stan’s cigarette arc through the air and disappear off to my right. I glanced over and there was no Stan……the door was wide open. You can’t stop a loaded tractor-trailer quickly enough on ice so when I finally stopped I rushed around to the passenger side and found Stan hanging upside down completely out of the cab except for his foot that was jammed under the seat. I was relieved to see him since I envisioned his mangled and bloody body being dragged under the rear wheels of the trailer. I grabbed his inverted body and lifted while he squirmed around to release his foot. We fell into a heap beside the truck as his foot came clear. That’s what saved him from being run over by the four wheels on my tractor and probably the four wheels on my fully loaded trailer. One minute he was having a smoke and leaning against the door and the next moment he was upside down about to be killed.

I finally delivered him to the “half-way” camp alive and in one piece. Honest, people have seen him since then. He rummaged through the spare parts at the camp and found what he wanted. He then solicited the assistance of the cook’s helper and their ¾ ton crew-cab truck and off they went back up the road to the stranded Hayes truck.

I had a decision to make – continue south by myself and try to catch up to two trucks that left over one hour ago or sit and wait for Matthew and Buddy who were still behind me. If I left now, and drove through the remainder of the night, I could probably make it into Yellowknife in the late afternoon. I knew I could grab a power snooze here and there on-route so I decided to continue alone. It would be a week on the ice by the time I got back and that was long enough to be eating, sleeping and driving in the same truck. Other than the hot meals at Echo Bay, the oil-rig site and here I, and the others, were eating cold meats, cheese, crackers and frozen bread washed down with thawed out milk and fruit juices. Besides, it would also be nice to use a bathroom again. Outdoors toilets at forty below zero with nothing to sit on required a certain knack to successfully complete your work in record time. Heaven forbid if it was windy. Like it or not, you had to face into the wind, if you know what I mean.

I was able to make good time coming south down Rae, Faber and Sarah Lakes. The road was long and straight and I upped my speed on the ice and then slowed considerably when I got near the shore. I was worried a bit when I came to Squirrel with the infamous Squirrel Hill where many a truck had problems. It was a long, relatively straight uphill grind if you were heading north. Most of the experienced drivers put the transmission in low gear and crawled up the hill in a slow steady pull without changing gears. The unlucky ones kept downshifting as their speed dropped and usually ended up spinning out thus blocking the road for others. I managed the downhill run by starting down the hill in low gear. The weight of the load on the trailer forced me to up-shift until I was traveling at a good clip when I reached level ground near the shoreline.

I caught up to the other two trucks near the abandoned Rayrock Mine. They had stopped to change a flat tire. They had no spares left so were taking a tire off one of the trailers and putting it on the tractor so it would have a complete set of inflated tires on the “drivers." They had been at it for 40 minutes in the cold. The sun was just rising and I could make out the four bunkhouses, mine office and the mill buildings that made up the old uranium mine in the distance. We started down the old Rayrock road. It was made with crushed waste rock from the mine and meandered it’s way southward to the Emile River where we forded the river beside the big concrete bridge abutments for a bridge that no longer existed. Shortly after the river came the fork in the road that led to the Strutt Lake power station operated by NCPC. Power lines were once strung back to the Rayrock Mine however the main lines now lead into Yellowknife. The road continued southward to the top end of Marian Lake.

As we motored past a small creek between the river and the junction my mind flashed back to the previous winter when we were pushing this same road north. I was following the big tired skidder in the Champion road grader with its big V-plough mounted on front. The ice on the creek did not support the weight of the skidder as it went over it and one wheel dropped through the ice creating a deep pothole. I came along in the grader, with my restricted vision of the road, and “bang” down went my front left wheel into the pothole. The grader lurched upwards out of the pothole propelled by its 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 on 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 snap completely through. There I sat completely immobile with no garage for a hundred miles.

I continued to motor down the road as I thought back to our repair efforts to the grader. I eventfully came to a trampled down area beside the road where a driver had driven his loaded tractor-trailer off the narrow elevated road. I could see the tire marks in the snow. They said he was in so far that “you had to pack a lunch if you were going to go see him.”

My thoughts turned to Yellowknife as we hit the top end of Marian Lake. The sun was shining on a very cold day. The streaming banner of exhaust from the truck in front told me that Nick had “put the pedal to the metal” as soon as he started down the lake. We were now three hours from town and the infamous “Strange Range” hotel and bar, where it was imperative that you sat with your back against the wall while you sat drinking the refreshments purchased from the proprietors. I would be in town in time to take a long bath, get cleaned up and head over to the girlfriend’s place. Then probably down to the Gallery for a couple of drinks….damn, I’m wide awake now and roaring to go with no thoughts about my next trip north…………………….

McSnowWriter's Pamphlet: 9.1 - Ice Road to Nowhere

Ice Road to Nowhere