Frozen highway

Hughie Osmond Sr. still has the email from the television producers.

They were planning a new show documenting the truckers who drive on the ice roads in the Northwest Territories, and they wanted to know if he would agree to have cameras follow him.

Mr. Osmond never responded. Having now seen the History Channel's "Ice Road Truckers," he says the show slightly exaggerates the dangers of driving on the ice roads.

The real danger, he says, is in building the frozen highway every winter.

For over 10 years, the Port aux Basques resident was one of the first people each year to blaze a trail through the frozen wilderness, from Yellowknife to one of several diamond mines over 500 kilometres away.

The ice roads mostly stretch over frozen lakes which dot the sub-arctic wilderness. There are still trees at that latitude. The roads occasionally go over land in short stretches known as portages, connecting lake to lake.

During his time in the north, Mr. Osmond saw a lot of innovation and changes in how the ice roads are constructed each year. Work usually begins around the middle of December.

"Making those ice roads is a very risky job - first of all, you're out there and you really don't know what the thickness of the ice is," he said.

The first task is to determine that thickness. At the very beginning of the season, a helicopter goes out first, touching down in places to allow crews to make measurements.

After the helicopter, it was Mr. Osmond's turn. He travelled by snowmobile, stopping periodically to drill down through the ice with an auger to measure the thickness of the ice. He was one of the first ones to venture out in the cold.

"You're talking about -30 to -45. Even -50 [degrees Celsius]. The coldest I saw it there -me and my son were there working and it was -62."

Mr. Osmond said they were looking for ice at least 16 inches thick to get the roads open. Ice a foot thick or less was too thin for even pickup trucks.

Recently the companies have developed a piece of equipment called a profiler. It is towed behind a vehicle and continuously measures the thickness of the ice with seismic equipment.

Once the ice was deemed thick enough in most places, crews would be sent out to the camps to bring out equipment that had been stored away from the previous year.

Even then, the ice was too thin for the really big equipment.

"When you go out and open the camp, you have to send out your smallest, lightest equipment first," said Mr. Osmond.

Clearing snow off the ice is the main goal of the crews. However, some snow is wanted because once packed down, it creates traction for the trucks that carry supplies and equipment to and from the diamond mines.

Clear ice is bright blue or green, with spider-webs of cracks running through it. He said cracks are actually a good thing, because they indicate the ice has some give.

In the past few years, workers have been flooding the road by drilling down to the water and spraying layer after layer of water, much in the same way one would make a backyard skating rink. At -20, that running water can freeze quickly. Mr. Osmond said inexperienced crew members can make a bumpy road if they flood the ice in the wrong way.

When he first started out, Mr. Osmond said flooding was rare. It was done at the end of the season as a preventative measure.

Although periodic checks would give the ice road builders a good sense of the overall thickness, currents under the ice from streams and brooks could cause ice thickness to vary widely over a single lake.

The danger in the early part of winter is breaking through the ice. Mr. Osmond said trucks and equipment always travel in teams. The driver following behind would radio ahead at the slightest sign of water coming from the ice. It is something he has witnessed many times.

"You just stop. Get out. You don't back up, you don't speed up, nothing. Just stop and get out," he said. "If she's gonna go down, she's gonna go down."

Once out of the trucks, the drivers would take measurements and try to determine the source of the water.

"When you find something like that you have to find out where it's coming from, how far it's going, and which way to get around it. That's scary," he said.

Mr. Osmond said truckers telling stories of their rigs going down through the ice are almost always an exaggeration. Deaths on the ice road are rare, but when they happen, it is usually the drivers of equipment that are killed at the beginning or the end of the season.

After helping construct the road, Mr. Osmond would spend his winter making runs to and from the mines. The 500-plus-kilometer trip can take the better part of three days round trip. Mr. Osmond brought along his camera, occasionally stopping to take pictures of wildlife or of trucks passing on the road. He says it is a job he now misses.

Out in the silence of the wilderness, Mr. Osmond said the ice can be the loudest noise you hear on a cold, still day."Ice is always making noises. Always. Non-stop it's going 'crack, crump, crack, crump.' Then there are times you get those big, loud cracking noises. They're eerie. They'll make the hair stand up on the back of your neck."

reporter@gulfnews.ca