Nina's Latest
Today was the best day so far, it was exciting , challenging and beautiful. We drove the Ice road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk 190 km each way. Some of the stories in the second season of the Ice Road Truckers featured this very road. We watched the makings of the show last night to get in the mood.
So much has changed since April 6th and my first addition to the journal. To think back then I was nervous to walk on a frozen lake, scared of the roads ahead, the cold, and the availability of supplies and today we both drove on the MacKenzie river and the Arctic Ocean to Tuk.
As you know from Rob's journal the Nisgaa and Cassier Highways were fine and only the Cranberry junction Rd was closed so that fueled our enthusiasm for the next challenge. The kids we met in Hyder said they were off to Tuk, so why not us. I didn't expect the road to Inuvik to be open as I had read that the ice has often started to thaw by mid April, but with every kilometer we heard that the road was still operating and the people we met along the way were more intrepid than the assistant in Williams Lake and in fact encouraged us to proceed to Tuk to experience the magic of the drive.
Without road maps, for none are available, we drove immediately from the town down onto the MacKenzie and followed the river to the delta and then the ocean. So splendid. At first the river meandered in big sweeping curves and the road was smooth like a highway. Then the fresh water met the sea water and it became a little rougher but still very pleasant and finally the path to Tuk was almost straight as the ice was plowed or blown free of any snow and it was more challenging due to the slick surface.
As for the cold I have adapted a little and I am wearing a lot more. Today it was -15°F as we embarked on the ice road and it continued around that for most of the morning, finally getting to -2°F when we about to leave Tuk. For quick photo ops we were able to jump out of the RV in just jeans and a skivvy , as long as we could quickly return to the warmth. For a longer walk of just 2-3 blocks we needed all our gear and today we both needed hand warming pads in our gloves while photographing.
Warmer climes will certainly suit me better but I have survived.
Not so the RV. Neither the new insulation installed by Rob nor the removal of drawers to allow the house heat to penetrate the water pipes was sufficient in these temperatures, and the pump froze and is once again leaking. It is a slow leak and it almost immediately turns to ice as soon a it emerges from the pump so for the moment we are reasonably relaxed, but will not be as we return south and the weather warms. The cupboard holding Robs clothes started to sag and on closer inspection part of the cupboard had broken away so Rob put in 2 L shaped brackets to help. Today the small locking flap over the electric power cable access became too brittle in the cold and broke in half and the heating pads to keep the holding tanks from freezing would not come on tonight.
Supplies have been basic and the shops open for business have been few and far between but with our enlarged pantry and visits to bars and cafes for the odd meal we haven't had a problem. So things look better as we head into Alaska, I should manage another 1-2 weeks of extra cold weather, supplies should be fine and if the RV doesn't pack it in we should achieve our goal of driving to Prudhoe Bay.
We set an alarm for this morning in order to get an early start as our plan was to drive the ice road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk and back today a distance of 190km each way. And since we had no idea what the driving conditions would be like we wanted a lot of time to make the journey.
We stayed in a motel last night, partly a celebration, partly because of the water troubles in the motor home.
At 8:00 am as we left the car park the temperature was 0°F and I was a little apprehensive about the day and how we and the vehicle would handle the cold weather. Silly me; immediately we descended onto the ice road on the MacKenzie River - a 5 minute drive from downtown Inuvik - the temperature dropped to -15°F (thats below -26°C for the Aussies and incidentally the coldest temp every recorded in Australia is -26°C recorded at Charlottes Pass in the snowy mountains). It took our poor Chevy a long time to get up to full operating temperature and when we stopped and let it idle the engine cooled down well below operating temp.
The first 60 kms of the ice road was down one of the channels of the MacKenzie river. The river looked generally to be about 500+ yards wide and the ice road was half that width most of the time - say a 6 to 8 lane expressway width. For this section the road was surprisingly smooth and we could maintain 55-60 mph speeds without too much bouncing. The surface was a mix of blue colored bare ice and ice with a sprinkling of snow cover. The work gangs on the road try to keep it free of snow so the cold penetrates the ice to make it thicker. On the snow covered patches the traction was good but the bare ice sections were, as you might have expected slippery - difficult even to walk on, requiring a long distance to bring the vehicle to a stop, and a tendency to slide in the corners; never thought I would do a 4 wheel drift in a motor home. We stopped a number of times to examine the ice and boy was it cold. The ice was transparent so that we could see into it. Difficult to tell how thick it was but it looked thick, maybe 6 feet. I read something recently that said in places the ice road was 8 feet thick. Also surprisingly and disconcertingly the ice was full of cracks that descended into the depths.
The second 60 km section covered the area where the MacKenzie channel approached the mouth of the river and the Arctic Ocean. The ice became noticeably less smooth with a lot of what I could only call swells; little round topped ridges across the road up to 2 feet high. This is apparently from the tidal action of the Arctic ocean. We did not notice it but apparently large trucks cause the ice to actually rise and fall as they pass over it. The ice color also seemed to have changed from blue to green. Our speed reduced over this and the subsequent section of the road to 45mph.
Into the final 60 km section of the road and our GPS told us we were driving on the ocean and sure enough we came upon a little sign on the side of the road that said Arctic Ocean. It was just a little bit weird to be driving on an ocean. The conditions continued from the previous section; irregular swells across the road, and ice with a green color. Now the road was not following the course of a river but paralleling the ocean shore. We saw the occasional building on the shore that we assumed were summer fishing huts.
Tuk is a small village which in summer is apparently on a peninsula of land the juts into the Arctic Ocean. And that's what it looks like on Google Earth. But for us today it was a small village in the middle of a sea of white and we had no idea where the land stopped and the ocean began. We spent a couple of hours there. We walked around the streets for a while and also drove around a bit. Took photos of the city monument, some old churches, some boats hauled up beside some houses, two replicas of traditional half buried log buildings, and called in at both town stores. Nina chatted to one elderly lady in one of the grocery stores to find out about Pingos - small hills formed by up thrusting ice caused by the freezing of the wet sand at the bottom of a drying out lake. We noticed that all the houses were raised off the ground so that heat does not get transmitted into the permafrost. There was quite a lot of activity in the town, people walking around, cars and pickups driving around, tractors laying gravel on the roads, and people scooting around on snow machines. We saw one couple with a snow machine towing a skimmer (like a plastic sled behind the snow machine) full of groceries and the lady was sitting in the skimmer with the groceries.
By the time we decided to make the return journey the day had warmed up to -2°F. On the drive back we passed a number of vehicles going towards Tuk. A few were trucks carrying goods, but most were pickups with snow machines aboard going (we assumed) to attend a snow machine race in Tuk tomorrow.
The location recorded with this entry, and the marker on the map, are a bit of poetic license. We are actually spending the night in Inuvik, but the map marker, and the Lat/Lng reference the position of Tuk. I simply could not allow Tuk not to get a place on our map.
