To Yellowknife, Sunday, 23 February, 2014
Feb 28th, 2014 by rallyadmin
The road to Fort Smith is empty and clear. You can drive the entire way on year-round roads. You could. We don’t.
John is leading and the road soon ends at a gate which is the beginning of the Fort Chipewyan Winter Road. The designation “Winter Road” indicates that the road is not a year round road and it is created and maintained only in the cold winter months. The winter roads usually go directly over land and water and there’s no shortage of water here.
The Fort Chipewyan road starts in a forest. We pass the gate and not long after we start, the overcast lifts and the sun comes out. It’s postcard beautiful. It’s the kind of day you hope for in the winter. The extreme beauty makes pay less attention to the extreme cold. (It’s already up to the mid minus 20’s.)
An advantage to the driving the Winter Roads is that you can drive very fast. There’s very little traffic (I wonder why) and the road surface is very smooth. It makes sense that the ice surface are smooth but the where the road drives over the frozen ground, it’s also smooth. The crews that maintain these roads take advantage of the fact that the roads can be graded to remove any bumps or frost heaves. Only an occasional pot hole requires look out.
John picks up the speed and we move along smartly. The only thing that slows us down are the turns. Why there are turns in a temporary road across open tundra and frozen lakes, rivers and swamp are a mystery to me but there they are. I presume that this is the path of least resistance.
I wonder if you flew over this road in the late summer what it would look like from the air. Would you be able to see the track of the road or would it disappear in the rapid summer growth. And how much open water would there be?
But this is what we came here for. To drive this road and the few other remaining Winter Roads. There is talk that the Canadian government is oing to replace the main Winter Roads with permanent, year-round roads. How they could possibly do that is yet to be determined but there is the threat to do so here we are driving through the great Canadian North. I’m sure that none of us are thinking about that threat now.
Fort Chipewyan is actually halfway up the road. We go through town and head back to the ice road. Eventually, the road ends at a paved road and we rejoin the empty, paved road to Fort Smith.
We spend the night in Fort Smith at the Pelican Rapids Inn (I have no idea where the name comes from) and leave early to continue to Yellowknife and the Great Slave Lake. Fun is over for now. The roads are empty and wide. Some paved, some gravel. Back to civilization, Great White North style.
Of course, there’s always the unexpected to liven up the day. We’re headed for Hay River to fuel up and then across the river to Yellow knife. We pull into the gas station/convenience store. Pull up to the pumps which, of course, aren’t working. Walk in to the store and there are no lights because there’s no electricity. No electricity, no pumps, no gas.
A young man in the store explains that there are rolling brownouts because one of the main generators has failed and the region is working on some emergency generators which aren’t designed to work full time. Hence, a rolling brownout.
No one seems to be terribly concerned. And no one knows when the power will return. And it’s -25°F outside. At this temperature, the truck gets cold within a few minutes of being turn off. Buildings aren’t much better. These are very tough people.
While we’re inside talking to the young man about the brownouts, Colin is outside chatting up a couple. The husband work for the province and the department he works for says that there is power and a gas station about 30km down the road in Enterprise. Off we go.
Enterprise is on our way anyway. Yes, they do have power and, yes, they has gas. Back on the road. Across the new cable stay bridge over the MacKenzie River. And on to Yellowknife.
Obi-wan