Thorunn Howatt
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 30/02) - Trucks started rolling down the Tibbitt to Contwoyto ice road this week - but only with small loads.

"We're just over 50 per cent of the gross allowable vehicle weight of 125,000 pounds," said logistics manager for Echo Bay Mines Ltd. and spokesperson for the winter road Kirk McLellan explaining that the maximum amount of weight, including the weight of the truck and its load for general operations is 125,000 pounds. "So right now we are operating at 55,000," he said

Delivery vans carrying groceries to the road's three camps are an example of some types of vehicles now allowed to travel.

Ice thickness varies at different locations on the road but averages about 30 inches or more. The recent cold weather and seasonal low snowfall has added up to a good year for ice road building. Ice thickness is measured with an ice profiler, a special radar system that is pulled behind an amphibious vehicle. Like an echo, it shoots a sound or beam down through the ice and records findings onto a piece of graph paper in the pull-vehicle. It measures thickness and ice density. Last year trucks didn't head up the road until Feb. 5.

Although the ice road begins outside of Yellowknife, just off Ingraham Trail, the real start of a trucker's trip is at Nuna Logistic's dispatch station on the corner of Old Airport Road and Highway 3. Vehicles hauling to Diavik's diamond mine site, BHP Billiton's Ekati Mine, DeBeers Snap Lake site and Echo Bay's Lupin Mine check in and are allotted dispatch order slots. Trucks line up at dispatch about a half-hour before they are supposed to leave and pick up paperwork.

This year, there are expected to be about 7,500 loads on the road - just a bit down from last year with Diavik hauling a bit less and BHP Billiton hauling a bit more than last year.

"Last year was a bit of a different year because it was Diavik's first year of getting ramped up," but McLellan said this year was a very "normal" year as far as ice road building is concerned.

The licence of occupation which is the primary instrument from the government to operate on the winter road is jointly held by BHP Billiton, Diavik and Echo Bay Mines Ltd. The licence expires in 2003.