.
Search
Email this articleE-mail this story  Discuss this articleWrite letter to editor  Discuss this articleOrder a classified ad
Frozen artery

The ice road to the mines of the Barren Lands closed for the season last night. News/North takes a look at the role it plays in the city's economy

Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 01/02) - The Nuna Logistics dispatch centre is the nerve centre of the ice road.

Situated in a portable at the corner of Old Airport Road and Highway 3, the atmosphere inside is quiet but efficient as truckers sign in and out before and after their day-long treks north.

This year, the centre ran like a well-oiled machine during one of the better ice road seasons in memory. The ice road closed yesterday, after about 7,900 trucks hauled 250,000 tons of freight up and down its icy stretches.

"We had really good weather and there was minimal shutdown due to maintenance-related issues so we didn't have a lot of shutdown days," said Echo Bay Mines road manager Kirk McLellan.

Average ice thickness for the road this year topped 50 inches, he said. The road wound north-east 567 kilometres to Echo Bay's Lupin mine with minor arterials branching off to the BHP and Diavik sites.

Every 20 minutes, another convoy of four trucks geared out of the dispatch centre parking lot heading north. The loads they carried were as varied as the needs of the mining camps they served: everything from trailers full of cleaning chemicals to trucks so heavy they needed to be carried in multiple loads.

The road operated almost continuously since it opened Jan. 26 to an operating weight of 52,000 pounds per truck. By Feb. 14, ice density allowed a maximum load weight of 125,000 pounds, which increased to 137,000 pounds on March 8.

Private police

A privately-owned road which costs about $9 million to build and operate every year, the ice road is an entity all to itself. It has its own cooks, its own operations workers, even its own police.

The three companies that use the ice road -- Echo Bay Mines, BHP Billiton and Diavik -- pay a percentage of the costs to build and maintain the road based on how much they use it. The road is operated by the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road Joint Venture.

Other companies pay about 13 cents per ton per kilometre. That means a full load costs about $2,900 to travel the full length of the road, which is still much cheaper than flying in supplies.

The loads

The ice road is the lifeblood of the mines. As the diamond mines rise in importance, so too does the road itself: four years ago, 1,500 loads trundled across the frozen highway; then 3,500 the following year and over 8,000 last year.

Building and maintenance schedules are planned around the annual gush of supplies. When planning isn't perfect, activity can slow down. That happened at Diavik, where building slowed down around Christmas as supplies dwindled.

"When the winter road opens you're getting close to the bottom of the barrel," said Diavik spokesman Tom Hoeffer. "Bringing more materials in there will allow more work."

Diavik brought in about 2,900 loads this year, down from 4,100 last year. This will be the second last ice road haul before Diavik begins production, scheduled for April 2003.

BHP Billiton was satisfied with the ice road this year. The diamond mines' operations have been in progress for several years, and the ice road fuels its operations for the coming year.

"All I know is our guys are happy," said spokeswoman Denise Burlingame while the road was still open.

"We're on time, things are coming up as expected. No slow downs. Looks like a good winter road season."

The mines use the trucks to haul equipment north, but also to haul spent and broken materials south. Backhaul contents include waste oil, recyclables and equipment that needs to be repaired.

The police

The ice road is seasonal employment for all sorts of truck drivers, who come North from across Canada, lured by the money to be made.

But the drivers aren't the only seasonal workforce. About 15 security personnel also come in to work as the road's private police force: most of them are ex-Mounties.

Employed by SecureCheck, they work 12 hours a day, seven days a week setting radar traps, responding to emergencies and enforcing general road safety.

"Our guys act like a highway patrol. They have radar, firefighting and oil spill equipment," said SecureCheck president and CEO Ron Near. "They patrol the roads, monitor the speeds and have some dispatching duties on the roads."

Speeding is a major issue on the ice road, since the trucks create a wave under the ice. Higher speeds equal a bigger wave; if the wave is too big, it can shatter the road surface. The median speed limit for loaded trucks heading north is 35 km/h.

Speed limits are determined by ice thickness, and vary according to load weight. The road has a zero tolerance policy on speeding: first-time offenders receive a five-day suspension. Anyone committing a second offence is banned from the road for the season.

Although Near said he didn't have figures on the number of drivers suspended this year, he said "you get the odd person who does (speed), but overall with the amount of loads and the amount of drivers and trips, the suspensions are very low."

The community

The first 70 kilometres of the trucks' trip north is on the Ingraham Trail. A perennial concern is the impact on the residents whose homes line the trail.

Every year, at least some residents are adversely affected by the trucks. This year, stones whipped up by passing trucks broke at least one windshield.

Measures were taken to minimize the impact on residents, however. Nuna made efforts to schedule oversize loads between midnight and 6 a.m. to avoid blocking the road to regular traffic. And an electronic sign was erected just outside of Yellowknife to warn drivers when unusual loads were on the road.

"We will try to do everything possible to not disrupt their lives during the haul," said McLellan, the Echo Bay roads manager, who spoke while the road was still in operation.

Brad Heath, who lives in Prelude East, said, "You get the odd guy who's speeding or driving down the middle of the road, but mostly they're professional.

Sandy Holmes, another Prelude East resident, said the road is in better shape this year than in years past. He said most large rocks have been cleared off the road this year, minimizing the risk to windshields.

"It's actually going very good this year," he said.

Heath said the biggest condition of the road is still his biggest concern.

"It's a narrow road, it's not in good shape and when it's dark it can be a little hairy sometimes," he said.

But, he added, "from their point of view, if they're new to that road it's got to be a scary experience. I certainly wouldn't want to be doing it."

What they're hauling

Diavik -- fuel, pre-fab dorm units, cement, ammonium nitrate, truck chases for 230-tonne haul trucks, generators for a diesel plant, food

BHP -- fuel, ammonium nitrate, a crusher, 190-tonne trucks; mechanical shovels, one-tonne trucks, excavator, bridge spans for a bridge crossing that will be constructed, components for a new accommodation wing, food