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Originally Posted by grainhauler08
Whats the deal with driving across the river,is it a short cut in the wintertime up there?Man I bet thats kinda creepy isn't it?Does the ice get pretty thick?Sounds like river is wide,is it deep also?Wow thats really different.Just curious.
There is no bridge, we cross in the summer on an itty bitty ferry:
It carries 2 trucks at a time!
In the Arctic there are very few roads, 7 in total for 250,000,000 square miles of country, & most of it is in the MacKenzie River delta, which in summer is pretty much under water, so in winter they build roads over the lakes & rivers to get frieght to the isolated settlements & mines that are up there. It's the only time of year that frieght can be hauled in there.
The ice must be 28" thick before it is safe to cross with a truck. The Mackenzie River is up to 10 miles wide in the far north (near the Arctic Ocean, but where I cross it is amost 3 miles wide, it is kind of creepy the first time in winter cause the ice crackles & groans, but you get used to it. Whe you have a problem is when it DOESN'T make noise, that's when there's trouble. I understand that the Mackenzie can be seen from space.
The reason it makes noise is because ice actually floats above the water & when you drive on it, it goes down to the water level & flexes so the more weight you have the slower you must drive, on this crossing the speed limit is 15 mph, which is STRICTLY (1 mph over the speed limit is a 500$ fine) enforced, because what happens is you create a wave in front of you which will hit the shore before you get there & break the ice therefore damaging the road.
The worst time, for me at least is crossing in the spring, cause there's alot of water on the ice, sometimes up to 3 ft deep.
THAT gets scary:
I took these last spring, this was there scariest crossing I ever made, there was one truck allowed on the ice at a time, there were water marks 1/2 way up my fuel tanks & my bottom step was completely under water. The road was closed the next day.
I hoped on the reurnt trip it would be better at night (hoping for colder night), but all it did was scared me worse
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