Hugh Rowland - On Thin Ice: Breakdowns, Whiteouts, and Survival on the Worlds Deadliest Roads

Established in memory of Gary Robinson, who lost his life on the ice roads, the Gary Robinson Memorial Fund provides financial support to those individuals or charitable organizations involved in search and rescue/recovery or emergency response activities. To find out more about the fund or to make a donation, visit the Yellowknife Community Foundation at www.yellowknifecommunityfoundation.ca.

F orty-five below zero in a whiteout snowstorm with the ice cracking and making a nerve-jangling sound like God dropping plate-glass windows from the skythat was my first taste of Hugh Rowlands world. Two weeks before I arrived in Yellowknife, a security guard had plunged through the ice and died within fifteen minutes. While I was there, another man froze to death. He was found completely naked. It was the lead story in the local newspaper. If youre in a blizzard, the most important thing to remember is this: Never get out of your truck. The raging storm and cold temperatures can quickly overwhelm your senses and you may become disoriented. Like the Yellowknife security guard, people caught in a blizzard are often found buck naked and frozen. Apparently theres something called paradoxical undressing, which occurs when a person is freezing and his muscles are failing. If frostbite hasnt induced him to find shelter, its as if the brain decides to put the body out of its misery. People in the paradoxical undressing state describe having a feeling that they cant breathe anymore. Other times, they will hallucinate and imagine tropical locations or extreme warmth. In both cases, people will start tearing off their clothes. It doesnt happen every time, but it seems to be a long-dormant, last-ditch primal defense mechanism that is suddenly awakened in some people when they are in the process of freezing to death. A few have been found in time to survive their birthday-suit big freeze but its a tough way to earn your I survived hypothermia T-shirt.

It was against this backdrop that I started to work with Hugh Rowland.

Hugh and I began this project in December 2008. The day before our first trek on the ice road, a fully loaded big rig slammed into a fuel truck out on a portage. The mangled wreckage was strewn on the side of a snowbank beneath a stand of evergreens. It was close enough to touch as we navigated past. At first, we worked by phone and e-mail. It was safer that way. Warmer, too. The following February, Hugh was waiting for the third season of Ice Road Truckers to begin and his departure to the Yukon was imminent. Not one to let the grass grow under his feet, Hugh invited me to stay in his home for eight days to get to know him; his wife, Dianne; and his family and friends like Grant, Rick, John, Jim, Cary the tattoo artist, Chickie, Diana, Rick, and Perry. They call him Hoodoo or Huge, and it is clearly a point of pride to have worked with or for Hugh Rowland. Hughs friends and family described to me a bighearted man of hard-earned principles, who was very different from his cocky tough guy portrayal on television. The real Hugh Rowland is hardworking and no-nonsense, but also both a kid and a mentor at heart. His easy grace and a confidence in his own abilities draw others to him. He is shrewd in business but also give-you-the-shirt-off-his-back generous. In fact, Hugh did give me his coat when I was unable to find clothing in Southern California that could handle the rigors of the Arctic.

Hugh Rowlands prodigious appetite for challenging work and adventure is the stuff of record and legend. Over the past quarter-century, he has made more runs, carried more tonnage, and survived more close calls than any other ice road driver. Having mastered one of the worlds most difficult jobs, he has lived to tell the tale.

Four weeks after the February trip, I joined Hugh on an excursion on the famed ice roads out of Yellowknife. I saw firsthand many of the things that he describes in this book. There was the bone-chilling temperature, the Arctic storms, the beauty and brutality of the landscape, crashes, both human frailty and human indomitability. The winter roads of the Arctic are a feat of modern engineering and Old World guts. Sadly, Hugh foresees an end to the ice roads within the next decade. That would make him the last of his kind. I hope hes wrong. Whatever happens, Hugh Rowlands place in the history of the Arctic winter roads is carved in ice with a jackhammer.

MICHAEL LENT

T here is a road made of snow and ice that exists only in winter, in a marvelous part of Canada so strange, so far north that hardly anybody lives there. The road forges an overland link in the Northwest Territories between two of the worlds largest inland seas: Great Slave Lake, near the southern border above Alberta province, and Great Bear Lake, on the Arctic Circle. The length of the road changes each winter with all of the troubles encountered during construction, but usually runs about 325 miles, some of them a little rugged.

EDITH IGLAUER IN 1974
Denisons Ice Road

S now is 90 percent air.

If youre caught out in the bush, youll need buckets of melted snow to get enough water to keep you alive. An entire pot of snow boiled down might only get you a few sipsthats a problem when its 60 below zero and youre a hundred miles from the nearest person. You need a lot of energy to maintain a core body temperature and if you dont get water into you fast enough (the colder it is, the bigger the chance of severe dehydration), youll be cashing it in and meeting your maker. Knowing the science of water, snow, ice, and freezing is critical to anybody who needs to work and survive in the Arcticlike me. Ive been driving trucks on the ice roads of the Northwest Territories of Canada for more than twenty-six years, and Ive been stuck out in the bush lots of times, especially in the early days, before cell phones and everything else we have now. And Im still here.

A t the end of November, when the lakes and rivers of the Arctic Circle are blanketed by deep snow, its time to build the ice roads. These roadsyoull find them in Canada, Alaska, Russia, and Scandinaviabear the trucks that haul machinery, concrete, steel, fuel, explosives, and basic life essentials. Theyre a lifeline to remote places that dont have any road access the rest of the year. Building the ice roads was perilous back in the 1950s, when John Denison invented the process. It still is. Over the years, forty men have gone through the ice roads and perished. Ive known most of them.

The roads are built on top of the ice that forms naturally over lakes, rivers, and oceans. Join up one frozen body of water with another, build connector roads called portages over any land in between, and you have a road made of ice. The ice isnt strong enough to support heavy loads by itself, though; it has to be thickened by smashing down the snow and knocking the air out of it. Thats the first step. But snow is full of air and is a world-class insulator for anything thats underneath, so after you beat it down, you have to plow it away to expose the ice below it to the wind and chilling Arctic air. The ice will freeze from the bottom up and thicken until its strong enough to hold up a truck loaded down with supplies. At least you hope it is.

From the time you take the first 6,000-pound vehicle out onto the ice to clear away all the snow in early November to the time when the big rigs loaded with 180,000 pounds rumble across in March, the ice is a risk that you have to manage at all times. Dick Robinson knew that. He started his company back in 1968 and its the biggest trucking and construction outfit in the Northwest Territories. His son Marvin runs it now.