Ice road
Not Cambridge Bay, though. This ice road just goes to West Arm. West Arm is not another town, it's just another patch of land, a bay outside of town where a lot of people have their cabins when they want to "get away from it all", the hustle and bustle of Cambridge Bay.
Look at me, I'm an ice road trucker
Some people get kind of freaked out about the idea of driving on a body of water, but at this time of the year, the ice is very frozen. They say you only need a few inches of ice to hold a human body up. The ice on the Arctic Ocean around these parts about ten feet deep, and the temperature hasn't gotten warmer than -30 since November. The ice will hold up.
What was more of a worry was the wind. It was blowing snow drifts all across the ice road. I had the truck, but it wasn't a particularly heavy duty truck, not like the ones the Russians drove here from Russia. The last thing we wanted (besides falling through the ice) was to get stuck in a snow drift and have to call for a tow truck to get us out. Or worse off, get stuck in a snow drift out of cell phone range and have to either hike it back to down or dig yourself out the whole way back.
And the winds were strong. It was -40 with the windchill. One of my friends had made plans to go wolf hunting, but the other hunter had told him that it was too windy. We probably should have taken that as a hint.
Trying to assess the situation
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But luckily this little guy came chugging along to save the day.
The snow drifts actually cleared up after a while, once we went around the bend. As the cliffs rose above us, they sheltered us from the wind. It was really cool to see all these spots that I was so familiar with from kayaking in the summer....but now frozen in the springtime. There was Lonely Beach, my favourite secret picnic spot. There was the tank farm. We passed the airport runway as an airplane passed above our heads. And the cliffs of West Arm continued to grow higher.
airplane landing
tank farm and two boats parked for the winter
West Arm is a popular spot for kids to go sledding. We thought we wouldn't be able to go because we didn't have any sleds, but as it turns out, the ice is so slippery we didn't need sleds. We could just slide down in our snow pants.
View across the bay from the top of the hill
shale rocks poking through the snow
truck and snowmobile off in the distance
dog and friend at the bottom of the hill
going for a ride! catching frostbite
On the cliffs of West Arm, we discovered this really cool ice cave formed by under the lip of the cliff by snow. The whole sight was pretty spectacular actually, the wind constantly blowing snow off the cliff's edges, making it look like clouds were clinging to the cliffs. F made his way to the entrance of the ice cave and called out for all of us to check it out, promising that it looked really cool inside.
So we all started to climb.
...and fall off. I didn't have any of the proper climbing gear with me, like an ice pick, so every time I made any progress up the hill, I would slide right down again. The others figured out the trick of kicking in footholds with their boots, but for some reason I couldn't get the hang of it and kept falling down the cliff. Luckily the bottom was padded soft with snow. Instead, I watched with jealousy as everyone else made it to the top of the ledge and went in.
take me with you!
Luckily, they took photos inside the cave.
photo by Lori, because obviously I didn't make it up
Eventually it was time to head back home. By then, the winds had blown more snowdrifts across the ice road. The drive felt a bit like I was stunt driving in an action movie, charging through the snow drifts with white knuckles, nervously hoping the car doesn't slip off into a snow bank at any second. But luckily we made it all the way home without trouble.
(photo from Chris Hummel)
